Lazy sewing mounting

If you do a lot of crafts, you often have little projects that you did fairly quickly.  Whether it is cross stitch or embroidery or some sort of cool hybrid project, the work is finished but what to do with it?

Now the 'proper' way is to sew it to some sort of base or mount.  This often requires first hemming the edge to ensure it doesn't fray under tension.  Or if it is little enough to be a bookmark you could use hemming table to stick it to a base bit of felt.

But what if it isn't bookmark material or you want to put it up on a wall or in a frame?  Or you are like me and are too lazy to do the 'proper' way for something that is little? (I'm better on big stuff that takes years!).

So I have this little embroidery that needs to be mounted lest the fabric be wrinkly.

The first step is to sort the edges of the fabric out so they don't move or fray- particularly since this is two pieces of fabric with wadding in the middle.  So I got my sewing machine out and- just kidding.  This is a lazy job. Masking tape to the rescue!

Now for the board to mount the fabric on. Lots of two dollar/cheap shops now sell craft supplies and painting supplies and they carry canvas boards in a wide range of sizes from the very small (what I need) to very large (useful source if you want thick, non-bendy card for a project).  Even better, the shop near me had 50% off.  Score!

Your board should be at least 2cm smaller around for each edge to be able to fold the material over easily for taping.

Fold and tape over top and bottom.

Then the two sides.

If you are happy with things at this point, leave it be.  I found the edges were showing so I very carefully cut off the excess using scissors.  Don't cut too close to the front of the piece or the fabric will possibly fray on the front.

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Then apply tape to protect the fabric and to stop anything pulling away.

And here's my finished piece.  It looks so much better than it did at the start!

Now I will say that this is strictly for small, minor projects.  I don't know how well it will hold up over years, nor do I know that the tape will or won't do anything to the material for a while.  A little project like this that only took a day or so (well I did it over a few weeks but that's because I don't get to craft as much as I'd like) is possibly going to end up as part of a card or just stuck in a corner, it's not exactly heirloom work!  If you have spent months or years on a project, it's worth spending the time and/or money to do or to get someone to do things right.

Hope this helps you do something with the pile of finished work- enjoy!

I've said it before, kits are good holiday go tos

Labour day was a little while ago but since I've not gotten around to photographing this until now, here's a new post!  This is part of a cute little bag kit I bought from a patchwork and quilting shop in NSW a few years ago on my travels and it was perfect to throw in a bag and take camping.

I tweaked the pattern a little- I added boards to the boat (it was just an outline originally) and changed the colours of the fish because I preferred the green and yellow.  The boards are a little wonky and uneven but I choose to call it quaint and rustic instead of 'wobbly because you really should've drawn it on before you started'.  The important thing for any project is to know how justify... innovative differences caused through inattention...

Making miniature petit point pieces

The piece that started it all

Many moons ago, I posted about a mini petit point broach that I deconstructed and made a pattern from.  And then did nothing else with for a long time.


Well in my holiday crafting mode I decided to do something about it.  I had some 40 count silk gauze that I had bought last time (that means there are 40 threads in each direction per inch in the gauze).  I dug it out, printed off a copy of my pattern and got started.

The first step was to create a frame to hold the gauze.  When doing cross stitch, I never bothered doing this as the tension in the stitches balanced out in my hands.  On the other hand, petit point is like half cross stitches- that meant the thread will always be pulling in one diagonal direction.

Because my pattern was  40 stitches across, I knew that my finished piece would be one inch (2.5 cm) across so I marked a 2 inch (5 cm) square to cut out on a bit of scrap cardboard

To stop the card from folding or tearing, I folded the sides over a few times and glued them down in order to reinforce the sides.  Then I taped a 3 inch square of silk gauze into place and got started.

Stitching was fairly simple. If you have done cross stitch before, you can do this.  The biggest  challenge was, of course, the scale!  Strong light is your friend if you try this!  Some sort of hands-free magnifier would also be advisable, but the only one I had was 2-4X magnification and between the awkwardness of it and the low power, it was fairly useless.

 I ended up making my original colour version and I am planning on mounting it in the original fitting if I can. 

One other thing I tried since I was on a run, was to dye the silk gauze using alcohol ink (aka a sharpie).  It worked really great, and I got to test another cross stitch design I've not posted up here yet...  This one was interesting as I tried a bit of backstiching in a lighter cotton thread (the designs were done with a single thread of DMC cotton), and the mountain of Cori Celesti was made using glow-in-the-dark thread.  Although suspect only I will ever know that since such a small amount of thread doesn't glow significantly.

What do you think?

Stumpwork- my first ever project

OK, this post is just a little brag.  I've just finished (mounted and everything) my very first stumpwork project.  Since it was also one of the first embroidery projects I've done (before this I was mainly a cross stitcher) it meant that from the start I was learning many new skills (thank goodness for embroidery stitch books!).

I bought this as a kit several years ago at a big Craft Fair.  I love the little details in it- the little bees are only a few millimetres across and yet so adorably cute!

The pattern is called 'Garland of Flowers', designed by Jane Nicholas and appeared in Inspirations magazine, Issue No 38 if you are interested in doing one of your own.  I can attest that even if you are a complete beginner at stumpwork, this design is possible.

Deconstructing a miniature embroidered broach

Several weeks ago I fell in love with a lovely old broach at a market stall at uni.  So despite the fact that the last thing I should be doing is buying things, it somehow managed to follow me home!  But it had a flaw that irritated me- there was a nasty stain around the edge. It's most noticable near the pink rose but there were a few marks elsewhere.  Close examination showed that it was due to a nasty seeping glue that had discoloured over time.

The broach after I attempted to clean it.  It is about 3 cm in diameter if you are curious.

When I got it home, I tried a few remedies to try and fix it- a gentle wash in warm water with a bit of detergent but no joy.  I then tried getting out the big guns- polar solvents.  This was a big risk- if the colours in the embroidery were not colourfast then I might find them bleeding everywhere and ruining the piece.

While the thread colours happily did not bleed, the stain did not move either.  I suppose I could've left as it was but I decided to take drastic action.  If you have a mint condition broach, I don't recommend the following- this one had already been repaired (the pin on the back was a modern one glued on to replace the original) and had the stain.  But be aware, if you have something with true value DON'T do the following!  I am not an expert- lovers of old things who spend weeks lovingly restoring things would probably be horrified.  I tried to treat the broach with respect but old glues meant that there was a certain lack of finesse in the following.

I decided to see if I could deconstruct the broach to either fix the embroidery if possible, or replace it with something I made myself.  Step one was to pry the backing place (flat metal with the decorative border) off the piece the embroidery was mounted on.  This had been glued down so a certain amount of prying was required.  They came apart fairly easily- the broach pin fell off due to a small amount of flexing, but since this had been glued on much more recently than the rest of the piece I just kept both to glue together again later.

The embroidery was mounted in a metal piece- it's hard to explain well.  The easiest thing is to probably look at the picture below.  An attempt to pry it apart was not successful as it was clear it was going to damage the embroidery so I resorted to using a knife to carefully cut around the fabric.  While this would mean the piece couldn't be remounted in the same broach, I felt it would ultimately cause less damage since it put less stress on the fabric.  Then I could finally separate the broach back- you can see the small dent in back piece.

A part of me wanted to find a signature or a scrap of paper in the back piece. It's a perfect little hollow space that would be awesome to put some tiny message into the future in that may or may not ever be seen again.  Now whether it should've been a posterity message 'this broach made in [insert date here] by me' or something to mess with future person's head 'Now look what you've done!' I'll leave as an interesting thought exercise to the reader.  Sadly there was no identifying marks, either paper or stitched into the border so the creator's identity will forever be a mystery.

Now while this has probably horrified any antique restorer, it has provided a great glimpse into how the piece was made in the first place.  The embroidery was stitched on a piece of off-white silky fabric with a even mesh light chiffon like fabric on top to provide the grid to stitch too.  It also provides a unique chance to see what the original colours are- I was very surprised to see the difference!

Here's what I mean.  Here is a photo of the front of the stitching on a black background.  To provide a colour comparison, I've included three DMC embroidery flosses: 334, 347 and 725 respectively.

And here is the back with the same DMC colours for comparison.

Much brighter, isn't it!  That's the colour that the original embroiderer intended- something bright and cheerful.  As for what I am going to do with a small piece of embroidery and an empty broach, well that's for future blog posts to tell...

Embroidered card

Here is the first project I acquired from the Melbourne Craft and Quilt fair this year.  Not only the first to post about here, but the first completed (rather impressive if you consider that there are unfinished and unstarted projects from previous years in the cuboard!)

This was such a sweet little kit that I couldn't resist.  It was also a nice quick little project- I picked it up and started it yesterday when I got home from the craft fair and I finished it this morning.  The kit was made by Rowandean and is called Foxgloves at Roadside.

Pros: nice and cheap but provides everything needed including window card, threads, needle and envelope.
Cons: the pattern is printed in permanent ink so when making it up all the printing must be covered which was tricky for the pink flowers.  Also, the instructions for the foxgloves on the left didn't say what sort of stitch to use so I just sort of winged it.

A rather English scene but given how simple it was to do, I'm somewhat curious if a similar scene could be given an Australian feel- just swap the tree to a gum tree and yellow the grass off a bit more.  Perhaps turning the fence into a post and wire fence.  Hmm...