Buttons, Beads and Bobbin

I have been on my travels this week, with a lovely few days on Deb's new boat, including a bit of foraging in the market, the antique hall and the art shop. I couldn't resist the glass beads - I was very pleased to find the round black ones, because they are perfect for eyes, which means I can get on with adding the faces to the Fairy Tale quilt. I also got a bag of small shell buttons, which have a lovely sheen. It's hard not to see faces in two-hole buttons, and because these are natural and imperfect, there are some interesting expressions among them.  Then we treated ourselves to some stones from the market. The black piece is apparently from Whitby, and contains a mass of tiny fossils. The other is, I think, striped calcite palm stone, and I bought it for its beautiful lines and colours. 

An artistic selection of my new purchases. Now I will have to sort them all back into their little bags.

To our great joy, there was a sale of DMC embroidery thread in the art shop, so we treated ourselves to four skeins each. I'm looking forward to using the new variegated thread - but I'm not sure on what! I also got a present from Deb, a vintage loom spool which will eventually be used to make a scroll. All the cotton has to be wound from it first.

Lovely colours, and a lot of cotton to use up

Travelling by train is a good time to get a bit of sewing done, if it isn't too crowded, but I've learnt from experience that some sorts of sewing work better than others. Joining inch-sized paper hexagons was too fiddly, and it's hard to evenly hand quilt when the train is jolting around. So for this journey I prepared a bit of easy stitching in honour of Hallowe'en. These ten little witches are marching along in their hats and cloaks, looking quite determined. They are about 4cm high, including their hats, and are cut from the bits in the tiny scrap bag. They are attached with minute seed stitches in a single strand of thread, and their hair and arms are six strands, couched on, although, in retrospect, I wished I'd used wool for their hair. The background is adorned with cross stitch, to give it a bit of texture. The advantage of seed stitching is that it doesn't really matter where the stitches go, and its nice to feel all the floppy bits of loose fabric merge into a single piece. 

Witches on the move - I wonder where they are going?

Finally, I thought I would show some of the books in my collection that have given me inspiration over the years. This one is Fairy Tale Quilts and Embroidery by Gale Harker, first published in 1992. Inside, there's lots of advice on planning, sources, materials and techniques, and full colour pictures of some beautiful works by a range of artists. My favourite is the quilt shown on the front cover, especially as the princess is peeping out from her own patchwork quilt. The designer of this quilt clearly didn't have my problem with drawing frogs!

Big Bloomers

Bare Rabbit has some bloomers! 

I was nearly defeated by the first leg of pintucks, which took a long session of folding, pinning, undoing, re-pinning and several cups of tea. The wobbly result is evident! However, after a good night's sleep, the second leg seemed much easier, and I flew through sewing on the gathered trim and up the seams. 

However, it quickly became obvious that the bloomers were going to be huge on Bare Rabbit's skinny legs, not at all how they looked in the book. I debated taking in the side seams for a better fit, but decided not to bother. For one thing, the whole bloomers thing seems a bit below Bare Rabbit's quiet dignity, and the exercise was to improve my sewing skills, which I certainly have done.

I'm not sure why some of the clothes seem to have come out too big. At any rate, I feel I've learned enough for now from this book, and I'm going to have a look for another machine project, because I have enjoyed the process very much. 

The Fairy Tale Quilt is progressing too. All the main pieces are attached, and it's time to add a bit of personality. I'm using tiny beads for eyes, noses and hooves, and had to hunt through the drawer of 'things used once a decade' to find the beading needles. There were two left in a pack of four  (I wonder where the other two are lurking) and both were bent, but, luckily, skinny enough for the tiniest, fiddliest beads. 

Faces can be a bit unpredictable. The slightest crooked stitch or misplaced bead can cause these lovable characters to turn into brooding evil masterminds. Puss in Boots, however, looks like a kindly soul; a bit ironic, because he was a cunning trickster in the story.

Puss in Questionable Boots

Meanwhile, Daddy Bear has the glazed look of a father who was dragged out of bed too early on a Sunday morning and forced to go for a walk before he's even had his porridge. (You can see it cooling in the cottage window.) He too has a pleasant smile, though. A little fly stitch works wonders for the mood.

A hungry bear and his bowl of porridge.

Interestingly, the story of the three bears is included in my German book of Fairy Tales, but in this version, the rotten thief is not a golden haired girl, but a little old lady who utters bad words when things are not to her liking. I much prefer this version, although there is the worrying possibility that she is arrested and thrown into an asylum at the end. Hopefully, I have misunderstood the German.

Finally, here are a couple of Billy Goats Gruff, with their trip-trapping legs flying, although they are nowhere near the bridge. You can imagine those little beaded hooves would make enough noise to try the patience of any troll. I have a soft spot for trolls, and don't like to think of them being bad tempered. Perhaps he'd just had a hard day. 

Clueless-looking goats. They should muffle their hooves.

 

Tatty Tales

 

This week, I finished the tiny book of fairy tale pictures, and gave it a suitable name - Tatty Tales.  The cover is made from brushed cotton sheeting with a starry pattern. This is left over scrap from a quilt backing and is a lovely soft grey. The book measures about 7 x 7 cm, and about 1.5 cm thick, with four double pages inside. The lettering is cut from scraps of an indescribable old garment, in strips of about 2mm, and sewed round the edges, fraying furiously as I made my way round. 

My favourite of the pages is Frau Holle. I came across this story in a German book of fairy tales, which I've been reading to practice very rusty German. The advantage of reading fairy tales in another language is that you mostly know the stories, and therefore can take a decent stab at any new vocabulary. However, I had not come across Frau Holle before. 

In the story, she is visited in turn by both a hard-working and a lazy girl. She lets them stay with her, if they do her housework, and, in particular, shake her featherbed so heartily that the feathers fly, for this will make it snow in the world below. In the way of fairy tales, the hard-working girl gets rewarded with gold and the lazy one gets punished with a bucket of pitch. You can't just sit around in a fairy tale!

My picture shows the first girl hard at work shaking out snowflakes. It looks like she's been at it some time, because she's standing in a deep snowdrift. Also, the stars are out, so it must be night - surely  Frau Holle is waiting to go to bed. Perhaps the hard workers aren't always a blessing either.

The Frau Holle picture makes the centre spread in the book.

This week, I also made the rabbit's shirt. I used a bit of an old duvet cover, which had worn thin and had a subtle stripe. The sewing was very fiddly, especially round the sleeves and collar, and I was a bit carefree with the hemming, which means the bottom fronts don't quite match up. Still, I count this another success - it's not perfect, but my skills and knowledge are slowly improving. My next challenge will be some knickerbockers -the poor thing has sat around with a bare bottom for long enough. 

Bare Rabbit now has a range of clothes, none of which match!

Troublesome characters

The Rabbit - not  troublesome at all

The rabbit now has its pink spotted dungarees, which were sewn from an old pillowcase and look quite good, if you like the bold style! They are very roomy, allowing for a shirt or jumper underneath, and also accommodating the rabbit's pompom tail at the back, as I forgot to leave a hole for it. The straps attach to the bib with snap fasteners behind the buttons which are just for show. I have learnt the value of slowing down to snail's pace for the curves, and using the hand wheel for the really difficult bits. Once again, the You tube video from Claire England was invaluable, and encouraging. My next attempt is going to be a shirt to go under it, which I think will be a big step up in difficulty and a wealth of fiddling about with tiny seams. 

This is the book the rabbit and its clothes are taken from.

The top right corner of the Fairy Tale Quilt, with firebird, frog prince, Humpty Dumpty and the genie, all awaiting their eyes and other details 

The rabbit suffered bits of clothes being pinned on to it without a murmur and posed patiently while I tried to photograph it in poor light. Some of the characters on the quilt have been far more troublesome. I wanted my Frog Prince to be leaping about, displaying long, bendy legs and squidgy toes. Unfortunately, I just couldn't draw him to my satisfaction, and he's ended up sitting, not leaping, admittedly froggish, but without the fun toes. Then, after reading my machine manual for the first time in twenty years, I discovered there was an applique stitch. How wonderful - I would try it out on the frog! After a minimum of practice, I dived in. I quickly realised I had the stitch size too small, but blundered on nonetheless, and hated the result. Applique stitch turned out to be horrible to unpick, and the original frog fabric was shredded in the process. For the second effort, I'm back to old reliable zigzag. Like all the characters, he still needs his eyes, and I might add some toes later too.

The lamp has a genie now, who also gave me a lot of trouble. The space I had for him demanded a difficult curve, and it took many experiments with bits of paper till I had him emerging from his lamp (which needs a handle).  I thought he would look good in translucent material, but didn't want the flowery background cloth to show through, so I spent ages tacking chiffon onto cotton backing. But the results were too clumsy, especially when I tried to add folded arms. I didn't want to get stuck on this for long and spoil the momentum of doing a bit every day, so he is a solid body genie now. As a consolation,  I sewed him in metallic thread, which at least gave him a bit of sparkle. 

There are still a few spaces on the quilt to fill. I'm experimenting with Billy Goat Gruff shapes and thinking about what tiny things might be added here and there - a poison apple? dancing slippers? Could I even attempt a spinning wheel? 

Spot the Difference

The Fairy Tale Quilt is filling up. I've added the straw and stick houses for the three pigs, a rickrack beanstalk with, at the moment, unattached leaves, a huge firebird off to steal the golden apple, and a lamp awaiting a genie. There's an awkward space under the brick house that I need to fill, and I still don't have a frog prince - a character I'm quite fond of, although with legs difficult to sew. All my characters are still eyeless, and the troll has lost his head. I'm looking forward to adding tiny details, once all the main bits are on, which should be soon now.

Still on the fairytale theme, I've completed another page for my tatty book - a grimly determined firebird this time!  I'm really pleased with the colours on this one. Adding fine white stitches to the yellow apple seems to make it glow. 

The four double pages are now complete and sewn together. I just have to work out how best to put a cover round them. Probably a bit of planning before I embarked would have been useful, but sometimes worrying about future issues means that nothing ever gets started. 

Even the best plans can go wrong though. I started with what looked like the easiest of the clothes for the rabbit, and successfully completed the summer dress, but I wasn't happy with the material I used, and I'm not a fan of floaty dresses anyway. On to the gilet, which I made from some scraps of tweed that must have been donated to me, as I've never sewn with it before. All was going well until I tried to fit the shoulder seams - the back and front pieces didn't match. What had I done wrong? I managed not to panic, and turned to google instead. It turns out the pattern pieces are printed incorrectly in the book; an errata message tells you how to fix the pattern. But I had already sewn on the pockets and didn't feel inclined to start again. To make it work, I abandoned the inside facing and cut lining using the outer pattern pieces. This worked fine, until I had to squeeze the entire front of the gilet through the too-narrow shoulder seams. A bit of unpicking did the trick, followed by some rather unlovely resewing. I was quite proud of myself at the finished result, and the rabbit is at least bare no longer. I feel it may not ever get anything to match this rather fine article. In the spirit of only using what I have, the next creation will be made from an old pillowcase. Look out for pink spotted dungarees! 

The silver lining in the cloud was that, when I googled the pattern, I came across the you-tube channel of Claire England, who demonstrates how to sew the patterns in great detail and with really useful tips. Just what a wobbly stitcher like me needs. Here's the link https://www.youtube.com/@ClaireEngland1

 

Bare Rabbit

 Time for a new challenge! 

This autumn, I'm having a go at improving  my sewing skills. Mostly, the machine only gets used to zigzag round applique, and, in fact, is working overtime on the Fairy Tale Quilt at the moment. But I found this book on the second hand market, and decided it would be a good project to make the rabbit and all her clothes. Some of the outfits are quite advanced (for me), featuring sleeves, buttonholes, pintucks and gathering, all on a small scale. The advantages are that I won't waste a lot of precious time and fabric if it goes wrong.

 

The book seems perfect for me - very clear instructions with lots of diagrams, full size pattern pieces and some handy sewing tips. 

The first job was to make the rabbit. She is mostly felt, with scraps of fabric for the ears and feet. I aim not to buy anything new for this project, so she is a patchwork of grey scraps. The eyes are tiny black pompoms and the nose is pink knitting wool, which was thick enough to give a good coverage. Her arms are held on by buttons, sewn right through the body so that they move. In fact, most of the sewing was by hand, with the felt seams whip stitched together. With ears up, she is about 48 cm tall, a bit larger than I expected, and which might lead to some strange coloured clothes as I attempt to use only fabrics I have. 

Hopefully the rabbit won't be bare for too long!

Part of the challenge of making the clothes will be following instructions and being precise. My natural inclination is to cut scraps freehand and sew haphazardly together. So I've got a lazy evening project on the go, making a tiny book. As usual, I've gone for a fairy tale theme. This cottage in the woods is one of the double page spreads, measuring about 13cm by 6cm. All the scraps are raw edged, and held on by seed stitching. I find old, worn clothing is lovely to stitch through, and the frayed edges fit the theme. This page features scraps from a shirt, a skirt, offcuts from someone's wedding dress and an ill-advised garment from a trip to Disneyland, which I never wore, but has provided a wealth of cloth to use. I've used a single strand of embroidery thread and metallic machine thread for the stitching. 

Once Upon A Time

I have always wanted to make a fairy tale quilt, and this year I got stuck in, after finding the perfect background material in Hobbycraft. So far, most of the big pieces are appliqued on, mostly by machine, but a few fiddly bits by hand. I made the decision to only do animal characters (not counting the troll, who has had his arms trimmed since this photo was taken). There are a few more buildings and trees to add, and then the details which will hopefully make it come to life. I will be much happier when the characters all have their eyes!