Christmas Ornaments

Well it's that time again and I am making Christmas ornaments for our church Boutique. I am having foot surgery next week and have been using mostly felt for my ornaments so I can work on them with my foot propped up. I used stiff white felt for the cut-out snowflake and it's a lot easier to cut than regular felt. I also used the stiff felt for the back of the round ornaments, with a little circle of fleece inside - this seems to give them a little puffiness and helps to keep their shape. The snowflakes are my design, but feel free to copy them if you like.... Do you recognize this house ornament? It's not my design - I saw something very similar to it on a blog or somewhere and can't find it again. I'd like to give credit where credit is due and wanted to ask the person who designed it if I can make a bunch for our Boutique, but don't know whose it is....but it's very cute!

Happy Stitching,
Lin Moon

Earring Crazy

It all started with a trip to the Pasadena Bead and Design Show. I bought some flower earrings and just fell in love with the vintage lucite flower beads they were made from. That began my quest.... I have been having such fun playing with flowers and beads! Luckily our church Boutique is coming up and they can sell the earrings there. But I will have to keep one or two pair, I must admit. Here are some pix of the earrings I have made....

Embroidery with Nails

This embroidery is for SharonB's Stitch Explorer 2009. This month's challenge was to incorporate something you don't usually use in your embroidery. So I chose to use small nails. First I stamped my blue cotton background with various leaf stamps in different shades of blue and turquoise. I used stamps with maidenhair fern and ginkgo leaves. Then I arranged the nails in this swirl pattern. I just love curves - my favorite CQ seam treatments are the ones that curve, twist and twine. I stitched over the nails using ribbon floss, then added the sequins and beads. This was really fun!

Even More LB Quilt Pix

The Gita Maria booth was on my list to visit. They had a lot fewer buttons and jewelry and a lot more shawl pins. Maybe that's because their new thing is shawl kits made with lots of gorgeous fibers, water-soluble stabilizer and machine embroidery. Here's a picture of the shawl they had on display. Some of the fibers in it were wide organza ribbons with patches of gold thread woven in - it was fabulous! (P.S., since some of the pictures get so big when you click on them, you might want to hit "control -" (that's minus) to get them to a better size)


This picture was taken at the igolochkoy booth. I talked a little with the woman at the booth and she told me they make their own needles! She said she likes to support the artists that use her special needles, so buys their work to support them and to show at her booth, so others could see the possiblities. This piece was wonderful!


This is Susan Fletcher King's entry for the Journal Quilt Project II.




I stopped at Mary Jo Hiney's booth and had a very nice conversation with her. She displayed this quilt in her booth; it is featured in her book called "Quiltagami". I really like the bottom of it, with the shapes and the beads hanging down. It was quite special.


This quilt is called "Midnight in the Garden of Hearts and Flowers" and was made by Judith Roush Knorr.




Diane Ricks made "Pacific Ocean Underwater Wonders". It is quite beautiful. Check out the stitching on the gold fish and the wonderful texture at the bottom of the quilt.


This one is called "Praise Ye Now Our Gardens Green" and was made by Sonia Grasvik.








I apologize for the fuzziness of some of the close-ups; as I kept visiting vendors my bag got heavier and heavier and it was hard to hold the camera still! (Such a terrible problem to have!) I had such fun there!
Enjoy,
~Lin Moon

More LB International Quilt Show PIx

There were so many great quilts at the Long Beach International Quilt Show! Of course photos were not allowed for lots of them. There was one very interesting quilt made by a woman from South Africa. It had a lot of squares in it and there was a large piece across the middle and down the center that was needlepoint. I don't remember the stitch name, but it was all small squares where each one is defined by a set of maybe 6 diagonal stitches. And the interesting thing was, the needlepoint was not blocked, so it was a little wavy, and that actually added to the piece. It was very interesting to add canvas to a quilt. I did see quite a few quilts with Angelina and felting in them...

This is "Sonoma Coastline" by Jan Carter, with a few detail shots of the base of the piece. I loved all the texture in it.






This is "Spring in Japan" by Akiko Kawata. It was hard to get a good view of this quilt, but it was beautiful.




THis quilt is called "The Pond" and was made by Marylee Drake. I love the 3D petals of the flower and the wings of the dragonfly.


"The Thread of Life" is shown here, by Jean Overmeyer.




This is "With the Passing Days" by Marie-Jose' Michel. I really liked the design of this quilt. She used fabric printed with irises for the irises, fabric printed with wisteria for the wisteria, etc. I enjoyed the effects she created with the non-printed fabrics more, like the cascading leaves and cherry blossoms. It's interesting how some quilts are better seen up close and some better from a distance.








Looking at all the quilts really gave me a lot to think about. Sometimes my immediate reaction was WOW! and then I tried to stand back and figure out what made it a WOW quilt.
Enjoy,
~Lin Moon

Long Beach Quilt Show 2009

I spent all day Saturday at the Long Beach Quilt Show. I didn't sign up for any classes this year; I wanted to have plenty of time to see all the quilts on exhibit and visit all the vendors. I'm so glad the show is in Long Beach and not just in Houston; I've been looking forward to going for months. Here are some pictures from the show. Enjoy! Since some of the pictures get so big when you click on them, you might want to hit "control - " (that's minus) multiple times to get them to a better size.
This is an Antique CQ quilt from Cindy's Antique Quilts (in OK). It was in excellent shape. She was asking around $3200 if anyone is interested. The bird embroidery was wonderful. It has these cool motifs made of small hexagons placed in a circle and then embroidered over. It was beautiful!




























































This one is called Evening and is by Deborah Sylvester. It is made up of hundreds of tiny little pieces, used like paint to form the quilt.





















This last one is called "Ginkgo" and is by Marianne Haeni. The detail shows an inset of what looks like machine-made lace, with a piece of fabric inset into that, with a gingko leaf on it. I thought this inset was a very interesting idea.





















More pictures will come in another post - hope you enjoyed the eye candy!

Book Review Art and Embroidery of Jane Hall

Have any of you seen this book? It is called "The Art & Embroidery of Jane Hall". This is a great book for inspiration - it's not your usual embroidery book. Jane Hall also uses paint, paper, cut silk, wire, etc. to achieve her effects. When she shows a piece, it may consist of 3 or 4 vertical planes, placed one in front of another to evoke a particular effect.

This book transforms you to a different world. It is a richly textured portrayal of a reverence for nature. It's one of the few embroidery books that is enjoyable to read, as well as peruse for pictures. Jane Hall can find solace in a single snowdrop; she is awed by the wonder of nature and it shows. Her work is layers upon layers of shimmering silks, chiffons, organza and ribbons.

She spends 2-3 months minimum on each of her pieces; the care she takes is evident. No detail is left unstudied, nor its influence on the mood of the completed piece. Even her chapter on materials is mouth-wateringly inspiring. Her fabric/thread design swatches are gorgeous! Although her creatures are more inspired by imagination than reality, sometimes you have to look twice to see which is which. Each of her pieces is shown in full and then in several detail shots, with descriptions of her working methods. In particular, she describes her methods for achieving depth from afar to up close.

There is a mood to her descriptions – awe, wonder, delight in nature and veneration.
It’s hard to believe anyone could improve upon nature, but Jane Hall’s work does.

More playing with needleweaving

I love texture and decided to get out some of my yarns to do some needlewoven bars (long ones!) for this landscape. My felting pad came in really handy; once I felted the background. I pinned the end of my loooong loop(s) down into the pad to prepare for the needle weaving. Ironically, I didn't use a needle for the weaving, since my yarn lengths were a yard long or more. At first I kept running out of yarn before finishing weaving the loop, but eventually I just doubled the yarn, like you would use a double thread in a needle, but without the needle. Then you have a loop at the end of your weaving yarn and if you run out, you can just loop another long length of yarn onto it, avoiding a knot, and keep on weaving.
So I had a bunch of bars coming out of the left side and some coming out of the right side. I hid the end of one bar under the curve of another. It was fun to intertwine (weave!) the bars to resemble hills, the ground, etc....

Happy Needleweaving,
~Lin Moon

Playing with needleweaving

I've been playing more with needle-weaving as part of SharonB's Stitch Explorer 2009 and I have so many ideas floating around in my head! Not enough time to try them all, but anyway, I thought the idea of a hand was a good one. It was hard to get good proportions - even though I used a picture as a guide (basted to the back), the fingers came out longer and fatter than I planned, but still, you can tell it's a hand. I didn't want to spend hours weaving the palm of the hand, so I used a thicker and lighter shade of blue for the weft portion of the palm.



I didn't secure the thumb and 2 of the fingers down, so that I could try making a peace sign. Peace out, man..... yes I was a hippie in the 70s....

Happy Needleweaving,
~Lin Moon