Of Thanksgiving Travel, Needlework Memories, Embroidery, and Applique

Hand Embroidered Pillows Made By My MIL circa 1959

Hello, my lovelies, and happy belated Thanksgiving to all of you in the States who were celebrating this week!  We've just returned from spending the holiday in Florida with my husband's family.  L-O-N-G drive, but well worth it.

More Needle Turn Leaves...

I shoved my Frankenwhiggish Rose needleturn applique project into my suitcase before we left and managed to get some leaves cut, prepped, and stitched down while visiting with Bernie's family, and couldn't help but notice striking similarities between my mother-in-law's throw pillows on the sofa and the project in my lap:

My MIL's Needlework, circa 1959.  This One Is My Favorite.

How cool is that?  It's the same color palette, very similar style -- could be an alternate block in the same quilt.  My mother-in-law Marlies used to do the most amazing sewing and needlework years ago.  Not anymore, due to age-related memory decline, but I asked her about these pillows and she vividly remembered making them.  

She said that she and her sisters got needlework kits like this one from their father as Christmas gifts and these pillows were given to her on her last Christmas in Germany before she emigrated to the United States to marry my father-in-law.  (They were married in 1960, so I'm guessing this was the Christmas of 1959).  Marlies told me the kit came with the pattern, materials, and yarns, and they would start working on the stitching after Christmas.  She had these pillows partially or completely embroidered before she left Germany, and finished and stuffed them sometime after arriving in Philadelphia to begin her new life as a married woman.  So they're close to 60 years old, and I LOVE THEM!

Detail of Yarn Embroidery

Isn't that gorgeous?  I wish I knew more about the pattern designer and the materials.  I can tell you that I've seen these pillows on their family room sofa for the 20+ years that I've known them, and they've definitely seen regular use over the decades, yet there's no pilling of the embroidery threads.  I wonder if it's wool or something else?  I think most synthetic yarns would have gotten all fuzzy and worn-looking by now.

My MIL Marlies, My Sons Anders and Lars, and My FIL Fred

My sons, Lars and Anders, got to spend some quality time with their grandparents, their Tante Angela, and their cousins, too.  My MIL kept asking "Where are the little ones?" whenever the boys left the room, but at 5'10" and nearly 6' tall, they are not little anymore!  

I did manage to get some other sewing done before heading out of town for Thanksgiving.  I loaded and quilted the outreach cuddle quilt for the Charlotte Quilter's Guild:

Outreach Cuddle Quilt Is Quilted!

Someone else in the guild pieced this top and there were some minor fullness issues, so I floated the quilt top and just did a freehand meander from the front side of the machine rather than a pantograph from the backside, where I wouldn't have been able to keep an eye on the trouble spots.  I mounted the quilt sideways and was able to quilt the whole thing in just two advances, less than two bobbins.  Now it just needs to be trimmed and bound. 

Pretty Sure I Put the Horizontal Spool Holder In the Wrong Place

I used a spool of variegated California Poppy YLI 3-ply 40 weight cotton Machine Quilting thread in the needle, and used the horizontal spool holder accessory for the first time since the spool was stack wound.  I am pretty sure I put that thing in the wrong place on my machine, by the way, because in order to use the upper thread break sensor with my setup the thread needs to travel BACKWARDS to the thread break sensor wheel rather than straight down.  I think that spool holder attached with sticky adhesive foam or something; not sure I can get it off and reposition it??  Anyway, I had the 40 weight cotton thread in my size 4.0 needle and used white Super Bob 2-ply polyester prewounds in the bobbin, and was able to get decent tension without too much trouble.  Still seeing slight directional tension variation indicating needle flex, but since completing this quilt I've read that going up to a 4.5 needle with the cotton thread would have helped with that.

I Love How the White Bottom Line Thread Disappears On the Back Side

Look how well the Bottom Line thread disappears on the backing side of the quilt.  The 60 weight 2-ply thread is so fine and thin that it takes on whatever color it crosses, appearing yellow when it crosses yellow fabric and blue where it crosses over blue.

I'm planning to machine bind this quilt, but that will have to wait a few days because I dropped off my main squeeze machine, the 'Nina 750QE, at my Bernina dealer for her annual Well Baby visit.  While I wait for her to return to the studio, I can continue appliqueing leaves to my Frankenwhiggish Rose blocks, pin the last rows of pineapple log cabin blocks together, and get something else loaded on my longarm frame.  

Let's have a poll -- what should I quilt next?  

Should I whip up another charity quilt top for practice quilting and try to completely eliminate the needle flex tension issues, or should I put a REAL quilt on the frame (and risk "ruining it" if my quilting savvy is not yet up to snuff)?  The only "real" quilt top that is finished and ready to load is my Paint Me A Story bear paw quilt, by the way...  

"Paint Me A Story," 65 x 65.  Do I Dare to Quilt This Yet?

I started this quilt in 2014 and I will be HEARTBROKEN if I wreck it.  But I suspect that I need to quilt real quilts if I'm going to get better at the custom quilting I most want to do...  Charity quilts are best suited to simple allover designs, not fancy ruler work and freehand fills.  Hmmm...  Let me know your thoughts in the comments.  

Enjoy the remainder of your long holiday weekend!  I'm linking up with:

• I Like Thursday at Not Afraid of Color: www.lapaylor.blogspot.com       
• Slow Sunday Stitching at http://kathysquilts.blogspot.com/ 
• ·       Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework http://quiltingismorefunthanhousework.blogspot.com

Too Cool for School Carpool "Tag" Pillow Completed!

The Fancy Mommy's New Carpool "Tag," a 10" x 20" Pillow

I finished something today -- the Too Cool for School Carpool Tag.  It's not really a tag, though; it's a pillow that I'm going to wedge between my dashboard and windshield in the carpool pickup line at school this year so the teacher with the walkie-talkie can let the teacher inside the building know which kids should be sent out to my car.  This started out as an experiment in machine embroidered applique using my new Bernina 750 QE back in January.  Then I cast it aside until I decided to use it for a free-motion quilting practice exercise seven months later, in July.  I didn't like the way the quilting looked from the back side (in hindsight, I should have used a lighter weight bobbin thread with the Superior Threads King Tut in the needle) and I wanted to come up with a way to finish the carpool tag so that I would not have hold it up to the windshield, which is how I came to turn this into a 10" x 20" throw pillow.  I just tested it out, and it fits perfectly between the windshield and dash, stays in place without me holding it, and the lettering is very visible from outside the car.  Perfecto!

Samuel & Sons Dolce Marabout in Candy Apple

I used a leftover piece of red microfiber chenille for the pillow back and a remnant of Samuel & Sons Dolce wool Marabout lip cord trim because I had them laying around -- literally -- and they worked.  Unfortunately, I went ahead and cut my pillow front and back with a standard 1/2" drapery workroom seam allowance before I measured the 5/8" lip on my fancy trim.  Groan...  Way to complicate a simple project, Rebecca! 



Annoying 5/8" Trim Lip

Just about every other decorator trim on the planet has a 1/2" lip so you can just line up the edge of the twill lip with the cut edge of the pillow top, sew close to the cord, and have your pillow finish the correct size.  Note to self: Measure FIRST!  THEN cut!

I decided to hand baste this trim to the edges of my pillow front so I could offset it by approximately an eighth of an inch.  Was this really necessary?  Would we have noticed and missed that 1/4" difference in the finished size of this pillow?  Probably not, but it never even occurred to me to just make the pillow slightly smaller.  I had already ordered a custom down/feather insert for this (feel free to roll your eyes at me), and my supplier already oversizes their inserts by about an inch to ensure that the pillow covers don't sag.  I had also already cut away my corners to prevent the "dog eared" look, so that removed even more space from the pillow cover...  Whatever.

Cutting Away Excess Fabric at the Corners to Prevent "Dog Ears"

Here's what the trim looked like hand-basted to the pillow front:

Offset Trim Hand-Basted to the Pillow Front

From the back side, you can see that the twill lip of the trim cord extends just a bit beyond the seam allowance of the pillow front.  You can also see that I was too lazy to test and adjust my serger tension when I serged the edges of my pillow top.  Ahem.  It looks pretty on the outside, where it counts.

Horrendous Tension Abounds; Trim Basted Offset from Edge

After that, I constructed the pillow as usual.  Oh, but I did test out a different invisible zipper.  In the past, when I wanted to make a throw pillow, I'd just choose whichever invisible zipper at Jo Ann's was the closest color match to my pillow fabric or trim, but a couple of times I had problems with the zippers breaking on those (perhaps due to an insufficiently burly zipper, perhaps due to my sons' pillow fighting battles in the living room).  Anyway, this time I ordered heavy duty #6 bridal gown invisible zippers online from The Zipper Lady (she sells them at retail individually; you do not need a wholesale account) to see if that would work better with my bulky quilted pillow fabric and in-the-zipper-seam trim.  The invisible zippers sold at Jo Ann's are usually #2, intended for lightweight garment fabrics like silk, rayon, etc.  See the difference? 

#6 Bridal Zipper on the Left, Regular Invisible Zipper on the Right

The only bummer is that bridal zippers only come in shades of white, cream, and black.  Well, that and the fact that the Bernina #35 Invisible Zipper foot worked better with the smaller coils of the ordinary invisible zipper. 

Inserting #6 Invisible Bridal Zipper with #45 Invisible Zipper Foot, Coils Too Big for Groove

Next time I'll probably go old school and put the invisible zipper in with my #4D Dual Feed Zipper foot instead.

All's well that ends well, right?  At least SOMETHING is finished!

Ta Da!

Rebecca's Tips for Sewing In-Seam Rope Cord Trims

If you're looking for a quick decorating fix for your home, you can't beat decorative throw pillows.  Since pillows use so little fabric, they are a great place to splurge on fancy fabrics and trimmings without breaking the bank, and they are not difficult to sew. 

In the Samuel & Sons ad above, all of the top-applied ball fringe trims have been hand-stitched to the pillow covers, and that is absolutely the way any high-end drapery workroom would apply trims with a decorative header.  The rope cord trims, on the other hand, have a twill tape or knitted lip attached to the cord so that they can be sewn successfully by machine.  I don't do a lot of this type of sewing anymore, but I made an exception recently in order to deliver a set of throw pillows to one of my favorite design clients before the holidays when my drapery workroom was backed up.  I know a lot of home sewers have difficulty achieving professional results with decorative rope cord trim, so I thought I'd share a few tips and tricks of the trade.

Kravet Frontier fabric, Habaneros Colorway

When I'm making a throw pillow, I cut two squares of fabric to the size of my pillow insert plus 1", to give me 1/2" seam allowances on all four sides.  I round off my corners slightly using a corner template from M'Fay Patterns.  Next, I like to overcast the raw edges of my pillow top and bottom pieces on my serger, especially when I'm working with a difficult fabric like this one from Kravet -- it has an intentionally wrinkled, puckered surface, and the little motifs that appear to be embroidered are actually a jacquard weave, leaving long floating strands of thread all over the back side of the fabric.  Once the edges were overcast on the serger, this fabric was totally well behaved throughout the rest of the project.



Ruffled Rouche lip cord from Robert Allen

When you're selecting your decorative rope cord, you can save yourself a lot of headaches by avoiding those that are very stiff and/or large diameter.  Why?  Think about it.  You're going to use a zipper foot to try to sew as close to your cord as possible.  If your cord is a rigid 5/8" diameter cylinder and you're sewing it against the flat bed of your sewing machine, there is no way you can get your sewing machine needle to stitch right up against the cord because the cord rolls inward onto the lip in order to lie flat.  With that kind of cord, I just machine stitch as close as I can and then supplement with hand stitching from the right side (after turning the pillow right side out) to ensure the cord is hidden.  With the Ruffled Rouche cord trim I was using for this project, I was able to push it and smoosh it out of the way sufficiently that no additional hand sewing was necessary.

Now, 1/2" seam allowances are standard for home dec sewing, but the header on my rope cord was a lot narrower than 1/2". If I just lined up the cord lip with the edge of my pillow top, my seam allowance would be too small and my pillow cover would finish too large.  I attached the seam guage to my zipper foot, set at 1/2" from the needle, and used that as a guide for my pillow fabric.  Then I just smashed the rope cord trim up against the left side of my zipper foot as tightly as I could as I stitched the trim to the pillow front.  Oh, and I did use a longer stitch length for this, to reduce puckering. 

Cord Ends Unraveled and Woven Together, Ready for Stitching

I should also mention that, when I start sewing on a rope cord, I try to stop and start in an inconspicuous place, on the bottom of the pillow between the corner and the start of the zipper.  I leave the first few inches of trim loose as I begin stitching, and when I get all the way around the pillow I leave a few inches of trim loose to overlap the starting point.  I carefully unravel the trim at both ends and weave the two ends together (this is easier with some trims than with others), pulling the yarn tails into the seam allowances and flattening them as much as possible.  Then I simply stitch across the yarn tails to secure the cord join.

Stitching Across the Yarn Tails to Join the Cord Ends

After Securing the Joined Ends, Trim the Yarn Tails Even with the Seam Allowance

Ta da!  When this pillow was finished, it was impossible to tell where the cord join was.

A few more tips: After I sew the cording to the pillow top, I insert my invisible zipper and then I sew all the way around to secure the pillow front to the pillow back, right sides together.  Then I flip the pillow over and sew around the perimeter again from the opposite side -- this helps get even closer to the cord.

Unfortunately, I was rushing to get these pillows delivered to my client and I forgot to take pictures of the finished pillows once they were stuffed.

Delicious Custom Pillows Come to Life!

Back in May, I posted here about a custom bench cushion and throw pillows that I'd designed for a small seating area at the base of my client's three-story spiral staircase.  We're still waiting on one backordered fabric for two of the bench pillows to come in, but everything else is finished.  My workroom did a beautiful job:

F. Schumacher, Samuel & Sons, Kravet, Lee Jofa, & Stroheim fabrics & trims

Lee Jofa pillow fabric with JAB Anstoetz trims

I also designed these cute little diva stool cushions for my client's granddaughter's play area in the Game Room.  We had leftover silk velvet Zebra patterned fabric, and leftover silk velvet drapery fabric, and added a little metallic beadcord at the seat edges to create these darling cushions with elastic edges (shower cap style) to slip over the hard particle board seats of this diminutive dinette set.  Because my workroom is amazing, and because there was enough fabric left, the little cushions are fully reversibe in case of sticky finger smears or spills:

Little Miss Muffet Loves Zebra


This deserves a close-up:

Have a wonderful Friday!

A Room Without Pillows is Not Finished Yet

This is my client's beautiful wool oriental carpet, which anchors a small seating area at the base of a three-story spiral staircase.  I have literally been crawling around the floor of my office for the past three hours, digging through piles of trim samples and fabric memos, to come up with the perfect combination of fabrics and trims to imbue this small space with warmth, personality, sophistication, and elegance.  Also fun.  Red fun!

The camel mohair chairs with nailheads are new, but they need to be enlivened with custom throw pillows, as will the teak bench on the opposite wall.  So, after obsessing about pillows for three hours, here's what I'm excited to show my client tomorrow:

 The teak bench will get two square throw pillows in this Patchwork Damask Silk in Russet from Lee Jofa, with Samuel & Sons Boulette Fringe in Cherry Bomb sewn in-seam.

This cut velvet bamboo fabric is also from Lee Jofa, and it's slated for the pillows that go in those mohair chairs.  In person, this fabric is exactly the same shade as the chair fabric, but its shimmery pile will give it enough oomph to hold its own and not disappear into the chair fabric.  This red and gold brush fringe from JAB Anstoetz will go in-seam, and the coordinating Stresa braid will be inset about 2" from the edges of the pillow, mitered at the corners.

 Another fabulous Lee Jofa velvet!  Fretwork in Claret/Chocolate is for two more throw pillows on the teak bench, and these will have knife edges, but they will be anything but ordinary with JAB key tassels on the corners that are embellished with Swarovski crystals and cultured pearls.

Last but not least, the teak bench will get a custom boxed seat cushion in this F. Schumacher & Co. bamboo Deco Velvet fabric.  This Samuel & Sons hand-embroidered ribbon will completely cover the 2" boxing, and solid black silk chair ties will secure the cushion to the bench at the front corners.  I love mixing the contemporary geometric patterned velvet with this vintage-looking ribbon trim, and the metallic embroidery reminds me of the gorgeous antique Asian textiles my client collects (several of which will likely be displayed on the walls of this space).

Okay, I lied -- there's one more pillow.  We carried this Calvin Klein ribbed ottoman fabric swatch around for months, loving the texture and the myriad hints of color that made this anything but a basic black, and finally we discovered that it complements this carpet beautifully.  So this will be one small rectangular pillow on the teak bench, with this Stroheim & Romann silk pom braid inset a few inches from the edges.  The bench cushion is gold with black, so this pillow is black with gold. 

Considering that I exhausted just about every resource imaginable, and auditioned hundreds of possible fabric and trim combinations, and didn't like ANYTHING else until I came up with this plan, I really hope my client likes it as much as I do!