These projects waited on binding for some time. Both applique patterns are by Carolyn Friedlander. The first is from Creativebug, a website that offers amazing tutorials.
This project is from Savor Each Stitch, but this is the backside. Check out the front here.
Completing this pattern has been an exciting process, but highlighted the challenges of communication. I hope this tutorial/pattern is easy to navigate and helps the user make a passport cover. This is a fun project! The covers make great gifts to your friends that travel or are perfect for making yourself a personalized cover.
Tutorial & PDF: Passport Cover by Brambleton Threads
Materials:
Fabric: scraps or 1 Fat Quarter or 2 Fat Eighth of different colors.
Woven Fusible Interfacing
Thread
Sewing Machine
Rotary Cutter
Self-Healing Mat
Fabric Pen
Scissors
Iron
Spray Starch
2. Using the instructions provided by the manufacturer, iron interfacing to the center of the wrong side of the shell fabric. 
3. Place right sides of the shell and lining together and pin all sides.
4. Using a fabric pen and ruler, mark 1/4” at each corner. Use scissors to clip all corners 1/4”.
5. With a 1/4” seam allowance sew three sides, both lengths and one width (two longs & a short), leaving one side open. Backstitch the start and beginnings of each edge. Set stitches by pressing with hot iron.
6. Pull the fabric right-side out through the open edge. Press edges.
7. Fold the short-side’s open seam under a 1/4” and press using fingers or iron. Pin.
8. Sew shut the open seam with an 1/8” top-stitch. Set stitches. Trim thread. 
9. Fold the piece in half and press, creating a crease in the middle. Reopen the piece flat.
10. To create the flaps, fold each width in towards the middle crease 1 3/4” and press. Pin in the middle of the creased edge and flap edges. Do this on each side.
11. With an 1/8” top-stitch sew the entire length of the top of the piece, backstitching at each corner of the flaps. Repeat this on the bottom edge.
12. Set stitches. Trim. Add passport & admire! The fabric will soften with time & travel. 
Please share your results and comments! Thanks for stopping by.
I always travel with a passport, but I never found the perfect case. I first wrote and made this easy passport pattern last Fall to solve my passport case woes. I’ve made a few demos in the process of pattern writing and I love the final product. Later this week I’ll share the pattern and tutorial!
I was traveling this early part of April and I’m looking forward to catching up with everyone. Thanks for stopping by!
The Free-Motion quilting bug caught me! Carolyn Friedlander’s awesome pattern Arcs waited patiently to be quilted and with the new Janome now here I was more than happy to start quilting. The sun came out strong yesterday, perfect to sit down and sew by.
Speed and stitch length are two of the things I am thinking about while quilting. It takes strong hands and arms to move the layers quickly under the needle. Sometimes I have a gap, but others I don’t move enough and the stitches are tiny. I am staying present! If my mind wands the needle wiggles! Quilting gloves may be helpful in this department by making sure for a more steady grip. Have you tried quilting gloves?
The design translated prettily from the front to the back. My husband said it looks like an ancient calendar, and it certainly does! The scale was an easy and the most fun shape for me to make, with a swoop-away-and-back towards me. The thread is gold Aurifil, and didn’t break at all. For the background fabric I used Sarah Watts’ Honeymoon. Earlier I mentioned the front of the piece felt like a sunrise to me and this background fabric felt like night and how light time feels around those hours.
The trees are blooming. Awhile ago I noticed this tree was shaped like a heart from growing around the powerlines and thought it would be magnificent in Spring. Here it is! The blooms aren’t in entirely, but this is a sneak peak.
What is blooming near you? Have a great weekend!
Yesterday held firsts. The Janome serger and sewing machine arrived! I’ve been waiting all month and it flew by. After returning home safely, I wasted no time switching over needle plate, threading up, and trying out free-motion quilting; Lori Smith’s appliqued piece was my first choice.
Complete satisfaction: I loved every second I spent trying out this new skill. The hours flew by while I stitched. I’m nowhere near steady, but am enthused to keep practicing; I want to quilt everything and am quickly on that path. Free-motion work is what drew me in to quilting for good: Fabric doodling! I was captivated by the work of other artists/quilters, and I couldn’t wait to join.
Doodling is an activity I love. I wasn’t sure how I wanted to transfer my ideas from brain-to-fabric. Many draw with friction pens or use an overlay, but I was so excited to try out the machine and an eyeball worked best for me. The endless options are incredible! Before I knew it, I had a sweet little table accented by a window. This stitching made easy with Aurifil thread.
The table was a little hard to see, and I wanted to play with texture, so in came some thicker thread paired with hand stitching and a great outline formed. All of the applique practice has paid off in the stitch regularity category.
Happy Spring! It has been a busy and exciting March. The spring peepers are out and the trees are pushing to bloom. Have you been working on anything exciting?
Thanks for stopping by!
The School of Sewing is a book I return to again and again since being recommended it by my seamstress aunt. A lot of people are worried about using a sewing machine, and I was no exception. The School of Sewing helped demystify my machine and got me comfortable using a variety of sewing schools. It’s a great book for those looking for a book to help them with beginning sewing. The apron, project three, is a great one and well fitting.
This is the child’s size and is a gift for a friend. The dinosaur fabric is Lizzy House’s Natural History for Andover fabrics. Lizzy House is one of my favorite fabric designers. She is playful and vibrant and sweet. These are great prints to work with.
I picked solids for the rest of the apron because it seemed to balance out the print. This apron is for a boy, and I wanted it to have a more stark appearance. The apron is already on its way in the mail to the recipient and I couldn’t be happier. Making a gift for another has always been such a pleasant experience for me.
How have you been sharpening your sewing skills? Thanks for stopping by!
Valentine’s Day is fun. This is a sweet time of year, and I love to send out cards. For previous Valentine’s Days I’ve sent out postcards, embroidered hearts, glitter cards (and those turned in to glitter bombs after being processed through the mail!), and now these old school grade school valentines I found about a year and a half ago when helping a relative move.
These sweet animal cards were perfect. Time has been a bit crunched the past two weeks, but I still wanted to send out cards.
The other evening I sat down with some Winsor & Newton Designer Gouache in Gold and set to drawing. It’s been about eight months since I used a calligraphy pen and nib, so there were some rusty moments and valentines were limited, but I was able to ease up on the amount of pressure my fingers wanted to apply to the pen and the cards turned out cute. The sun came out just as I was taking pictures, and the gold really sparkles.
How and why colors coming together are constantly on my mind. I want to tell a story with each piece I make, and it should not be a story that leaves one wondering why it was created. The story should be steady enough to enter and fresh enough to the eye each time that one keeps returning; I’m thinking a lot about it! After trying many other combinations, these two were my final contenders.
Chain-piecing was one of my favorite skills I learned in beginner quilting. The product makes me want to hang garlands all around the house.
A new sewing machine is close to being a part of my life, but I still love my little Janome. It is doing a great job sewing up those seams!
I decided to nestle the clouds between the solid purple and blue Arcs to give this more of a sunrise feeling. Catching the sunrise everyday is one of the most amazing times of the day, and the sun pushes the pinks, purples, and dark reds against the blue sky. With this much print, I felt it was important to create a balance within the already chosen colors, and then find the most cohesive union between these rows. I’ve been contemplating a border the entire week and have yet to settle on any one idea.
Any tips on how you decide on borders?
Happy Valentine’s Day! What are you doing to mark the day?
This is my first time using one of Lori Smith’s applique patterns. The directions are simple and well numbered. I was introduced to her work through the applique class I’m taking at the LQS. It is a great pattern to learn many of the skills needed in applique…as I’m finding out! 
The pattern encourages scrap usage and to date I haven’t used any new fabric. We used bias bars to make the stems and these helped make the stems bendy, easier to apply on. Glue was recommended to keep the stems in place, but since I am on the go and recently learned the joys of basting, I decided to baste the stems on. I’m saving most of my pennies, and glue feels like something I could run to pick up if I was screaming for it, but am glad not to buy right now!
To make circles close to perfect (mine aren’t perfect!) we utilized Karen Kay Buckley’s Perfect Circles. The O-ring to hold all the circles is included, and I love that! Not only are my circles better than anticipated, but each one looks like a sweet little flower while awaiting application.
I worked on Carolyn Friedlander’s Arcs all week. What I appreciate about this pattern is how dynamic the arcs are despite being a simple shape. I learned a lot about tucking under and securing corners.
This is all scrap fabric I had from other projects. The raspberry fabric in the middle row almost had me cutting out new arcs, but I decided to roll with it. This project still has a lot more to be added, and the colors can be balanced. Thread color is going to be crucial.
Other exciting things have been going on here too. I’ve been drawing a lot and am thinking about ordering some supplies to make printed fabric by hand. Any tips? Has any one worked on making fabric?
What are you working on?
A thank you to all that have stopped by & looked, liked, commented, or a combination of all three. Deciding to start a blog wasn’t easy for me due to introversion, but that was a feeling I pushed aside to forge ahead.
The way I typically thank those in my life is through a greeting card. With the internet being my platform here, I thought it best to provide a greeting card tutorial. The embroidery greeting card first came in to my life in the form of tiny hearts I cut out. I embroidered my friends’ initials or names in the hearts. Many of the tiny hearts were cut without a thought about templates and I hadn’t learned back-stitch yet (my favorite right now)! This is the sophisticated version, using calligraphy style script, of those sweet little hearts. The embroidery greeting cards don’t take much time, but make a big impact on the recipients!
Materials:
1. Measure the paper to to size of card you would like. Here I cut the paper down to 6 1/2″ x 11″.
2. Fold the paper in half hamburger style. I used my fingers to set the crease.
3. Free hand draw what you might like on the card. Typically I write “Happy Birthday, _____!”, or if for a couple I draw both their names with a heart in-between. Don’t worry about using fancy script, because everything looks beautiful once embroidered.
4. Poke holes in the card every couple of millimeters or centimeters. The closer the holes are the more likely of a collapse of the card-stock between the spaces. The further apart the holes the larger the stitches will be and this will make the card faster to complete. A variety of stitch lengths are used in the making of this tutorial for demonstration.
5. Pick your colors and embroider! I like to use french knots for periods. The thread may feel bulky and stiff, but this is because paper is a more firm fiber than cloth overall!
6. I prefer to hide the knots inside the card, but if you are feeling bold you may leave them on the outside of the card.
7. The corners have to be secured since the card will not close flat on its own. I used general purpose thread to anchor each corner with an X, but you could as easily use embroidery thread. I tied the knots to the back of the card.
8. Admire & fill out your card to send away. Or you might use the card as a wall hanging for your inspiration board.
Thank you for reading & I hope everyone has a lovely week. Please feel free to share any made embroidery cards!
After a week of figuring out some technology–hello, YouTube!–the computer is free for roaming. The snow has been beautiful. Everything is quiet and the cars move slowly along. The sunrise colors are delicate here. 
Post Card Party Swap is a fantastic way to share small quilted pieces with other knitters and totally hits all my favorite categories: mail, pen-pals, quilting, and applique. The LQS offers classes with postcard ideas and this was a class I joined that used wool. It was my first time doing wool applique, and I love how textured and sturdy wool is to work with. When the snow began to fall, I decided to hand quilt circles as the background, enjoying it so much I worked on it until I finished. Hand-stitching is calming, centering, and adds a beautiful finish to this little postcard!
Practice makes for more experience and so out came the scrap bag and the rotary cutter, and I cut out six more hearts to applique. The squares are sevens inches by seven inches and the heart is a basic template. Since I’ll always have scraps about this size I plan on collecting at least one heart from each piece of fabric from here on out. When there are enough of appliqued I will make a quilt. Right now eleven appliqued hearts exist. 
Savor Each Stitch arrived and it is a wonderfully written book with clear explanations. The first project is cut and ready to be basted. Basting, I’ve just learned after pinning ten hearts, is much easier to work with when doing needle-turn applique. What I particularly liked about basting is how smoothly the round edges turned under. It was a revelation to me, because the pinning seemed to cause distortion overall, but the basting kept all in place! Looking forward to moving ahead with this project. 
Everyone is posting such lovely work! Thanks for stopping by and checking out the blog.
Brambleton Threads 