Free Motion Scroll

I managed to make a few Christmas gifts this year, and this was a project that had been on my mind for a while in different forms. It all started out just over a year ago when I was at a quilt show and came across a booth that sold antique sewing stuff. With my mum having a collection of old machines and bobbins etc, I took a look to see if there was anything neat. What I found were a few pairs of bobbins/spools that were pretty nice and about 4" tall. I immediately thought of making some kind of scroll with them.


After much brainstorming and doodling in my notebook on and off for the year I decided to just get on with it and decided to practice my free motion sewing and make a little scroll for my mum to hang in her sewing room. I had jotted down "I love you sew much" in my notebook, my brain works in very punny ways sometimes, and decided that would be my message. I measured and drew out a template in Illustrator, then I wrote up the message and messed around with the sizes, fonts and spacing until I had something I was happy with. I printed it out and traced it only my fabric with a water soluble quilting marker. Then I just started free motion embroidering.


I outlined some letters, tried zigzagging in places.


I used various colours of threads. Sometimes layering them, sometimes using variegated threads.


And basically just tried all sorts of things that I had been too chicken to try, but figured I had nothing to loose. It was a bit like a sampler in fact! 

 I attached a back with some snaps on it, so that I didn't have to sew through the front, and in case it ever needs to come off the bobbins, and was done! And in the end despite all my procrastinating and worrying that it wouldn't turn out, well, it wasn't so bad! So next time, I'll just try and jump in! 

Lego Photo #3: Holiday Edition 2011

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! 

This was my latest Lego photo endeavour as well as our Christmas photo for the year! I kept it quite simple, placing everything on some cotton batting to try and mimic snow, and back lit it with sunlight to make the star glow as much as possible. I wanted to try doing it on real snow, but that is sadly it is lacking in California! 

Thanks to all of your folks for taking interest in the projects I working on this year and for all your supportive comments and questions. I'm hoping to do even more posts next year so I hope you'll enjoy!

Lego Photo #2 - Curling Edition

I've been working away at top secret Christmas gift projects and so haven't really had much that I can post on here recently. I did however make this little vignette for my Dad's birthday card last month. It's a little montage of me and my dad, and our good friends Paul and Ken all curling together. 

It was pretty fun trying to make little curling rocks - and they do rock in fact! They have little round bases, and so can slide and spin around. The ice part was rather time consuming - placing all the tiny pieces, but I think in the end it turning out fairly realistic. I did some photoshopping on it to give it a more aged appearance which I think fits the picture better. Notice how I made sure I'm not sweeping!! 

Remembrance Day

Lest We Forget
Modeled after the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Ottawa

Woodturning Club Competition

This past weekend the wood turning club I belong to had their annual competition. They put a lot of work into the organization and how it all comes together, making sure that every single piece that gets submitted gets constructed feedback of what is good about the piece and what could be improved. This is all done by two guest judges who examine each piece and critique it and finally award various prizes. There were 98 entries and they got through them all in about 3 hours! I stuck around and listened to what they said about mine. But there was also someone frantically noting down all their comments so at the end we got nice little comment sheets. They even took really nice photos of all our work and printed those on the pages with teh feedback. Luckily, there are several categories as well as skill levels you can enter, so I didn't have to worry about going up against some of the geniuses in the club. They were very encouraging and I thought I'd give it a go and at least get some good pointers for what to improve. 

This was my first ever natural edge bowl. The photo looks about 200 times better than the actual bowl, but I didn't really know how to finish it or a good technique for the inside. The judges were very helpful in describing better ways to get a nice form, finish and some techniques, so I'm going to try another one soon while I still remember. 

This was a lidded box I made about a year ago, and to my surprise it won a second place ribbon in the beginner box category! They still had many suggestions for improvement, so I'll keep working on those things as well.

All in all it was pretty neat to see all the things everyone made, and there were some pretty awesome pieces. And it was really great to get some feedback from people who really know their stuff. 

Happy Halloween

One of Jerome's favourite movies is The Nightmare Before Christmas. So last year I made him this paper rendition of Jack the skeleton. Complete with string mouth. My original vision was to do it out of leather and stitch it all, but white leather is annoyingly hard to find. Someday I will find some though, and he will be made again! 

Happy Halloween!  

Lego Photo #1

Earlier this week I posted a fun photo to our cooking blog of Jerome and I cooking in Lego form. It got quite a few comments and emails from friends and family, so I thought I'd start posting some of the other Lego photos that I have taken in the same sort of series.

As most people who know me can attest, I am a big Lego fan and have collected a fair amount of Lego over the years. Our wedding cake toppers were even Lego people! Earlier this year I was messing with my Lego people and made one that had a moderate resemblance to me which I thought was amusing. I had found a little grassy area near work to eat lunch at and saw a tiny flower one day and thought it would be just the size for a Lego guy! So I lugged my camera and my Lego Laura to work one day and at lunch had a little photo shoot. I'm sure the people in the office building thought I was nuts, but I thought it was really interesting how the scale and juxtaposition of the natural world and the Lego came together. With a little tweaking it came out pretty nicely, and I ended up using it as a card for random notes, like I'm giving the recipient a little flower.

One of the other photos from the shoot which I didn't edit or anything.