Ghosts of projects past, part 1. And fabric giveaway!

A little bit delayed, but I posted it on facebook on Sunday–the winner of the Anna Maria Horner fabric stack giveaway is Henria O. (check your fb messages, Henria!).  She also, perhaps not coincidentally, entered the most times per profile (six!).  I have a new fabric stack giveaway for you, but I want to tell you what I’m working on first…

I’ve been doing some hand-stitching recently.  As you know, I’ve been working on my Daisychain ABCs sampler from Posie Gets Cozy.  I’m up to Q!

I have a new student named Paige who is very interested in hand-sewing.  She likes slow projects and she wanted to learn all about the different types of hand stitches.  I was trying to think of what she might like to do and I remembered that when I applied to work at costume shops (in my past life as a costume designer), part of the application process was to make a stitch sampler book out of muslin to show your hand sewing proficiency.  I think we also made a book like that in grad school.  The first task was to machine-sew the booklet together and cut all the little flaps you would need for various stitches.  Then the shop manager would write the names of different stitches on the muslin and you’d do each stitch as it was listed, showing that you knew the stitches by name and that you could execute them precisely.  You would do this in red thread and there was something so satisfying about seeing all the perfect little red stitches on unbleached muslin with their names above them.  Like coloring inside the lines for the first time.  And if you did a good job, you’d get hired.

Paige and I made samplers so she could learn a selection of useful stitches.  Ours aren’t quite as involved as the shop ones–we just did one “page” each and wrote the names on hers afterward for reference.  But they were fun to make.  Paige used a different color for each stitch, and as you can see I couldn’t resist the old red-thread-habit.  I was explaining to Paige as we stitched that the hallmark of a good hand-stitcher is even stitch length, which only comes with practice.  She is very good at hand sewing; she loves neatness and order.

Paige's sampler on the left and mine on the right

Her next project is going to be a doll quilt (forgot to mention that she’s 11) done in English paper-pieced hexagons.  Sounds fancy, doesn’t it?  English paper-piecing is a nice, slow hand-sewing technique in which you use paper pieces (die-cut or hand-cut).  You baste little squares of fabric around them and then whipstitch the shapes (usually hexagons) together and remove the basting and paper.  Very slow, but very beautiful.  And you can’t really machine-piece hexagons, so really it’s the only way to do it.  I dug out one of my English paper-piecing projects from last summer to show Paige what it would look like.  I saw this book on Jane Brocket’s blog and instantly knew I wanted to make the tea cosy and hot pad set on the cover.  Ah, Japanese crafts…how I love you.  I finished the hot pad on vacation last summer (it took about 15 hours to make) and I started on the tea cosy but then got distracted/ran out of hand-sewing steam.  I would like to pick it up again soon, maybe after I finish my sampler.

And now, for this week’s fabric giveaway!  This is just a little one, but since I’m starting it later than intended it will run though the end of next Tuesday.

 

This is a stack of four fat quarters from Denyse Schmidt’s DS Quilts line for Jo-Ann Fabrics.  It’s pretty much sold out and becoming hard to find.  In case you haven’t heard of Denyse Schmidt, she is a genius quilting fabric designer who normally produces lines for Free Spirit Fabrics.  Her fabrics look like the luckiest vintage finds ever and are currently all out of print.  The two most popular are Katie Jump Rope and Flea Market Fancy (a reprint of the latter is rumored but I haven’t seen any evidence on the Free Spirit retailer site).  People kill for these fabrics!  The Jo-Ann ones definitely have the same flavor.

So, here’s what you need to do:

From now until Tuesday (August 2nd), enter up to five times by commenting on a post on Craft & Sew Studio’s facebook page, and/or by commenting on any blog post here on the website!  The winner will be chosen at random and notified on Wednesday by email and/or facebook message.  

Here are some questions I’ve posed in recent blog posts that would be easy comment fodder:

• Do you craft on vacation?  Do you knit in the summer?  What do you like to make this time of year?
• Have any of y’all made your own wedding gown?  Or anything else super-fancy?

You could also tell me what you would make with this fat quarter stack.  Here’s something I recently made with these very fabrics–a lavender sachet in teeny-tiny patchwork for my mom’s birthday.  I used Alicia Paulson’s fusible interfacing method.

Don’t forget, you can enter up to five times total!

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