Round of of all the missing projects

This is a duckling pillow I made for my niece at her behest. The design is by Megan Zaniewski. You can find it in her delightful book!!



This is a box I made of a California quail. I used a photo I found online that I've lost track of and a RGB to DMC converter I found online that I also have lost track of. I'm sure they are both easily found online but I'd rather get this published than search! Sorry to everyone!




This is a box I made for a friend's daughter who recently got into sewing. The sewing machine design, I'm pretty sure, was found in Love Embroidery magazine.



I made this couched Christmas ornaments for my husband's relatives. The design for the ornaments is from Inspiration Magazine.

I made this bag for my friend, Shizuka. It's her name on one side and Trish Burr's fuchsia on the other.


 

This is my Bigfoot that I did based on my friend Torey's drawing. It was super fun and overall, I'm super happy with this guy!

Here's the backside which I think is pretty cool looking in its own right.

This is a box I made of the Chinese character for dream that my student Atsushi wrote for me a long time ago. It's so beautiful. I love this box! It's amazing! I gave it to my niece to take to Japan for me and give to my friend who sadly lost it before even opening it. I imagine it got thrown into a trash can somewhere.




This is a banner from Gathered. 

This is a box I made for my friend's birthday. It's from a Yumiko Higuchi pattern.

This is a box I made for my friend for Christmas. It is a design by Tanya Bentham done in the style of English medieval embroidery.


 

 This is a box I made based on a Yumiko Higuchi pattern.



 

This is a song book I made. I did a little cartonnage book for the Benzie felt cover. 

 

Embroidery Update

Oh, geez! I started this post in June of 2024 and never posted it, so here we go!!

Here is a bag I made using Amy Butler's origami bag, Joy designed by Georgie Emery in Love Embroidery, and an advent tree pattern by EmBeaRoidery.





This is a California scrub jay I did from a photo I found online. I've lost track of who took it.


This is a portrait of Tracy Chapman that I did. I took a photo from online of her for the basis. I don't know who took it.

These are crazy quilt pillows I made for all of my nieces and nephews!! For the monograms, I used Elisabetta Sforzia's A Sea to Stitch book.

This is Nature's Delight by Colleen Goy and found at Inspirations Studios.

Smocking a Shepherd's Shirt- Part 11 The End!

 Okay, so last time we left off the neck had been completed and the sleeves were next up.

Okay, so the sleeves have a couple of fun challenges, namely the gusset I've never done before and have no instructions for and the fact that my pleats are double the width they should be.

I'm not gonna lie, the gusset involved a lot of staring at the fabric wondering. What I decided to do seems to have worked out, so let's look at that. I knew one side of the square was supposed to be along the side of the sleeve and another side was supposed to be at the shoulder seam. A gusset usually has a diamond-like shape so the diagonal should be in the armpit. Or to put that another way the hypotenuse of the right triangle formed by the sides at the sleeve seam and the shoulder seam should be in the armpit. That leaves two sides of the square I have to put somewhere. Since I was trying to ensure I sewed the correct sides to the correct places, I decided to create the right placement with pins. You can see my thought process here.

Great! Now I can see that this triangle flap is going counter-intuitively towards the shoulder. I still feel this is a little strange, so I left this pinned on my cutting table as a reference while I sewed the other sleeve.


Here you can see one sleeve and gusset attached to the torso of the garment.

By the way, I'm still nervous that that gusset is going to provide enough ease in the armpit but what's one more concern about this garment? (Face palm!)

Okay, so super wide pleats resolution- I folded them to each side of the center and sewed them down. I think it's an obvious solution, but if you've made it this far, you should get to see the resolution!! :D

 Here's how the sleeve looks on the outside. It's kinda pretty!

At this point I got distracted by the pleats. I could see all the lines from my gathering prep and I kinda liked it.

Then I got distracted by how soft and pleasant they feel!


Okay, stay focused! So close!! So close!! Here's the garment with both sleeves attached but not actually sleeves yet.

Okay gusset time- it's like hammer time but less fun! Duh... nuh nuh nuh... nuh nuh... nuh nuh

Okay! Sleeves and sides sewn together- it's time to add some cuff and hem the bottom. I apparently didn't stop to take any pictures of these steps so here's the nearly completed garment. Only buttons are missing. And is abundantly obvious it is baggy in all the wrong places!
 

After putting it on and pondering the buttons, I decided that if I were ever to wear it, the openings would never be unbuttoned, but was I going to wear it? It's actually kind of comfortable, so I sewed the neck closed and found I kinda liked it but not to wear in public!!! So no buttons on the cuffs... I'm calling it!

Smocking a Shepherd's Shirt- Part 10

I set myself an arbitrary deadline of Monday to finish my smock by because basically I was convinced it wasn't going to be a wearable garment but the only way to find out was to make it. So tally ho, as it were...

First up cut the neck opening and make the placket for the neck...


 

Here you can see I'm pinning my 2 inch wide placket in place to be sewn. I sewed it to the inside first (with a 1/2" seam allowance) and then folded it over to sew on the front side. Did the original smocks get sewn on an electric sewing machine? No, they did not. Don't care!

 

Here it is completed. Be sure to enjoy the white dots left behind after I ironed out the ink from my gridding.

 

Let's do a spiffy little diagonal stitch at the base so it sits a little nicer!

 

You can see it sits pretty nicely. You can also see my crooked embroidery! Yay!

A different angle of my neck opening...

 

I don't have any pictures of it but I did do both sides. If you can't imagine it, you can scroll back and pretend it's the other side! If you're good, you can scroll down and see the next step! (If you're bored, I don't know how you made it this far!!! But amazing!)

Now we're to the part of adding the shoulders to the front and back. I've put my scissors underneath the shoulder straps so you can see my dilemma.... That neck opening is super far away from the shoulders. What am I going to do? (Insert the Jeopardy final question thinking music here!)

 

Well, I decided to basically make a bias tape to bind off the raw edges. Seriously, does anyone think I'm going to wear this garment? Not me... Don't get me wrong, I want to like it. I've put a hell of a lot of effort into it, but if we ask the Magic 8 Ball, it says "All signs point to no".

Well, I'm still giving it the old college try and attached the shoulder straps like I would a yoke, which means I had to cut out two more shoulder straps.

Then came the collars... Normally you only have one collar and it goes from one side to the other around the back of your neck, but this intriguing garment has two collars, one over each shoulder. And I am growing ever dubious that this will be an attractive garment... Sigh!

Okay, collars attached, it's time to do that bias tape thing I mentioned before. But in the interest of full disclosure, I didn't make bias tape, I didn't even use one strip of fabric... But I did bind it off!

First set of stitches...

Second set of stitches...

Next up- the sleeves!