Epic Embroidery of Evil

Here's a crazy quilt-style embroidery hoop I made for a friend who's really into black metal. It's hard to tell in the photo, but most of the embroidery and trim is silver metallic. Incorporates some old fashioned ribbon embroidery flowers, and  fabric with black metal musicians on it. (Spoonflower is a hell of a place.) My friend was suitably impressed. \m/  >__<  \m/

That's how I Troll

I finally made a quilt for myself! I used a Finntroll band flag as the center panel, and a green nature/leaf batik for the borders and back. Quilted with a large, simple allover design, I then went back and stitched along the outlines of the logo after this picture was taken.
I'll keep it in my car as a lap blanket during our brutal 6-week Texas winter :)

Oh Helloween!

Another XXXmas gift I made is this lap quilt for a dear friend whose favorite band is the German power metal pioneers, Helloween.

Again, I used a fabric band flag as the center panel. I had to scour the internet pretty hard to find this one; it's not only vintage, it's also bigger than the standard band flag size so it made a decent sized quilt :)

The technique was identical to the one I used to make the Moonsorrow quilt, as seen in this previous post. Just find a similar themed fabric for the backing, throw on coordinating borders, free motion quilt it with invisible monofil thread, add binding and BAM! A gift that simultaneously makes you warm and cool!  \m/  >_< \m/

Epic Chair Do-over

Time to catch up on some old posts!
I'm still rockin' the sewing machine; just been keeping a low profile :)

First up, check out this chair makeover I did. A sad old office chair X some amazing Alexander Henry Japanese tattoo fabric = an easy and impressive project!
I (mostly) followed this tutorial; results may vary depending on the individual chair shape.
Best part, you can be less than perfect on the seat bottom, since no one will see it :)

LET YOUR FREAK FLAG FLY!

I love to collect printed banner flags of bands I like (because FABRIC!!), but I don't have room to hang them all up. I had a pile of them just sitting around gathering dust, when it occurred to me: KILLER LAP QUILTS! Just add a border to enlarge it a bit and add some contrast. I was able to piece the batting together from large scraps, and fabric off the bolt was just wide enough for the backing. This first one is of my favorite band, MOONSORROW (Finland).

Not gonna lie, I'm pretty stoked about this idea :) They're quick and easy to make, and are perfect for showing off your amazing musical taste while keeping warm on the couch, in the car or at the multi-day music festival! I will put together a tutorial for the sewing challenged, eventually :)

They see me Trollin'

In addition to quilts, I enjoy making plush dolls and animals. Not too long ago, I finished a cute troll doll that I had been working on sporadically for over a year. I had found this baby yeti pattern by the talented Jennifer Carson, and thought it would be a good place to start. I modified it a bit to add the tail and other details. He has jointed limbs, and the "hair" is real Tibetan lambskin mohair.

As I worked on him, I thought he was starting to resemble the bass player for Finntroll (another one of my favorite bands) so I decided to make him into a heavy metal troll :)

I got a denim doll's jacket and cut off the sleeves, and sewed a Finntroll patch to the back. I made a tiny spiked bracelet for him and (this is my favorite part!) added a talking doll voice box with 10 seconds of recordable audio-so of course he sings part of a Finntroll song!

And even better, Finntroll came to my area on tour in December, and I got to meet them! They thought my lil troll was pretty cool :) How awesome is it when you can have fun making something, and more fun later showing it off!

sew sweet!

A while ago, I saw a picture of a sewing-themed cake that was really impressive. That inspired me to start a pinterest board dedicated to them. As cake decorating has become more sophisticated by leaps and bounds recently, hobbies have become a popular theme for birthday cakes, and of course quilting is no exception. Feast your peepers on some delicious eye candy!

After a few slices of this, I know my butt wouldn't be a featherweight!

talk about sweet dreams!

These Hawaiian applique cookies look good enough to eat...

amazing sewing basket.....yes this is a CAKE!

To see lots more like these, visit my Sew Sweet Pinterest board!

I just realized something......

Q-U-I-L-T-I-N-G has the perfect number of letters for a knuckle tattoo!! Any takers? :)

PINCUSHIONS OF DOOM!!!

Now that my class is over, I'm finally able to get back to making some of my own projects I have been itching to do for a while- like these most grim and frostbitten of pincushions!
Using this tutorial, I made them with mason jars and skull and skeleton fabric, and filled them with an assortment of black buttons. Then I added a few skull and bones decorations and a white guitar pick to each jar.
I was lucky to find the black pleather eyelet trim in just the right width, by the yard at Joann fabrics.
The skull pins were made by snipping off the bead ends of stickpins, and gluing on a tiny skull bead.
I have a couple listed in my Etsy  \m/  >_<  \m/

photos by Ronnie Williford

I got class! Also: cat beds

Whew! I haven't posted here in a while because I was busy last month organizing to teach my first class, which I volunteered to have at my guild's workshop weekend. It was about basic design and color principles, and while there wasn't time to do any actual sewing, we did do some sketchbook exercises in addition to my lecture and slide show. I had 5 students, and they all seemed to enjoy the class quite a bit. I hope to be able to refine it and teach more in the future!

Once things calmed down afterwards, I finished up a project I've been working on sporadically for a while: sewing kitty beds to donate to local shelters! This is another great way to use up tiny scraps that aren't good for anything else. I picked up the outer fleece wherever I could find it cheap: the guild free table, the  remnants bin at Jo-anne, etc. Pro tip: you can get a cheap blanket at IKEA with almost 2 yards of fleece for $3! Then I followed this tutorial and made a few beds here and there when I had time. Now I have close to 20! Here's Buddy, my quality control department, putting the latest batch through his rigorous testing standards.

PLUSHKLOK

Deviantart user GrungeIndiani has made this excellent set of poseable Dethklok soft sculptures! Aside from being hilarious, the animated Metalocalypse show is partly responsible for my love of metal and I have always wished Cartoon Network would have put out more merchandise from it. More photos reenacting scenes from the show are in her gallery. Well done!

don't throw that away!

I never get rid of any fabric scraps, as it's in my nature to be  cheap  cost-efficient. Odd cutting leftovers can be used to piece a back on smaller quilts. Even tiny bits of an inch or two can be put to good use: ones with nice patterns can be fused to make quilted postcards or mug rugs, like the Asian ones I made below. (fused bindings too!) Less-attractive or damaged scraps, including batting, become stuffing for pet beds I make for charity- more on that later!

This post is linked to Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Friday 

yep, that about sums it up.....

Two of my favorite things in the whole world are 1) music, especially the heavy metal kind; and 2) cuteness, especially the Japanese kind. As unlikely as it seems, someone has seen fit to combine them with this Hello Kitty/ KISS fabric line. Now this is a mashup I can get behind! This panel and several other coordinating fabrics can be found on equilter.

what's the password?

I always like to keep a hand embroidery project around, for when I fly somewhere or have a bit of time in the waiting room (don't ask how many times I've been there in the last couple of years).
This is a piece I finished over the holidays; it's a tea towel embroidered with a drawing I did based on "the narwhal bacons at midnight", an internet meme made popular on reddit.

Hand embroidery is very relaxing to me; despite (or maybe because) it takes so long.
As for machine embroidery, I am on the fence between thinking it looks good, and thinking it looks TOO good and may even be "cheating". I would like to see some of my own designs done by machine before I sign off on it one way or the other. If you have an embroidery machine, what are your thoughts about it?

update: DONE!

....well the top, at least. 14 months of literal blood, sweat and tears later, I finished my block-of-the-month quilt!
I think it was a bit above my skill level, but I powered through it anyway. I learned a few things along the way: paper piecing, set-in circles and curved piecing, Y-seams.

 I also learned I will never spend this long doing someone else's pattern again! It was frustrating to not work on my own designs for so long, but I'm glad I did this because I improved my sewing skills and I have an amazing, show-worthy piece at the end of it.

I think working in animation for so many years has given me some good training for this type of activity: attention to detail, tolerance for repetitive work, patience for long-term projects, the ability to do as many revisions as necessary to make work turn out right.

This behemoth finished out at 88" square with the pieced borders. I may add another small border to the outside so I can do a wider binding with piping. I still need to piece a back together too.

For the first time, I'm going to send something out to be professionally quilted. After investing this much time and money, I don't want to risk messing it up.....so eventually I will be shopping for a good longarmer. If there's someone you recommend, I'm taking suggestions!

Back when I started this project last January, I pictured myself finishing it a year later and being recovered from cancer, divorce and all the other horrible things happening in my life at the time. And while I have made some progress, unfortunately the quilt is farther along.....I guess you can't set deadlines for some things :(

above photo by Claire Jain

Book review: Quilting With Manhole Covers

When I went to Japan 10 years ago, one of the many artistic details that caught my eye was how ornate the sewer covers were. Each city has its own designs reflecting nature, local history and Japanese traditions.

Imagine my delight when I found this book, which holds the distinction of being the only quilting book I bought before I started quilting! Even though it has been out for a while (1999), it offers some unique, untraditional design ideas.

Author Shirley MacGregor presents photos of the covers with the history behind each design, as well as a line art version and photos of quilts inspired by it. There are no complete patterns included, but any quilter with a little experience and imagination should have no shortage of ideas after reading this book. The designs would even look good as digitized embroidery.

This is an unusual, older quilting book that is worth tracking down, even if just for the "eye candy" factor! It's still available on Amazon.

needle artistry

Here's a roundup of quilting and sewing-related tattoos from across the interwebs. I have several tattoos, but none of this nature. I don't have any more planned, but I wouldn't be opposed to it if I could find or come up with a design I had to have. Enjoy!

(above: courtesy of Miss Sews-it-all)

Japanese Oni pillow

I have always liked the look of redwork embroidery, but I would never spend time doing a traditional Sunbonnet Sue or any other overdone country kitsch design. 

I am also a fan of Japanese artwork and mythology, and figured this Oni (demon) mask from Kabuki theater would look good in red! 

When it was done, I added red borders and finished it into a square pillow. The back side is Japanese tattoo print fabric I found on equilter a while ago. Super fun!

Just don't do it while driving

I love you, The Onion.

Just a crappy little quilt

This is one of the first quilts I made a few years ago. At the time, I wanted to make something cute, simple and original....but every subject I wanted to do (video games, heavy metal, tattoos etc) had been quilted before. Then I thought of the one thing I was SURE no one had done yet! (so far I have not been proven wrong on this.) I also like the idea of something being simultaneously cute and repulsive. And thus was born what you see before you. It was done in fused applique (or should I say, crapplique?), machine pieced and quilted.

I entered this in the 2010 Austin quilt show, where it won 3rd place in the novice category. I was feeling pretty good about this....until I realized there were only 3 entries in the category! LOL. At least I can now say I'm an "award-winning quilter"!