Fairy Tales Through the Needle's Eye

. . . upon a time, there were two friends who loved to stitch together. They had taken classes, gone to quilt shows, made wedding quilts, joined guilds, and worked at The Elly Sienkiewicz Appliqué Academy as a stitching team. One evening, about two years ago, they were sitting at a meeting of the  Baltimore Appliqué Society. Just before the speaker began her lecture, Kara whispered to Teri, "Have you ever seen a Baltimore Album-style quilt with fairy tales?" Throughout the rest of the meeting, wheels of inspiration were turning in their heads, as both friends loved fairy tales as much as they loved to appliqué.

As soon as Teri and Kara reached the car, the talk began. Which fairy tales would they stitch? How many should they choose? How large should they make the blocks? They brainstormed during the entire 45-minute ride home. The next day, they had each done exhaustive internet searches to be sure that there were no such quilts. They discussed and finalized the list of stories they wanted to use, including some tales from the Grimm Brothers and Hans Christian Andersen. The next weeks were filled with planning. Which blocks would be picture blocks, which would be wreaths, and which would incorporate papercuts? They wanted to stay true to the style of Baltimore album quilts, so they intended to include each of these major styles of album blocks. Designs were drawn, colors were chosen, and background fabric and a few base fabrics were purchased. And the friends began to stitch.

Two years later, the top was completed, and they took the quilt to Bellwether Dry Goods to be hand-quilted. And this past Monday, they went to pick up the completed quilt. The stories had come to life. Kara and Teri were thrilled!

Here are a few highlights from the quilt.

The spinning wheel and briar roses from Sleeping Beauty

Cinderella's glass slipper

Little Red Riding Hood with her basket of goodies for her grandmother

One of Snow White's seven dwarves, in front of the magic mirror

Andersen's Nightingale singing with the emperor's mechanized bird

The Ugly Duckling in the nest

Thumbelina in a walnut shell being pulled to safety by a butterfly

The ship that intrigues the Little Mermaid

Beauty approaching the Beast's castle with the rose her father picked for her

Can you find the Beast hidden in the tree?

Jack climbing the Beanstalk on the left border . . .

. . . with the cow at the bottom

Jack descending the beanstalk with the golden harp on the right border

There is no sashing between the blocks, so the quilting design provides that separation.

Teri and Kara are delighted with the completed fairy tale quilt and cannot wait to share it at the Baltimore Appliqué Society meeting next week. Unfortunately, the Snow Queen interfered with their opportunity to share it at a lecture that they were scheduled to give earlier in the week. They have many plans and ideas for fun projects to continue telling these fairy tales through their needles' eyes. 

The two friends are already discussing their next quilt project. Which fairy tales will they stitch next? What stories would you tell through your needle's eye? 

Kara and Teri don't know what adventures their quilt may have, but they do know that any quilt about fairy tales will surely live happily ever . . . 

Crazy Quilting—Start to Finish

The title of this post sounds a bit intimidating, but it is the goal of a new class Teri and I (Kara) will be teaching at our local quilt shop. We have taught a beginning crazy quilting class that primarily focused on learning the basic embroidery skills needed for seam stitches and motifs; however, we really didn't have time in a one-day class to teach how to piece and embellish the blocks. Quite a few of our students wanted to learn those skills as well, so a 6-month class was born. The class doesn't start until January 16th, but we thought we would bring you, our readers, along with us as we take this crazy quilting journey.

We began preparing for the class by putting together a sample that consisted of four different blocks. Each one is a little different, which allows for a few different techniques in assembling them. Assembling crazy quilt blocks is inherently somewhat random, but the way one person puts them together may make sense to that person and not to another. That's what Teri and I discovered.  I tend to be more exacting in my process, whereas Teri is confident in eyeballing the pieces and putting them together with great results. Our students will get a little bit of both methods, and they will be able to choose the method that best suits them. Here are the four different blocks before embroidery:

We tried to incorporate different fabrics, many of which were sourced from local thrift stores.

We each finished two blocks, but before we started, we put together the 4 patterns and planned out our motifs and embellishments. By doing this ahead of time, we avoided duplicating our efforts.  The side benefit of this "worksheet" was that it allowed me to plan out my seam stitches and thread colors ahead of time.

Some people—like Teri—would rather choose their seam stitches on the fly, (stitching pun intended,) but planning things out helped me to contain some of my stitching chaos.

This is my "contained" stitching setup.

For the motifs in this sample, we chose images from our upcoming fairy tale project. You may recognize a few of the motifs from our December ornament series. I used the press and seal method mentioned here to transfer the images to the block.

Snow White's apple

The Beast's castle

The Nightingale

Sleeping Beauty's nemesis, the spinning wheel and its spindle

The wicked queen's crown from Snow White

The flowers in this piece of silk sari were highlighted and
beaded to help them stand out.

A beaded seam stitch and an antique button

We worked in some beading in various locations. Sometimes we used them in the seam stitches and other times in the motifs themselves.

One of the requests for this class was to learn how to use silk ribbon in a crazy quilt so we incorporated a bit of silk ribbon embroidery as well as an off-block silk flower.

A silk ribbon flower using the ribbon stitch

A gathered flower using French wired ribbon, with embroidered ribbon leaves

Lace appliqués and a bit of French lace trim were used to highlight certain areas of the blocks. We also used a piece of gathered silk ribbon embellished with beads to enhance the vintage postcard center of one of the blocks.

The lace flowers really stand out on the thick brown wool
we used.

The French lace trim and beaded ribbon highlight this
vintage postcard.

There are so many creative opportunities in a crazy quilt, and we can't wait to see how they are used in this class. We are looking forward to this journey that we will be taking with our students, and we plan on bringing you, the readers, along with us. Stay tuned for more updates as the class progresses.

Can you find any other elements from fairy tales in the motifs?

Once Upon a Time...

We are wrapping up our ornament series this week with the quintessential beginning phrase common to most fairy tales: "Once upon a time." As we were putting this series of ornaments together, we didn't feel that it would be complete without including these famous words in the form of an ornament. So we promised four ornaments in this series, but here is a bonus! (We told you there might be a surprise...)

I (Kara) had recently seen a method of transferring an image to a background using Glad® Press'n Seal wrap. Since I wanted to embroider the letters in a particular font (Apple Chancery), I thought this method might be perfect.

My Uni-ball Signo white pen was perfect for this since I would be working on a black background.

I laid a piece of Press 'n Seal over the pattern . . .

. . . and traced the letters using my white pen.

Once I had finished tracing the letters, I centered the press and seal over my black circle. I trimmed the excess plastic wrap so it wouldn't get in my way while embroidering.

And now for the fun part! I chose to do small chain stitches for the fatter parts of the letters and straight stitches for the thinner. I started with the "O" and did chain stitches all the way around it, and then I came back with another row of chain stitches for the fat parts. I used a stem stitch for the vine and french knots for the flowers.

For the embroidery, I used a Valdani 12 perle cotton for the green vine and Painters Threads 12 perle cotton for the letters and flowers. The not-so-fun part was pulling the press and seal off after the embroidery was finished. Pulling it off needs to be done carefully, so as not to disturb the embroidery. It was a bit tedious, but a pair of fine-tip tweezers were the key to getting the little bits out.

Once the embroidery was finished, I put a piece of Timtex between the two circles with a glue stick dab to hold the parts together and then proceeded to secure them with the knotted blanket stitch, with beads in between the knots.

For your free pattern for this week's ornament, please click here: Once Upon a Time Ornament. If you missed any of the free patterns you can find them here:

UPDATE: Thank you for stopping by here! A detailed pattern will be available at a future date at www.needleseyestories.com

Cinderella's Slipper

Little Red Riding Hood

Sleeping Beauty

Snow White's Dwarf

We hope you have enjoyed this ornament series as much as we have enjoyed creating it! If you have made any of our ornaments we'd love to see them.  Feel free to post them to our Facebook page or to our Google + page.

Snow White's Dwarf Ornament

Did you guess which fairy tale we'd feature this week? He's not one of Santa's elves, but he was pretty special to Snow White. Week four of our free ornament patterns brings you one of her seven dwarves. We are posting early this week, because here in the U.S., we will be celebrating Thanksgiving on Thursday.

Once upon a time, there was a young princess with ebony hair, rose-red lips, and snow-white skin. All agreed that she was the fairest in all the land. Snow White's stepmother, the queen, was also beautiful, but most vain. As Snow White grew up, the queen realized that her own beauty was surpassed by that of the princess. In a jealous fit of rage, she sent a huntsman to take Snow White into the woods and kill her; he could not bring himself to do so, and set her free. A terrified Snow White sought shelter in a small house, where she found a safe haven amongst a group of seven dwarves, who came to care deeply about her. Although they tried to protect her, when the queen discovered Snow White was still alive, she was relentless in devising plans to kill the princess. Her first two schemes were thwarted by the dwarves, but finally, the queen disguised herself as an old peasant woman and tempted Snow White with a poisonous apple. One bite rendered Snow White dead. The dwarves could not bear to put her in the cold ground and placed her in a glass coffin, so that they could still view her beauty. One day, a prince discovered her, fell instantly in love, and begged the dwarves to allow him to carry her away to his palace. As his servants carried her coffin, one of them stumbled; the piece of poisonous apple was dislodged from Snow White's throat, and she instantly awoke. She and the prince were married, the wicked queen was eliminated, and they all lived happily ever after.

I (Teri) gathered wool for the different parts of the dwarf: black for the background, brown for shoes, tan for hands and face, a dark green tweed for the shirt, and a lighter green for the pants and hat. I chose some threads that I thought I might want to use; some I did, some I swapped out as I was stitching, finding a color I liked better.

I traced the pattern onto freezer paper and cut out each part of the design. Because there were so many small pieces, I backed each with Soft Fuse for more accurate placement. Using a 3.5-inch circle template, I traced and cut two black circles: one for background, one for a backing for my ornament. Then I cut out each piece of the design, removed the paper backing, and arranged them on the background. (Quite a mess of scraps!) 

I pressed the design in place so that the pieces would be secure as I stitched them in place...

...using a whip stitch and matching silk thread.

Here is the little guy all stitched down, ready to be embroidered. He stood there for a day or so until I figured out how I wanted to stitch his beard.

I decided to start with the apple. I did all my surface embroidery with wool thread. The stem is just a small, brown straight stitch. I used red to outline the rest of the apple and filled in with white straight stitches to show the bite out of the apple. Poor Snow White!

I contemplated using turkey work for the beard, but I really wanted it to be curly rather than fuzzy. So I ended up making a series of randomly placed straight stitches, pulled tightly from the back, but leaving it a small, loose loop on the top. I'm not sure if it's a real stitch, or if I made it up, but my loose, loopy straight stitches placed in varying directions made for a nice curly, thick beard! I also couldn't decide if he would have a brown beard or a white one, so I doubled the threads and used a strand of each, for a bit of a "salt and peppery" look. Sometimes, indecision becomes a creative opportunity.

The thread is pulled tautly to the top from the back.

Varying the direction of the stitches, I made a small stitch about 1/8-inch or a bit smaller, and pulled the needle to the back.

 

I pulled the thread to the back slowly, so that I would leave a loose loop on the top. I knew it would be secure once the ornament was finished and the loops would not be pulled to the back. I also didn't worry about them being equally loopy; some are looser than others, but I think that just added to his charm.

 

His eyes are French knots, and a small fly stitch became his nose. Using a split stitch, I stitched a small line for the legs of his pants. Finally, I finished off his hat by outlining it with a blanket stitch. (Mary Corbet's Needle 'n Thread offers a superb stitch directory with video tutorials, if you need a refresher on any of the stitches.)

I stitched a small ribbon loop to a circle of Timtex interfacing, which I then dotted with glue to secure it between my two black circles. The Timtex offers stability for the ornament, and it is cut a tad smaller than the black circles.

Using Perle cotton #12 thread and #6 glass beads, I used a knotted buttonhole stitch, adding a bead between each stitch, to finish off the ornament.

We hope you have enjoyed our fairy tale pattern series as much as we have. For your free pattern, click here: Snow White's Dwarf.

UPDATE: Thank you for stopping by here! A detailed pattern will be available at a future date at www.needleseyestories.com

If you have made Cinderella's Slipper, Little Red Riding Hood, or Sleeping Beauty, we'd love to see some of your ornaments! You could share them on our Facebook or Google+ pages. Or post your photos on Instagram and tag us (@needleseyestories). 

We are so glad you stopped by for a visit! Come again soon...we may have a special surprise for you, in addition to more great stories!