Happy Birthday...to us!

We can't believe we started this blog two years ago! Time certainly has flown, and we have come a long way in those two years. Here is a peek back at our humble beginnings:

Once upon a time, there were two friends who loved to quilt. They set out for a weekend away from their families to take some classes at a quilt show in Gettysburg, PA. Sadly, they waited too long to reserve a room, and upon check-in were a bit disgruntled with the accommodations. Not to be discouraged, they decided to stay in the humble lodging rather than return home to the kids. (Even though they loved them dearly.)

Kara, the perky one, got into her pajamas and leaped through the air onto her bed in excitement. Teri, the cautious one, was lifting the covers on her bed and closely examining the wrinkles and strange fibers on the sheets. 

"Someone's been sleeping in my bed," cried Teri.  

"What do you mean?!" chirped Kara.

"There are hairs in my bed, and they aren't mine!" Teri exclaimed.

"Really? Are you sure? ...Oh, ewww! Someone's been sleeping in my bed, too!"

Thus began our adventures stitching together. Suffice it to say that we got clean sheets, stayed the night, had a great weekend of quilting, AND learned to make our reservations early. It may not have been Goldilocks in our beds, but we have been blessed to combine our creative energies, and working together has been just right.

We have learned and experienced so much since our Gettysburg adventure. Here are a few of our highlights:

• Teaching at the Academy of Appliqué in Williamsburg
• Having our quilt, A Fairy Tale Album, accepted into the Houston International Quilt Festival
• Going to Houston to see the quilt and experiencing all that excitement
• Going to our first Market
• Meeting other quilters from all around the world
• Designing our first pattern (Marcia's Flowers)
• Lecturing at the Baltimore Appliqué Society and other guilds
• Teaching at the Baltimore Appliqué Society and various local quilt shops
• Having almost 90,000 views on our blog in our first two years
• Launching our website

Speaking of websites . . . we have been meaning to catch up on a few things that we had to put aside while preparing for the Academy. On the list of things to do was to add a few items to our website. If you pop on over there, you will see what is new in our shop. We started our store with the Marcia's Flowers wool patterns in two palettes, and now we have the wool kits to go with them. Each kit contains enough wool to complete the project, which you can then use to top a wooden box or turn into a pillow.

Marcia's Flowers Pattern bright palette

bright palette

warm palette

Marcia's Flowers warm palette

As we promised in our Pansies post, we now have pansy ribbon kits available. Each kit makes four, five-petal pansies, with a little bit left over to make a violet or two. The how-to directions are in our pansy post (linked above). Our students in Williamsburg were all amazed at how realistic these pansies are and how easy they are to make! You can buy the kit in two different sizes: 1" wide and 5/8" wide ribbon.

5/8" pansies

5/8" pansy ribbon kit

1" pansies

1" wide pansy ribbon kit

Also in our shop, we have a limited supply of kits for our Floral Wreath block and our Secret Garden block. The Floral Wreath kit comes with everything you need to create this beautiful and realistic wreath of flowers—even the background is included! In the kit you will find River Silks and Hanah silk ribbon, French ombré wired ribbon, Gentle Art threads, as well as detailed directions.

Floral Wreath

So many beautiful ribbons in this kit!

While you provide the background, the Secret Garden kit contains all the appliqué fabric, ribbon, and threads needed to create your own garden. There is River Silks, Hanah silk ribbon, French ombré wired ribbon, and sari silk for the wisteria tree not to mention all the threads needed for the embroidered garden. The kit also includes a comprehensive set of directions to help you as you complete this block inspired by children's novel, The Secret Garden.

Secret Garden block

Ribbon, sari silk, and threads—oh, my!

We couldn't have achieved our milestones without you, our readers, so what better way to celebrate our two-year birthday, then to have a GIVEAWAY! The winner will receive a Marcia's Flowers pattern and kit in their choice of colorway. All you need to do to be eligible for this giveaway is to leave a comment on the blog below telling us which of our posts over the past two years is your favorite—and why. That's it! (If you are reading this in email, hop over to the blog by clicking here.)

 Good luck!

We thank you all for traveling with us on this journey as we tell the stories of the many different ways we, and others, use a needle. Our love of stitching binds us together, and it has been our pleasure and honor to share these stories with you. Here's to many more years of stitching and storytelling!

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Pansies

What I (Teri) love about pansies is that they love the cold weather. So during the time of year when most of our natural color lies dormant, pansies are happy to spread some cheerful purple and yellow hues to what can be a rather dreary brown and tan, with an occasional evergreen sprinkled around. Here, pansies tend to be one of the last flowers blooming in the ground, and one of the first to splash is colors in our gardens in the spring. There is something incredibly beautiful about this blossom with such thin, delicate petals that demonstrates such hardiness in harsh weather. I want to be like that pansy!

Floral Wreath, designed by Through the Needle's Eye

In our Floral Wreath class at the Academy of Appliqué in Williamsburg, February 28–March 1, 2017, we will be creating our own pansies, one flora of many we will be stitching. Hanah bias silk ribbon is perfect to replicate these lovely blooms, and you will be surprised by how much easier they are to make than they look. We hope this taste might entice you to check out the two classes we are teaching at the Academy and consider joining us in our class(es).

Pretty pansies made with 5/8" Hanah bias silk ribbon

When we were in Houston at Market, we were talking to Brooke in the Hanah Silk booth, and she asked us if we would make a prototype of our pansies for her. She gave us some ribbon to use, and we promised some pansies by week's end. It was a bit challenging in that we didn't have all our regular supplies—we tried to pack light to leave plenty of room in the suitcase for returning treasures. But we spent an afternoon creating flowers, and we thought we'd share a little tutorial with you here, to give you a glimpse of the fun we will have in Williamsburg. 

All you need is 15 inches of ribbon. We chose Hanah's Wild Iris and Briar Rose for our colors. Here, we used 1-inch wide ribbon; however, the pansies above were made with 5/8-inch wide ribbon. Obviously, size matters, but only in that the size of your ribbon will affect how big your pansy is. You will need to cut the ribbon into 2 pieces: a 9-inch and a 6-inch piece. (You may wish to obtain chocolate reinforcement, as we did, above. Truffles always help!)

Fold the 9-inch piece into thirds, using a 45-degree angle. Pin to keep in place. With a strong thread—either 40-wt. cotton, polyester, or quilting thread—do a running stitch on the outside edge. Be sure to knot your thread. Note, above right, that you should start at the inside bottom, and then stitch across the bottom in a curve to help turn the edges under when it is gathered.

Do a running stitch around the OUTSIDE edge, catching both layers on the folds. Do not put a knot in the needle end of your thread.

Your stitches don't have to be tiny. The smaller the running stitches, the more gathers you'll have. Your preference! After you've made a few, you will determine how you like it best.

Now you are ready to gather by gently pulling the thread. The silk gathers very easily.

Begin to pull the thread, working the ribbon toward the knotted end. As you begin to have a gathered piece of ribbon, you could put your finger on the thread near the ribbon to help stabilize your gathers.

I always fuss a bit with my petals to make them look the way I want them to look, always remembering that no two pansies in nature will be identical. I don't fret if the petals seem a bit wonky; I can usually stitch it into submission, or at least make it behave well enough to call it "organic." (Some pansies in my garden have wonky petals, but I think they're still pretty. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it!) When you are satisfied with the arrangement of your gathered petals, turn over the pansy and catch several layers of the gathers with small stitches to anchor it in place, above. Now, knot your thread. We could stop here and have a violet, but we will continue and put the back two petals on ours. 

You will need the six-inch piece of ribbon. First, fold it in half and finger-press the center crease. Open the ribbon.  To make the back two petals, we will do a running stitch in a squared-off U-shape. You can see the first "U" below. Knot your thread when you begin!

When you get to the crease, stitch up one side and down the other. Make sure that if your thread is on the back on the way up, your needle goes in on the front, or vice versa. The thread should loop over the top of the ribbon. See the two examples below.

Thread is in back, so needle starts running stitch on the front.

Here, the thread ends up on the front,
so the needle begins the running stitch on the back of the ribbon

It is now time to gather, . . .

. . . which gives you two petals.

Play with the petals to shape them, and then knot the thread. At this point, we need a foundation on which to stitch our flower. Usually, I use a small piece of crinoline, but we didn't have that in Houston. We had just purchased some hand-dyed osnaberg fabric from Fiber on a Whim, which is a rather coarsely woven fabric, so we used a bit of that.

First, we placed the back two petals on the square foundation fabric, and used stab stitches to secure them. I try to be sure my stitches are in the folds so that they don't alter the shape and they can't be seen. Then I place the bottom section on the foundation. When I like the arrangement of all the petals together, I stitch that piece to the foundation as well.

Note that the needle comes up into the bottom of a pleat.
I can adjust the placement using these stabbed stitches until I think the petals have the look I want.

I only need to stitch the petals in the center to secure the flower as a unit.
When I am finished, I will trim the foundation fabric as close to the stitches as possible.

Five-petaled pansies. The gathering stitches on the left were smaller,
which yielded a smaller flower with tighter gathers.

The center of the pansy is made using silk ribbon French knots. Again, we didn't have all our usual supplies, so we improvised a bit. Usually, I would use regular yellow silk ribbon, but all we had was the bias silk, so we cut it down the middle and used the yellow side. The three French knots help to hide any raw edges in the center of the flower.

Finished pansy blossoms

Brooke had given us some of Hanah's cording to try, so we gathered it to fashion a leaf for our pansies.
Here are the flowers atop a piece of Fiber on a Whim's hand-dyed osnaberg fabric.

What better way to experience the loveliness of springtime than to create your own pansies—all year round! These flowers can be appliquéd onto a block, used on a crazy quilt, glued onto a pin to create a floral brooch, or fastened to a barrette to bedeck a young girl's hair. I'll bet you can come up with some more creative usages for these lovely posies! We'd love to see photos of your results! (Search @needleseyestories on our social media channels. And don't forget to enter our Facebook giveaway if you haven't yet!)

Stay tuned: we have some pansy ribbon on order and plan to offer pansy packs on our website if you have no access to ribbon and would like to try these. 

Detail from The Secret Garden,
designed by Through the Needle's Eye

We hope to see you at the Academy of Appliqué in Williamsburg, from February 28–March 4, 2017! Pansies, roses, bachelor's buttons, clematis, lilies, jasmine, wisteria: we'll be stitching a garden of joy! (For more info, click here to go to our website.)

What a delightful gift that could be from Santa!!