A Wooly Christmas Banner

Last year Teri and I (Kara) taught a year-long wool program called the Stitching Society at our local quilt shop. We were trying to come up with ideas for more uses for the program's patterns, so I made a Christmas banner with a few of the holiday designs. Making a banner had been on my to-do list for some time, so this was a great opportunity to check it off. 

I decided to re-purpose a piece of light tan wool fabric that I had picked up at a thrift store for the background. Once I had the six Christmas images chosen, I chose the fabrics, threads, and beads. All the embroidery was done with perle cotton in varying sizes (#5, #8, and #12).

Wreath

The first pattern I chose to do was the wreath, as I knew it would be a quick one to do.  

This simple design is made up of little fly stitches and red seed beads

 Poinsettia

I had a perfect red wool to use for the petals and a lovely rose wool for the center 

I used the fly stitch again along with French knots for the center

Mistletoe

I chose to use ribbon for the bow instead of wool  

More fly stitches for the leaves, beads for the berries, and a #5 perle cotton, stem-stitched branch.

Holly & Swirls

I love this unique design.

Fly stitch again for the leaves (a great stitch for leaf veins) and the spiral trellis stitch for the berries

Christmas Tree

This green herringbone wool was perfect for the tree.

Stem stitch and lazy daisies make up the branches, and French knots became the ornaments.

Pine Bough

This is another simple but beautiful design. 

Again, I used the #5 perle for the branches and the spiral trellis stitch for the berries.

Once all the designs were stitched, I decided to use a simple casing on the top, so I could thread a piece of twine through each one. This allows me some flexibility for hanging them.

This was a fun project to do and was a big hit with our class. It also fits in quite nicely with my woodland-style Christmas-decorating scheme. Hopefully you have had some opportunity in the last few months to do some holiday-themed stitching.  Feel free to share with us—we'd love to be inspired by your work. Happy holidays!

Back to the BMA: More Crazy Quilts

The American Crazy Quilt Exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Art has sadly ended, but I (Teri) had many more pictures from my visit that I wanted to share. Kara and I are working on a crazy quilt sampler for a six-month class we are going to be teaching at our local quilt shop, and the inspiration in these quilts abounds. We hope you will be as inspired as we are. Enjoy!

Crazy Quilt with Striped Ribbon Border, c. 1885; made by Annie Shakman Heller, possibly in Baltimore, MD

I loved this sweet little umbrella!

Crazy Quilt with Ice Cream Cone Border, c. 1885; American

Close-up of ice cream cone border

This silk bookmark was an English import.

Crazy Quilt with Peacock Medallion, 1881-1889; attributed to Katie Mattingly Edwards in West Virginia

Peacock feather detail. What wonderful combination seam stitches!

Crazy Quilt with Wheel Motifs, 1887-1888; made by Roberta Lee Barnes in Baltimore, MD

Printed designs, sometimes "cigarette silks," were often included in crazy quilts.

Center medallion, Dresden Plate, with the maker's initials

One of the fan designs

A corner block

Crazy Quilt with Center Star and Blue Velvet Border, 1883-1888; made by Augusta Adèle Smith, in Baltimore, MD

Lazy daisy flowers

Artist's palette

Crazy Quilt with Initial "M," c. 1885; made by Minnie K. Minderlein in Baltimore, MD

Ribbon flower with chenille stems and leaves

Ribbon buds

Wheat: ribbon and chenille thread

Wheat: ribbon

This quilt was full of beautiful botanicals. 

Queen Anne's lace

Tiger lily

Pansies 

Calla lilies

Such stellar stitchery! 

To see our first post of photos from this exhibit, click here. Now I feel the urge to go do some stitching on my own crazy quilt blocks. We'll share our final mini-crazy quilt in a few weeks.

Happy stitching!

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.