Stitching Circles and Other Things

Buttons, yo-yos (the fabric kind), circles, rings, ovals, and round are a few of the things and shapes that I love. Needle pulling thread is a process that I can get lost in for hours!

I follow a few online groups that focus on taking small pieces of fabric and bits of threads and practice slow stitching or stitch meditation. One group focuses on stitching circles on their pieces, often adding a button or some other object in the center of their stitching. I love all the work shown and decided to use this technique on one of the patches in “Nine Patches, Five Threads Red”. I wanted to keep the button in the center. I could have sewed the button on first, but it would then be in the way of the stitching thread. So I gave it some thought, considered marking around the button, but I didn’t want to deal with making the mark disappear.

Small Patch with Circular Stitching

Then I remembered I had some round stickers about the size of the button. I placed the sticker on my patch where I wanted the button to be and stitched around it. Once I was done stitching I removed the sticker and sewed the button on. That was a good, easy solution.

Recently someone on the group asked how people get their circles so seemingly perfect. I almost responded with my sticker idea but then decided to write a little blog post instead.

Expanding on the sticker idea I purchased some larger size round stickers. You could print different size circles on a full page label, but then you would have to cut them out. Or if you are fortunate to own or have access to a cutter machine that can cut multiple circles you could probably use that. I don’t have this option, so I settled for what I had.

The stickers I bought were labeled “permanent”, so I was a little nervous about using them. The good news is the fabric has enough lint (small fibers) that the labels don’t stick permanently as soon as they are applied. If you are using a specialty fabric such as a smooth satin or silkie that may differ you could place the sticker on a fabric that is linty just to pick up some surface tension and then place it on the fabric you want to stitch.

I would caution about leaving the stickers on for a long time especially if they will be stored in a way that pressure is applied to the sticker.

Here are a few samples of using stickers as guides for stitching.

Stitching around some circle labels 

You could also cut out shapes – leaves, flowers, vines, etc. to use as a guide for stitching. Rectangular labels work great as guides also.

Leaves, button flower,  and a moon

Now about perfect stitches. I don’t aspire to making perfect even stitches on my art pieces. I like the look of a natural organic stitch. Outside of practice, practice, practice if I for some reason want perfect circles and stitches I would probably resort to an embroidery machine.

Happy sewing in circles!

Rose

Color Escapes Black and White

 

Escape is now finished and off my FoF (Focus On Five) list. That’s the word prompt given by one of my art quilt groups. The size was to be 12X14 inches. I had another small quilt I made for another group’s challenge and I thought I could use it for this challenge, but it was larger. So back to the drawing board. I’d been playing with an idea for yo-yo’s and decided to develop it for Escape.

After The Rain a bias tape challenge

In the process of making this quilt without much forethought or planning I ran into a few rough spots. The rough spots have informed me and made me think of and realize better ways to work when I start a larger similar quilt and another improv quilt inspired by this small one. I’m not sure when they will be started (they have to wait for their turn on my FoF list). But I will be making some notes now, so I don’t forget when I do start them.

Escape 

Sewing through all the tightly stacked black and white yoyos plus the background fabric, batting, and backing fabric was a little difficult. I changed to a different needle and increased the stitch length, but it still was hard. I had originally tried to stitch them down by hand but quickly converted to machine sewing. Next time I think I will try and make the yoyo’s into fabric by themselves without the background fabric and batting.

After the first few yoyos I realized that I really wanted them to be as flat as possible but not as flat as I would get from a plain circle of fabric. Normally when I want a flat yoyo I will get it wet and then squeeze as much water out as possible and flatten it with my hand and then let it dry. This time I had so many to do that I decided to lay them on my ironing surface and then lay a wet pressing cloth over them. After that I could use my iron to flatten them. That worked great. Problem though was I had forgotten that some of the circles had been marked along the cutting/stitching line with a blue washout pen. Since I didn’t wet them and squeeze out the water then let them dry the blue marking became permanent and it you look close at some of the yoyos you can see the faint blue marks. I rarely mark the stitching line now as I’ve made so many of them my hand is trained to turn under the ¼ inch without needing a line. But I still have some older yoyos made when I used the marking, so I need to keep that in mind before using the iron to flatten them.

I was delighted when I found some fabric in my stash that was designed in such a way that I could cut out some circles for my yoyos that would give me ones that were half colorful and half black and white. These would work for the ones just beginning to escape.

My next challenge was encasing the black and white yoyos while letting the color ones go free. I wanted to do a facing finish on the color/white section and a black and white binding on the black/white side. I added the binding to the right edge and then wondered how I could do a combination facing and binding on the rest. My solution was to face the rest of the piece including where the black and white yoyos were at the top and bottom. I then did a faux binding over the black and white portion.

Back of Escape

Still working on the official title for this piece. It will be along the lines of thoughts escaping a black and white world.

Keep stitching and adding color to our world!

Rose

 

 

Another Monday Night Tip

Well It’s past time for another Monday night tip. This one may appeal to anyone who uses a printed pattern for sewing or quilting. I discovered it when I was working on a common sewing task nowadays – mask making. This is good for anytime you are going to be using the same pattern for multiple applications or if you want to be able to see what you are doing when you fussy cut a design from your fabric.

After being a little frustrated with patterns on regular printer paper I thought what if I printed on something that was a little more durable. I had been tracing around the pattern onto some sew-in interfacing because it was a little more durable that the paper but sometimes tracing leads to slight inaccuracies. I thought what if I could print on the interfacing. 

I cut a piece of interfacing to paper size (8 ½ by 11 inches) and placed it in the paper tray of my printer. I left the regular paper in and just laid the interfacing on top. I was careful to be sure it was in straight and smooth. Then I hit the print button. It worked like a charm! I tried again with a piece that was 8 ½ by 14 because I had a pattern that was longer than 11 inches. Perfect! I printed a few more patterns without any problem.

The best thing is it saves time, they can be used over and over again, and they are slightly see through so I can fussy cut if I want.

Pattern piece printed with Sew-In interfacing

What you will need is some sew-in interfacing (not fusible!) that is slightly translucent so you can see through it. I used Pellon 910 Sew-In Featherweight Interfacing. That’s what I had on hand.

Carefully trim it to the size paper your printer can handle. Place it in the tray making sure the top edges is flush with the top of the paper tray.

If you have several pieces of pattern you would like to print you could set them up on a single sheet using any program that will allow you to add multiple images. I generally use Photoshop but you could use other graphic programs or even word. You just need to be able to add multiple images and size them correctly.

Hope this makes printing and using pattern pieces a little easier for you.

Be sure to test your printer capabilities to handle different types of paper. I use an HP Officejet Pro 6978.

I haven’t researched to see if anyone else has come up with this idea but it would not surprise me to find out that they have.

 

Happy sewing!

Rose