Jane's Quilted and Appliqued Christmas Wallhanging

My friend Jane is quite a quilter. She makes quilts for her children and her friend's children, and for fundraisers, and gifts and other occasions as well. I've worked on a few quilts with Jane, and it's always an adventure. Jane and I were at a little fabric shop together last fall when I was looking for Halloween fabric to finish off my Halloween apron, and she found the cutest pattern for a quilted and appliqued Christmas wall hanging. She purchased some fabric to go along with it while we were there, then she made it. I love how it turned out, so cheerful and cute and Christmas-y.

It's Santa and a pair of mittens! I love mittens, as you might have guessed by our family's version of 'stockings' hung by the chimney with care! The red background fabric around the border is so pretty and rich looking and I love the swirl designs in the green border fabric too.


Jane had never done an applique project like this before, but you couldn't tell that by her blanket stitches. She did a great job.

This mitten looks cozy enough to keep any little hand warm on a cold winter day!

Nice job Jane! Thanks for letting me show it off.

I neglected to ask Jane the name of the pattern and the designer, but I know she will read this and perhaps she'll be kind enough to leave a comment with that information in case anyone is interested in making this festive little wall hanging too.

Happy Stitching!

Click here to return to HookedOnNeedles.com

Remembrance Pillows made for a friend

This past summer, my friend Debbie's mother Grace passed away after a long and productive life filled with lots of family, friends, faith and love. Debbie decided to save a few articles of her mother's clothing, and had kept them in a bag just waiting to decide what to do with them. She recently told me about her idea to make something from the pieces she had saved, and she asked if I would be interested in the project. Of course I was, and here is what Grace's four tops have become...


This is the front of two of the Remembrance Pillows...


...and this is the back of the same two pillows. I cut the pieces for the pillow backs out of the section of each top where the buttons or zipper openings were so that the covers could be taken off and washed if necessary. You can also see that the front patch pocket on the blue flowered denim top was left in place as well.


Here are the fronts of the other two 12 inch pillows...


...and here are the backs of the same two. The purple top was a cozy zippered jacket, so I left the zipper intact just like the buttons on the other pillows.


Using small pieces of fabric from the shirts, I cut out heart shapes in three different sizes and appliquéd two of them onto each pillow top with hand-stitching.


I tried to do each one a little bit differently from the others so each pillow would be unique.


Grace was a very tiny lady so I was only able to make four 12 inch pillows, one for each of her daughters. But with the leftover fabric, I was able to make 3 other very small pillows with hearts on them as well. These small pillows Debbie will give to some of Grace's grandchildren.








The white blouse had the prettiest white lace on the sleeves, so I made two little sachet bags by cutting about 4 inches from the end of each sleeve and stitching the bottom edge closed. Then I ran narrow ribbon through the lace to make drawstrings. These little bags could be filled with nice smelling soaps or potpourri and hung in a closet or placed in a drawer.

What a nice way to memorialize a loved one, making something old and used new again. I think Grace would be happy to see a few pieces of her clothing used in this way.

Happy Stitching!

Click here to return to HookedOnNeedles.com

The making of the Halloween Apron

Yesterday I showed you the finished apron I sent for my Halloween Apron swap gift, and today I'm going to show you how I came to that finished design. It all started with the fabulous variety of fat quarters I received from Grace Full Creations this past summer. With so many fun fabrics and colors to choose from, I could create just about any scene I wanted, but this one of course would have to be a spooky Halloween scene. I had asked Micki what she liked about Halloween, then tried to incorporate some of that into the design. I knew she was very much into the spooky aspect of the holiday, so the graveyard scene seemed appropriate, and perfect for the bottom of the apron. Then of course there must be a full moon for a bat or witch to be flying in front of.

Here's how I started...


Just as I had done with some of my other aprons, I cut the leg off a pair of old jeans and opened it up. The hem edge became the top and armholes were cut out. Then I began drawing the scene right onto the denim using my air-erase marker. I had printed out lots of different elements for this design so I could choose whatever I thought would look best as I went along.


I had to get a skull in there somewhere because Micki said she liked them!


And every graveyard scene needs a scary ghost or two just to set the mood!


Then I went through my fat quarter collection and picked out fabrics for each element. None of these fabrics had a Halloween-specific theme, just great colors and interesting designs.

The pumpkins and the bat were traced from the graphics I printed out from various free clip art sites. I had planned to use a witch silhouette in front of the moon, but in the end decided I liked the bat better.

The tombstones and cross and ghosts were drawn freehand along with the sections of the hilly ground. The moon was drawn with my handy dandy school compass to get that perfect full-moon shape.


Then all the fabric was cut into the appropriate shapes and fusible web was added to the backs to adhere the pieces to the denim. I've decided I really like fusible appliqué!


I used a loose zig zag stitch on my sewing machine to stitch around the edges of all the shapes using black thread. I also added some details on the pumpkins and the leaf using the walking foot on my sewing machine.



The ghost faces were hand embroidered using black embroidery floss, along with the year on the cross tombstone.


The bat's eyes were just little straight stitches of white perle cotton...


...and the RIP was backstitched using the same white perle cotton. The spider web was machine stitched using the walking foot, after I drew it freehand using the air erase marker. That is one of my favorite elements on this apron!


I wanted to add a pocket to this apron because Micki said pockets are very important to her, so I found this darling fabric panel that had many different little blocks of Halloween scenery on them. I thought this one would make the perfect pocket for the middle of this graveyard scene. I lined it with the same orange fabric of the pumpkins, leaving just a little strip visible at the top edge of the pocket.


There's a cute little pumpkin just sitting there on that hill waiting to be scooped out and carved into something frightening!


The skull design was worked in backstitch using white perle cotton and a little piece of stitch and tear stabilizer with the design drawn onto it. I did not have a marker that would show up on this dark fabric, and this method worked great on the Irish Step Dancing dresses I used to embroider, so I used it here. It worked great!


Once the front of the apron was finished, I cut out strips of fall fabric for the neck and waist straps, and I made the fall apron for the reverse side to match the shape of the denim. Then I stitched them together with the straps in between and the right sides together, leaving an opening for turning. Once the apron was turned, I pressed the edges and top stitched around the whole apron to close the opening and finish it off.


The reverse side of the apron was simply a piece of fall fabric cut to the same shape as the denim, with a pocket of coordinating fabric stitched onto it. This makes the apron useful for a whole season instead of just the time around the end of October.

Next time you want to decorate something with a one-of-a-kind scene, pick through your fabrics and start cutting out shapes. Heat up your iron, practice you zig zag stitch and get creative with your walking foot. You just never know what you'll come up with!

Happy Stitching!

Click here to return to HookedOnNeedles.com

Halloween Apron Swap gift revealed!

Is there anything more fun than wrapping up a few little gifts specially made or chosen for the recipient and then finding out they were received and enjoyed? I think not! I just got an email today from Micki who was my swap partner for Aunt Pitty Pat's Halloween Apron Swap. She received a package in the mail with all of this in it...


I had such fun picking out a few little Halloween themed gifts to go along with the apron I made for her, and then wrapping all of them up in this fun Halloween tissue paper with long, reusable pieces of black and yellow ribbon. Besides the apron which was the main item in the swap, I sent Micki a little ceramic jack-o-lantern, a fall scented candle, enough Halloween candy bracelets to share with her whole family, and some fun Halloween stickers.

When she unwrapped the apron, this is what Micki found...


...an apron that looked perfect for fall with colorful leaves and a large, functional green-leaf pocket across the front. But when she opened it up and really looked at it, this is what she would find on the other side...



...a one-of-a-kind original Halloween themed apron, designed and executed by me especially for her! I cannot tell you how much FUN I had making this apron!

Halloween is not exactly my favorite day of the year, mainly because it has become so much more than just a day and I think some people take the gory, bloody, scary aspect of it much too far with their decorating and such. There are some places here in my own city that I try to avoid driving by at this time of year because I don't like my children to see some of the stuff people have out on their lawns from mid-September all the way until November.

However, I can certainly see the fun in having a practical and useful themed apron for the occasion, and that was the point of this swap. So I jumped into the project with both feet and both hands, and when I came out the other end of it, I was quite pleased with the effort! I used some familiar methods of needlework and some not so familiar, so I went outside my comfort zone to put this together.

In my next post, I'll show some close-ups of the finished apron along with a few photos of the creative process that led to this fun Halloween graveyard scene on an apron.

Happy Stitching!

Click here to return to HookedOnNeedles.com

Fun New Year's Quilting Projects

There are so many creative and generous people out here on the internet sharing their ideas and patterns and imagination with anyone who wants to click or bookmark or subscribe. I have found a couple of long-term projects being shared by designers I have been following for quite a while now, and I thought you might find them exciting as well.

The first one I want to share with you today comes to us from Sandi Andersen in Minnesota and her website A Legacy of Stitches.

This is the Block of the Month for January, a handsome snowman with a smart hat and scarf to keep him warm and cozy. I can't resist a cozy snowman so this one really caught my eye. Sandi offers her pattern for this right on her website or you can request an email of the PDF file. Sandi will be sharing a block a month for 2009. These blocks will feature something special about each month and she suggests making them into one quilt or finishing each separately to be used as seasonal wallhangings. I am sure each one will be more creative than the last!

The other project I want to share with you today is found on Helen's website Hugs from Helen. You might remember that Helen was the brains behind the Stitcher's Angel Swap that provided me and so many others with great opportunities to make friends from all around the world.



Helen's project is a 65 inch square Mystery Quilt which she will be presenting during Australia's summer holidays which coincide with our very cold and icy winter up north here. She calls it The Great Summer Holiday Mystery Quilt. The fabric requirements are posted this week, and next week she will begin with the instructions. If you just can't stand a mystery and you must know what you are getting yourself into before starting, Helen even provides a link that will reveal the mystery and show you what the finished quilt looks like. But that would be spoiling the fun, don't you think?

If you are looking for a new project for the new year, there are two fun ideas that could keep you busy and creative for quite some time. I have admired Helen's and Sandi's work since I first started following each of them and I just know they will not disappoint.

Happy Stitching!

Click here to return to HookedOnNeedles.com

Appliqued, Embroidered and Beaded Christmas Tree Skirt

Back in the 80's while I was still working full time before our oldest was born, my sister and her family lived right in the same town with us. I would spend many late afternoons and evenings at their little place, playing with the kids, swimming, enjoying their company while my husband was taking college classes at night. I had sewing and craft projects that I worked on at home and a few volunteer activities that I was involved in through the library or church. I stayed busy enough. Then my sister broke the news that she and her family would be moving half way across the country for her husband's job. I didn't realize how much I would miss them at the time, but after they were gone, I surely did miss them terribly. So I pulled out a project I had only just purchased, set it up on the card table in the living room and worked on it for hours at a time every day and on weekends sometimes all day long. I poured myself into this project to keep my mind off of my sad loss.

When it was finally finished, which took months, we so proudly placed it under the Christmas tree and admired it. Then we heard a sound, like something being chewed, coming from somewhere under the tree. My husband noticed one of our cats lurking back there and realized what was happening. He lunged at the cat, she took off running, and we examined the damage. She liked the beads and sequins, that bad old cat! We caught her before she could do too much damage, but we couldn't risk leaving the tree skirt out with her unattended all day long, so it got packaged up and put away. I am happy to report, for so many reasons, that the cats are no longer with us and the tree skirt has taken its rightful place under our family room Christmas tree for the past several years.

Here it is...



This was a kit by Bucilla as I recall which I had purchased at some long gone craft store on clearance after Christmas one year. I think I paid a whopping $8 for it! That was quite a chunk of change for me to spend on a craft kit back then! I'm so glad I splurged though. It came with all the felt, sequins, beads, embroidery floss, wool yarn, ric-rac and detailed instructions for placing each piece in the proper order. The design repeats three times around the skirt going from the doll on the left over to the rocking horse on the right.


Here you can see better that Santa is reaching up to place the star on top of the Christmas tree and his little elf is helping. If you look closely at the pom pom on Santa's hat, you can see a loose thread hanging there. That is the damage that darned old cat did that day! If we had not caught her so quickly and put the tree skirt away, I am certain that not one bead or sequin would have been left on the tree skirt. She was THAT bad! But she was my favorite cat and I loved her. Her name was Sandy.


Anyway, here's the little elf carrying the drum and the cute little rocking horse with the yarn tail and mane. You can see here that the arm of the elf is stuffed and sewn on just like Santa's arm with the star and the other elf helping him. Each face is embroidered and every sequin is sewn on with a bead to secure it. The elves also have yarn hair peeking out from under their hats.


Here's the little doll with yarn pig tails and red bows. The teddy bear's little embroidered face is so happy and his fat little stuffed arm sticks out of Santa's bag.

The ric-rac was sewn on by hand using white thread and then I backed the entire piece with a piece of red felt that I purchased separately and embroidered my name and the year onto. This was whip stitched to the top using red thread all around the outside edge and up the slit opening and around the little circle in the middle where the tree goes. I also added three little flaps with snaps on them to close the skirt and secure it around the tree.

In the first picture, you can see the candy canes around the little circle in the middle with little green holly leaves. These were felt pieces appliqued like the rest of the designs and the red stripes were embroidered using satin stitch.

I love putting this tree skirt underneath our tree every year. It gets buried once the wrapped gifts start appearing, but once the Christmas morning mayhem is over, it becomes visible again and adds a nice sparkle and cheerfulness until it gets put away on January 6th for another long year.

Just so you know...

This is Sandy, the bead and sequin chewer. She was my very favorite cat and she loved me more than anyone in the world. We got her as a kitten a year after we were married and she lived to the ripe old age of 17. She really was a wonderful cat.


And this is Sandy's partner in crime, Sunny. We got her as a kitten about a year after we got Sandy and they were best buddies all their lives. Sunny lived to the ripe old age of 18. They were both sealpoint Siamese cats and sounded like crying babies when they meowed. They both loved curling up on top of the computer monitor to keep warm. That was back in the day, eh?

I just wanted you to know I'm not as heartless as I seemed when I mentioned that the cats are no longer with us!

Happy Stitching!

Click here to return to HookedOnNeedles.com