Hand Embroidery

Recently our church vestry went on a retreat held at our diocesan summer camp (St. Crispins for any Oklahomans) and the beautiful setting and relaxing environment made me return home in the mood for some hand embroidery.  We closed by singing this Sam Baker song-  it's a lovely way to wrap up, and I love the echos to Come thou fount, one of my favorite traditional hymns.

Anyway, I decided to do a piece of hand embroidery referencing that text and turn it into a cover for my three ring binder full of vestry paperwork.  I sketched it out ahead of time, and then just stitched away.  My stitches aren't very even- clearly I need work on my satin stitch, but overall I'm pleased with how it came out.  By the time I got to the words I was done hand stitching, so I decided to do those free-motion on my sewing machine.

I made the binder cover so that one inside flap has an integrated pencil case and the other size has a pocket to hold a notepad.  I always have a good time figuring out how to assemble things like that.

And on another hand stitching note-  I hand stitched my valentines this year!  Well- not really stitching, more like card-threading, but it was fun all the same.  I've always loved string art, so much so that I did a quilt using it a few years back, so I decided to take a simplified approach to it for my valentines.  It's just perle cotton on cardstock.

I was also inspired by some beautiful online calligraphy (I'm terribly ashamed that I can't remember where I saw it) to try some fun envelopes.

Although at the moment I've gone back to working on the quilting on my big two panel quilt, there's more embroidery/hand stitching in my future as I've signed up for the big stitch swap being hosted by Fairy Face Designs.  This is my first instagram swap, so it's a new approach for me!

More Quilting

I feel like I've been quilting on my large Eucharistic Prayer C quilt forever.  I still love this project, but it feels like the quilt that is never ending.  Alas, there is still much more quilting left to go and then painting, so the end is not yet in sight.   I've been getting so bored and frustrated with the quilting that it's been hard to get motivated to work on it, but it's not like I'm at a design standstill or anything so I feel like I should just force myself to push through.  I keep telling myself that it will take even longer to finish if I don't work on it.

I realized the other day that I haven't actually shared any updates on it since this very brief snapshot before Christmas, so I figured I was due to show some progress.

The background of the large borders on both panels is quilted in green, red, blue, and purple and will eventually be painted in.  The green is fairly continuous, but the red blue and purple aren't which means tons of stops and starts.  Added to all the color changes in each vignette and I feel like I spend twice as much time burying threads as I do quilting.

Wow this is turning whiny!!!  I better stop and just show some pictures :)
These are a few of my favorites of the quilted images.

And here's the back of one of the panels which is mostly finished (quilting wise).  I think the back looks pretty cool, apart from the giant ripple bump in the backing which I didn't discover until hours of quilting had gone over it.

I'm going off now to be inspired by all the rest of the creatives out there and hopefully exit the other side in a better frame of mind!!  Linking up as always with the awesome Nina Marie.