A New Set of Grandma Dolls

My other Grandma died in May. I wanted to make Grandma dolls for my family again, but this side of my family is much bigger than the first. So I came up with the idea of making a base image to which I can add some embroidery.

My Grandma and Grandpa lived on an orchard which they eventually turned into a Christmas tree farm for most of my life. We (along with cousins aunts and uncles) went there every summer to help with the cherry harvest. I myself picked cherries from age 8 to 16, when they changed to Christmas trees. To me my grandparents are linked to trees, and cherries in particular. So when I designed this doll I thought that it needed to be a cherry tree.

I drew the image on paper, scanned it, then used inkscape and gimp to make a digital file. I made a tree trunk with a sun above it. I will print off pictures of my grandma's face onto cloth and put them inside the suns. Then I can add leaves and cherries to the tree trunk and branches. The back has a heart with my grandma's name, birthdate and death date. I think that this will make for a simpler project for me, while still being beautiful. I was able to fit 30 dolls to a yard of fabric.

Pieces of Friendship

I am participating in the Pieces of Frienship swap. For this swap you make 4 four inch puzzle pieces using any method. I chose to do mini crazy quilts.

Here are the 4 completed puzzle pieces placed together. I am really happy with how they turned out. I used a small nature image from some fabric scraps that I had for each puzzle piece. Then I surrounded them each with a little bit of some Spoonflower swatches. The spoonflower fabric was fairly dark compared to the middle images, so I chose threads to match colours from the centre image for the embroidery.


I started with the butterfly piece. The image got cut off a bit when I sewed the different fabrics together, so I wanted to "fix" the butterfly a bit. I embroidered a missing piece of the wing at the top and continued the branch it was sitting on out of the centre. I wanted the orange colour to balance out the orange of the butterfly, but I thought it might be too overpowering by itself. So the leaf, branch and vine type embroidery with orange french knots seemed just right. Then there were some empty spaces, so I thought that some detatched chain butterflies would go nicely.


I wanted to continue the centre image again for the flowers. I basically just added some stems and leaves that mirrored what was printed on the fabric. I liked the vines, leaves, branches, and butterflies from the first piece, so I just repeated them.

The frog didn't really need any touch up so I just repeated the same seam treatments and butterflies.

The bee also didn't need any touch up. The way this piece was cut, the left strip of fabric was much bigger than any of the other pieces. I ended up adding an extra branch there so it didn't look too plain.

Then I added a backing and blanket stitched around the edge. I used the light yellow to bring the colour out from the middle again.

Pagoda

I made this pagoda for the front flap of a bag I made for my mom. It is done from a drawing I did of a miniature pagoda my parents brought back from Japan. The outline is done with 2 strands of embroidery floss in split stitch. The windows are done with one strand in back stitch. Then I added tear drop shaped beads at the corners to represent the lanterns of the pagoda.

My Grandma's Wreath

This is one of my all time favourite things that I made for my Grandma. I made this a long time ago as well. The pattern was in Cross Stitch and Country Crafts magazine.

I don't know why it is so appealing to me. I'm not really a bird person, although this bird is really cute. I think the whole package just come together nicely.

This is probably the thing I wanted back from my Grandma the most. I have loved it since I made it, and I am really happy to have it back.

My Grandma's Heart

I made this for my Grandma for Christmas in the early 90s. My aunt was going through my Grandma's things and thought I would want to have it back.

This is one of the first crazy quilt items that I ever made. I was working on my first crazy quilt at the time. My mom gave me a crazy quilting book (I think it is the original of this book), which led me to making the crazy quilt in the first place. It also had a bunch of small projects in it, including this heart. I made a few other ones. I can't even remember who for anymore, and I didn't take any pictures. I even was asked to teach a group of ladies at my Grandma's church how to make the hearts.

The flower in the centre is done with french knots. The rest is pretty simply decorated with cretan stitch, herringbone stitch, and beads.

Marvella's memorial quilt- the vines

I am busy doing stem stitch vines along all the purple rectangles that surround the t-shirt pictures. I don't want the quilt to become too busy, but I thought the purple needed a bit of something.

Marvella's memorial quilt part 3

I have finished sewing the t-shirt pictures, the framed picture and cloth from the dress together into a large square. I'm not sure that I used the best or easiest method to do this, but it looks good and is flat so that is all that really matters!

I started by sewing one side of the t-shirt pictures together with strips of the dress material.

Then I took the other side's t-shirt pictures and laid them on top to see how much fabric I would need in between them. Once this side was sewn together I really had to improvise to sew the whole thing together. At some points I ended up folding over the edges of the dress fabric and top stitching it to the t-shirt pictures. Once I had done this, I decided that I would top stitch around all of the t-shirt pictures so that it all looked the same. It also helped it to lie flat and I think it looks nice that way.

Now I am working on doing a bit of embroidery. I won't do too much, because the quilt is about the t-shirts, pictures and bridesmaid dress fabric.