• Category Archives Embroidery
  • New Years Resolution

    Where does the time go? It seems like only yesterday; I eagerly anticipated everything I planned to get done in my 2021 New Year’s resolution. My goals were to finish a bunch of UFOs – this was a challenge issued to my Virtual Small Quilt group, most members posted a list of a dozen or so (and many achieved their goals), my list was over 50 projects, and I just barely made a dent.

    Part of the problem is that I start as many new projects as I finish others, so my UFO boxes never seem to diminish like the magic purses in Fairy Tales that will never be empty. So too, with fabric scrap bags. I make a lot of scrap quilts. I probably made more of those this past year than any others, yet that bag of scraps never seems to diminish – they must be breeding in there.

    My other 2021 New Year’s resolution – to clean and reorganize my sewing studio; I failed miserably to accomplish. Part of the problem is that those persistently pregnant scraps are just not going away. The other part is my penchant for being a depot for fabrics and materials destined for another quilter or fabric artist. I constantly ferry materials from one person to another. My husband has vetoed the idea of those boxes residing in our living/dining room while in transit; I have nowhere else to put them but my studio – and pray I can find them when I can connect with these other sewers. Not to mention the fabrics offered to me for my own stash, I have difficulty saying ‘no thank you.’

    As I said, I did get some UFos done, and here are pictures of those:

    I also made a bunch of Kennel Quilts for animal shelters. These are small 12″ x 18″ quilts that are used by animal shelters. Here is a gallery of the ones I made in 2021, including a paw print design I made as a free pattern available on the group on Kennel Quilts on Needle Spot.

    Onto 2022 – my New Year’s Resolutions are: to blog and maintain my website more frequently, to finally reorganize my studio, to start a couple of brand new projects in new techniques I want to try that have been simmering on hold for too long, to finish more UFOs (of course!), and to make my way through boxes of exotic teas I buy and then neglect in favor of plain ole Liptons.


  • Stitch Away the Gray Days

    OK, Christmas is past and in a few hours 2020 will be upon us and winter is just getting started up here in the Northwest. You may not want to be thinking of Christmas 2020 yet but what better time to begin some projects for next year’s yuletide? If you start now you will have a whole year to finish your projects. To that end, I am offering my Hand Embroidered Folk Art Ornament class at Sharon’s Attic in Aloha on Saturday January 11 from 10 am – 4 pm. This has been a popular class over the years and I keep adding critters to the menagerie. The best part of these hand embroidered whimsies is their portability; everything you need to make one will fit nicely in a Zip Lock bag and with a few stitches here and a few stitches there, you can finish one between other day to day tasks – on your lunch break, waiting for an appointment, watching a football game, bingeing Netflix…
    I have made quite a collection of these I could show you and you would say “Ah – but you are an experienced embroiderer…” so rather than show you my work, I would like to show you what has been done by my students. Keep in mind that many of these were made by stitchers who had little or no hand embroidery experience.
    Feeling inspired? Come join me at Sharon’s Attic in a couple of weeks and see what you can do.


  • Art & Soul Retreats Coming to Portland in March 2019

    Time for some shameless self-promotion! I want to talk about my classes at the Art & Soul Retreat in Portland next spring. I plan to do this in segments devoting a separate blog post to each the better to promote each class individually. My first will be:

    Thread Painting: March 10, 2019; 9am – 4:30pm

    This is free-motion quilting on steroids. Though it does take a degree of confidence to plunge into it, the method does not require quite the level of precision that traditional free-motion quilting does for delightful results. In regular free-motion quilting, the beauty lies in individual lines, these lines should be rendered with accuracy to be attractive but Thread Painting is more like coloring or (as the name says) painting.  A skillful hand will yield spectacular results but even a novice with less expertise can create something beautiful.

    In this class, I will offer two options to try – a pair of butterflies that enlists a coloring book approach that is suitable for a raw beginner and a songbird that employs a more ‘painterly’ technique involving layering and blending of colors and textures. Though I recommend a beginner to try the butterflies a confident beginner can try the bird and get good results. I have even had past students create their own bird from a photo to explore.

    The project sizes are small to make it possible to complete the thread painting in a reasonable amount of time, rather than have it turn into weeks or months of work or risk it languishing in your studio as a UFO. The cost of thread for a smaller project is also reasonable; thread is not cheap especially if you want a wide palette of colors. A smaller project will allow you to learn and perfect your technique before tackling a larger, more expensive project.
    If you are still uncertain that you could actually do this, look at what previous students have done in this class. Most of these were all stitched by students who had only a little or no experience with thread painting.
    If you are interested in this workshop, you can find more information at Art & Soul Retreats