State Fair Parade - Stars of the Show - Blue Ribbon Winner

Another project in the State Fair Parade! One of the reasons I like to enter different projects is to get a different opinion on my work. So I'm sharing with you what I sent to the state fair with the comments I received back - good & bad! Hopefully you will pick up some tips for your own projects!

This was one of my favorite wall hangings to design, stitch and finish! I printed a photo to put in the middle of the hanging using pre-treated fabric sheets and Bubble Jet Rinse. Here is more info on printing photos.

I used metallic thread in several colors to stitch the Curlz lettering, Lights, Camera, Action and Stars of the Show. For the sides, I couched hologram metallic thread to the black fabric, creating the colored spotlight effect.

I finished the photo, embroidered lettering and couched threads and dug and dug around in my stash of fabric looking for a fabric that was as bold and dramatic as the rest of the project. That became the dilemma; I couldn't find anything! Can you believe out of my fabric stash of hundreds and hundreds of yards, I did not have a single piece that would work?!?!

This frustrating dilemma became such a creative one. I started with a piece of black fabric and sprayed a light coating of spray adhesive. I cut up 1/2" and 1" pieces of the hologram metallic threads, letting them drop and scatter on the "sticky" fabric. I then scattered metallic embroidery threads and foil sequins on the fabric.

The next layer was a piece of black organza which I stuck down on top; sandwiching the threads between the two pieces of fabric. After the layers were stuck together well, I freehand quilting large stippling stitches all over the fabric; just enough to hold the threads a sequins inside without too much movement.

I then cut the width and length of borders I needed, stitched them to the center of the wall hanging and completed it with a black binding! Then I glued on rhinestones, star names with crystals and hollywood and camera scrapbooking diecuts for added embellishment.

I was so happy with the results and had such fun creating my own border fabric. I could never have found the right fabric with the bold and dramatic colors I was looking for, unless I made my own! Perfect!!

Out of the previous 5 projects I entered in this class - Paper Pieced Projects, Purple Hearts, Set Sail, Pink Nine Patch, Lady in the Grass - this is my absolute favorite! And this one was the blue ribbon winner!!!

Here are the judge's comments:
Such creativity!

My thoughts and comments:

I love it!! :)

State Fair Parade 5 - Paper Pieced Projects

Another project in the State Fair Parade! One of the reasons I like to enter different projects is to get a different opinion on my work. So I'm sharing with you what I sent to the state fair with the comments I received back - good & bad! Hopefully you will pick up some tips for your own projects!

These are two paper pieced projects that I made for class samples a couple years ago. Each of the four blocks are a paper pieced block with sashing and borders added. For quilting, they are both just stitched in the ditch.

I did the Valentine with embroidery in the white tone-on-tone blocks. They are quick and easy rework outline designs, but compliment the fabric very well.

The Valentine one has a neat little label on the back. It is an embroidered label, stitched on cutaway and then cut out and hand tacked to the back of the wall hanging.

This one also had a big oops! If you look closely, you can see the shadow of the red fabric underneath the white. Whenever you are sewing with white, you have to be careful that all your darker fabrics are trimmed down and not allowed to peek through. It is so easy to miss a few and the white fabric makes it very visible.

Here are the judge's comments:

A very nice piece. Shadowing on piecing. Sweet Valentine piecing.

My thoughts and comments:
I am going to be my own worst critic here, but the Valentine is not one of my best or favorite pieces. Yes, I like the embroidery designs and concept, but I have to say the little white dots swirling around the fabric just drives me nuts. Too me it is too busy and needs a calmer piece of fabric. But the purple one is fantastic! :)

State Fair Parade 4 - Purple Hearts

Another project in the State Fair Parade! One of the reasons I like to enter different projects is to get a different opinion on my work. So I'm sharing with you what I sent to the state fair with the comments I received back - good & bad! Hopefully you will pick up some tips for your own projects!

Hearts, hearts and more hearts! This wall hanging all started with just one little heart and grew and grew! I was trying some new machine applique techniques and writing step-by-step directions for my method of satin stitching, which you can see here and here.

With a scrap of fabric, I stitched one heart and then another. Soon I had various heart scattered on a large piece of fabric. Instead of adding it to my over-whelming pile of "I don't want to throw this away, but don't know what to use it for yet!", I decided to add borders, stitch a few more hearts and bind it so I would have something finished!

I stitched the hearts by machine applique, but also digitized the heart so it is an embroidery applique design. If you would like to download this FREE heart applique design, click here. If you are new to embroidery applique designs and how to use them with your embroidery machine, see here and here.

As for the quilting, I stitched in the ditch around the blocks and borders and then added my favorite method of quilting - stippling!! I will stipple anything and everything I can get my hands on; I just love stippling!!

Since this project had a most unusual beginning, I decided it needed to have an interesting end to it also! I had just seen Ricky Tim's method of piped binding and was itching to try it on something. Guess what? That just happened to be the perfect finishing feature. BTW - If you haven't seen Ricky's method for piped binding, detailed in his DVD Grand Finale, you should! It's an easy-to-do piped binding which creates a professional finish on your quilts!

And the label? Just my name and the date with a machine embroidered applique heart. Simple!

What an interesting project - no planning, no thought, just start stitching and keep going until it's finished!! I was able to use some small pieces of fabric leftover from another project, write and detail satin stitching techniques and try out a new method of binding all in the same piece! What could be better than that?!?!

Here are the judge's comments:
FABULOUS binding! Great satin stitching! More WOW factor would be nice.

My thoughts and comments:

I fully agree; what more can I say? The hearts do get a little boring after you've seen the first couple...:)

State Fair Parade 3 - Set Sail

Another project in the State Fair Parade! One of the reasons I like to enter different projects is to get a different opinion on my work. So I'm sharing with you what I sent to the state fair with the comments I received back - good & bad! Hopefully you will pick up some tips for your own projects!

This peaceful, refreshing scene of a sailing boat with a seagull flying up above is a paper pieced project. A couple years ago I taught a class on paper piecing and how to incorporate embroidery with this technique and this is one of the samples I stitched.

The sailboat (complete with the pole and flag on top!) and the water is a paper pieced block. I then added the two embroidered seagulls flying up high in the sky and a bubbling fish down below. To carry out the sailing theme further, I added the embroidered lettering Set Sail and little fish in the corner yellow blocks.

I had fun with the quilting on this little seaside theme! The blue water has quilted wavy lines to represent the moving waves. The white sail had rows of quilting blowing in the wind with rows of straight stitching on the boat to represent wood. There are also clouds free motion stitched in the skyline with the birds. The borders are all stitched in the ditch.

At the time I was working on this little project, my grandfather was in the hospital with only a few days left (December 2005) before he passed away. It was my evening to sit with him for several hours, so I had taken this project with me to get the binding stitched down. Isn't it interesting how you can look back on projects you have done and relate them to the circumstances under which you were creating them?

No ribbon for this project, but I entered another 5 items in this same class, one of which received a blue ribbon, which means no ribbons for any of the other 5.

Here are the judge's comments:

Need to work on corners. Very neat job!

My thoughts and comments:
I agree on both comments. I used a narrower binding than I normally do to scrimp a little on fabric and found out it was too narrow. See how the corners look distored and punched out? That is because I was trying to scrunch too much fabric and seam allowance in there and needed just a little wider of a binding to do it. Other than the corners, this wall hanging turned out neat! Maybe when I get a chance I'll rip off the binding and restitch it. Or maybe I will just leave it as it is and use it as an example of what not to do in some of my classes! :)

State Fair Parade 2 - Pink Nine Patch

Another project in the State Fair Parade! One of the reasons I like to enter different projects is to get a different opinion on my work. So I'm sharing with you what I sent to the state fair with the comments I received back - good & bad! Hopefully you will pick up some tips for your own projects!

This is a simple pink and white nine patch pattern I created a year ago as a sample for a class I was teaching. The pattern is from Alex Anderson's Start Quilting book. It was quick and easy project which I was easily able to finish in a day.

For quilting, I stippled in large, meandering loops over the entire piece. This was one of the larger projects I had stippled quilted as an allover pattern at the time. Little did I know at this point I would be hooked on machine quilting and start quilting larger quilts and different kinds of patterns.

The fabrics are created with Moda's Quilt Pink fabric line from a couple of years ago. Since Breast Cancer was the theme, I decided the label needed something special and different. It is an envelope label with machine embroidered lettering and the pink ribbon. It can be opened to reveal the information inside or shut to remain hidden.

No ribbon for this project, but I entered another 5 items in this same class, one of which received a blue ribbon, which means no ribbons for any of the other 5. But this was a neat project to stitch!

Here are the judge's comments:
Very nice job! Your solid pink doesn't go with your peachy pink. It would have been fun to use a darker pink like the star pattern in the print fabric. Love the label!!!

My thoughts and comments:

I agree; the solid pink and print pink are a little different color tones and are not the best blended together. My favorite part on this wall hanging - most definitely the label!

State Fair Parade 1 - Lady in the Grass

Over the next few weeks I'll be sharing with you some of the projects I entered in the state fair. One of the reasons I like to enter different projects is to get a different opinion on my work. So I'm sharing with you what I sent with the comments I received back - good & bad! Hopefully you will pick up some tips for your own projects!

This is a sweet little wall hanging featuring Lady, our blond haired four-legged dog. At the time I stitched this, I was getting ready to teach several classes on fabric photo printing. I created multiple samples with different photos and this was one of them.

I printed the center photo onto pre-treated and pre-cut fabric sheets with my inkjet printer. Just as an added note - only inkjet and bubble jet printers will work to print photos on fabric because they apply wet ink to the fabric. Laser printers will NOT work because they use a dry ink that is set to the fabric by heat. (There are other kinds of paper that will not work on laser printers as I found out the hard way! :))

After printing, I let the photo dry and then rinse it under running water. Then I let it soak for 5-10 minutes in a Bubble Jet Rinse solution. The rinse releases any of the extra ink into the solution and sets the ink so it is permanent and won't bleed when it is washed in the future. Then carefully wring out the extra liquid and let dry. It becomes just like fabric and you can cut and stitch it in any way you desire. You can download some more information on photo printing and treating fabric here.

I added the toast marble fabric around the photo and then a floral fabric border. Then comes the fun part - adding embellishment! I found some cute little puppy buttons and paw prints which are scattered around. And of course, I just had to add some embroidered lettering above and below the photo! Plus it is bordered with a feather decorative stitch.

The quilting on this project is nothing spectacular - just a few random bubbles in and around the embroidery and buttons. It is just enough to hold the layers together.

The label on the back is also printed fabric. Only this time, I used the toast marble fabric, treated it with Bubble Jet Solution, ironed it to freezer paper so it would feed through the printer and printed the photo and lettering. Then I peeled off the freezer paper, set it in the Bubble Jet Rinse, let it dry, cut it down and stitched it to the back!

No ribbon for this project, but I entered another 5 items in this same class, one of which received a blue ribbon, which means no ribbons for any of the other 5. But this was a fun and quick project to stitch!

Here are the judge's comments:

What a wonderful quilt. Very original!

My thoughts and comments:

I was pleased with the way this project finished. It is a simple way to give photo printing a try if you have never done it before! Be sure to check out my tips for photo printing here.

State Fair Projects

I sent over 20 different items to the state fair this year. For some of them I didn't really expect to win any ribbons; in fact I didn't really expect to win what I did. But it was fun to go through the domestic arts building looking for those familiar items with my name on them!

I'll be doing several posts in the next week or two, after the fair is over and my items are returned to me, showing you the items I entered and the results of each one. One reason I like to enter several of the things I've created, is to get another opinion on it. I see it for what it is. I know the meaning behind it. I know what I'm trying to create.

But is that conveyed to someone else? How are my standards of workmanship and creativity viewed through another pair of eyes? That's one of the great things about entering projects - you can see areas of your projects that need improvement and that may cause you to think about things you might not have otherwise thought about.

I will say I was surprised and excited with the ribbons I received for everything I entered. But I want to show them to you, pointing out to you the good points and areas that need improvement. Hopefully you will pick up some ideas that you can use in your own quilting projects! So stay tuned for a State Fair Project Parade!!