If the Thread Twists when Hand Sewing, There is a Remedy

                                           Leave Thread on Spool to Start Threading the Needle

Everybody knows how to thread a needle. Maybe. If your thread twists when you sew by hand or if you get knots in the thread when you pull it through the fabric, you may not know how. This may be one of those things you didn't know that you didn't know.

I could sew before I could read or thread the needle, so "how to thread a needle" was never part of my sewing education. My Grandma threaded the needle, and I sewed scraps together to make a purse. It probably allowed coins to slip through the large stitches, but I made it myself and carried it around the house until I started sewing doll clothes by hand. Then, I was allowed to climb on the stool and quilt, but the quilting threads were already started. I never needed to know how to thread the needle.

Years after I learned to sew, I often had thread that twisted with every stitch. Eventually, I figured out how to avoid twisted thread. If you have twisted thread when you sew, it's not the thread. It's the way you thread the needle. 

Thread has a directional twist that makes a difference when you thread the needle. Here's the easy way to avoid twisting of the thread. 

Thread the hand sewing needle before you cut the thread off the spool. Set the spool on the table or your lap and push the thread through the eye of the needle. 

When you cut the thread off the spool, knot that end as soon as you make the cut. When you sew, you'll be pulling the thread through the fabric along the diagonal twist and not against it. This prevents the thread from twisting when you sew.

Cut the thread at the spool and tie a knot at the cut end

You may have twisting with embroidery thread and perle cotton, particularly if you rewind the thread onto a cardboard flat or if you split the six-strand embroidery thread into two or three threads. It's the same principle -- thread the needle from the original open end of the thread and tie the knot at the end closest to the original wrap.

If you rewind the thread onto a cardboard, you'll have the reverse. You'll need to tie a knot in the end, take the thread off, cut it, and thread from the end you just cut. 

This is confusing when you divide the six-strand embroidery thread into two or three strands. Keep track of the end that comes out of the original floss package first as that's the end that goes in the needle. If you mess up and the thread starts to tangle when you sew, you can start over and thread from the opposite end -- but you can learn to avoid the extra steps with a little care -- and knowledge.

Improve your hand sewing skills with this easy technique. Make crafts faster and neater.

See you soon!

Linda
cajunC
Cajun Collection

Sew Fabric Christmas Ornaments Safe for Small Children, No Sewing Machine Required

 

Strawberry for Full-Size Christmas Tree

 

You've probably started your Christmas crafts already, but there is always time for more fabric slashes and stitches to round out the holidays. I'm making some fruit Christmas ornaments from cotton, satin and felt scraps and thought I would share them with you. These are made entirely by hand, so you can make them while watching television or chatting. You'll need a needle and thread and fabric scraps.

 

My grandchildren are 2 this year, so not all ornaments are safe, and the wire hangers we all use are especially unsafe for little ones. You can make ornaments small children can enjoy by using fabrics and thread, with thread hangers. As the children get older, you may want to add decorations that you can't use now -- buttons, beads, sequins or rolling eyes. You still have to watch a small child with any Christmas ornament, especially if he still put things in his mouth.

 

These are all simple, but original patterns and ideas you are welcome to try.

 

Start with scraps of fabric and choose some shapes you'd like to hang on a tree. A large tree will need full-size shapes; a small tree can use small ones.

 

Here are some of the fruits you can make, with a little imagination: Strawberries, apples, lemons, cherries, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, oranges, and maybe grapes, with lots of patience.

 

Tomato or Apple Christmas Ornament Handmade

 

Could these be Grapes? Need Several to String Together

 

All the round fruits take a full circle, just like yoyos. A 2 or 2 1/2 inch diameter circle makes smaller fruit, and a 3 1/2 inch circle makes larger pieces of fruit.

 

Choose a color that resembles the fruit, but it doesn't have to be solid colors. Cherries, strawberries, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, red apples can be made from shades of red fabric. Represent lemons and star fruit with yellow, and grapes with purple or green. 

Cut the circles for the size fruit you want to make, except for the strawberries. Use a larger circle cut in half and make two strawberries from one circle. See more directions below for the strawberry.

 

Fold about 1/4 inch at the wrong-side edge of the circle and secure the thread with a couple of stitches on top of the knot-- you'll be pulling on it later and need it to be anchored. Stitch around the circle with wrong sides together until you get all the way around. For a lemon, I take a few tacking stitches in the center to resemble the bottom and use a round green circle for the top.

 

Cut a Circle and Stitch Around It for Round Fruit Ornaments

 

 

Completed Lemon with Stitching Gathered Tight at Top

 

For the strawberry, fold a half circle in half with right sides together and stitch up the side. Tack. Fold about 1/4 inch of the raw edge at the top, wrong sides together and tack the thread. Straight stitch around the semi-circle until you're all the way around. Turn the strawberry so the inside can be stuffed. 

 

Strawberry Requires Half a Circle Stitched Closed

 

 

Strawberry Christmas Ornament with Star Cap

I use felt for filling the fruit -- scraps, strips, small pieces left over. Once the fruit is stuffed, pull the thread to gather it tight at the top. Take a few stitches to secure it, then add a top piece. A cap for a strawberry or tomato looks like a star, or you can add a stem for an apple, or leaves.

 

Cap for Tomato, Strawberry Christmas Ornaments

 

 

Secure the top, then loop the thread two or three times to make a hanger for your fruit. Tack the hanger loops in place and cut the thread.

 

Your fruit Christmas ornaments don't have to look real. You can make fictional pieces and let the children imagine what fruit they represent. Children love magic, and may find that the best Christmas ornaments don't represent anything they've ever seen.

 

Start with a Fabric Circle and Stitch Around the Edge for Gathers

Complete a Fictional Fruit with Christmas Colors

 

We hope you get pleasure from crafts and creating safe and inexpensive Christmas ornaments, and that you have a wonderful Christmas season!

 

See you soon.

 

Linda

 

http://www.cajunc.com

Identifying Quilts by Era of Production

 

We're often asked about old quilts and textiles, and sometimes we're helpful in placing items into perspective by style and fabric.

 

Old Quilt with White Background

 

 

If you haven't worked with fabrics all your life or if you aren't as old as we are, you may not know some of the characteristics of the eras. Here are some tips that may help you identify when your quilt was made.

 

Nineteenth Century quilts are often made of wool and dark colors. Twentieth Century quilts are lighter colors and fabrics. Typically, colors during wartime are darker than in peace.

 

Hold the quilt to the light. Quilts were made with batting that had cotton seeds early in the 20th century, and holding a quilt up to the light shows what the batting looks like. If it has seeds and isn't consistently the same throughout the quilt, you may have an early 20th century quilt. The quilt above with the white background and the fan pattern shows cotton seeds when held to the light.

 

Feel the fabric. Quilts after about 1960 were often made of permanent press fabrics, after these fabrics were available. Dupont introduced nylon in 1938 and Dacron about 1950. Ruth Benerito, credited with developing permanent press fabrics, recently made the news upon her death at 97.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/08/business/ruth-benerito-cotton-chemist-of-permanent-press-renown-dies-at-97.html?_r=0

 

Quilts before the late 1950s used primarily cotton, but sometimes were made of linen or wool. Feed sack prints were common during the 1930s and 1940s, and these were coarse fabrics with small flowers, usually on white or off-white background. Quilts from the 1970s may be double knits fabrics, a heavy polyester that didn't wrinkle, but was heavy and not always comfortable. 

 

1950s Quilt with 40s and 50s fabrics

 

Look at the Style. Watercolor quilts weren't popular until about 1980 or so, so if you have one, you'll know that the style tells you that it's more recent than that. You can check online to see when a quilt pattern or design was developed. Some patterns have been around for more than a century, while other blocks are recent designs by quilting artisans.

Watercolor Quilt

 

Look at the colors. Each decade has a color scheme, although the colors weren't as obvious in some decades as others. Colors in the 1950s were teal, chartreuse, pink and gray together, and speckled. The 1960s transitioned from psychedelic to yellow and blue, and by the 1970s, we were into orange and green in large designs. Avocado, coppertone and harvest gold were colors of appliances, and that carried over into fabrics.

 

We saw popularity of soft colors in the 1980s, such as spring green, mauve and shades of purple and blue, and those colors became forest green and burgundy by the 1990s. We're back to a little brighter palette now, after a few years of natural colors, chili pepper red and steel.

 

Use your instinct. Some quilts just look old, and they may be. Others look new. Quilts may be made of old fabrics or old blocks in another decade. We've been working on some 50s blocks for several years, but the quilts, when completed, look new. In fact, a few of the blocks have a yellow poly-cotton fabric added.

These old blocks are from the 1950s, but yellow was added later

Study the quilt. Look at the thread used in addition to the color of thread. Imported quilts often use white thread with about 5 stitches to an inch. American quilters like smaller stitches closer together. Cotton covered polyester and nylon quilting thread are signs of a newer quilt than cotton twine. Check the binding and how it's made. Purchased binding has been available for more than 50 years, but many quilters make bias binding from fabrics from the decade of the quilt. The more you examine quilts, the more you'll see the differences in old and new.

 

See you soon!

 

Linda

cajunC

 

http://www.cajunc.com

 

Ribbon Crafts -- Make Your Own Crafting Tool

Flower Made with Cardboard Wrapper

 

 

 

Crafting sometimes requires innovation, and occasionally I need a tool I don't have available. A Scrap Wrapper is a plastic gadget like a ruler with a slit in the center that has room for your sewing machine presser foot. It makes a large fringe for cotton rugs, but I want to make tiny flowers that look like carnations for ribbon crafts, or smaller fringe. 

 

 

 

Carnation for Ribbon Embroidery

You can use a seam gauge for a ribbon wrapper. Slide the stop to one end and start wrapping the ribbon from one end to the other. Don't overlap and don't wrap tightly. Cut the end of the ribbon. Go to the sewing machine and stitch in the center opening of the seam gauge to the end. Pivot the gauge and stitch back to the starting point. Leave some thread to pull for gathers when you're done.

Wrap Silk Ribbon on the Seam Gauge

Silk Ribbon from Seam Gauge

 

Cut each side of the ribbon with scissors by sliding the sharp point under the ribbon even with the wrapped edge. Cut the ribbon on both sides and pull it through the seam gauge from the center. Now you have a ribbon that can be gathered into a carnation for ribbon embroidery. Pull the thread to make the gathers and roll the ribbon into a round. Use the excess thread to wrap the back tight to keep the flower shape.

 

Make Your Own Scrap Wrapper

Wrap Ribbon From End to End and Stitch in Center

 

 

You can also make your own scrap wrapper with cardboard. Here's the easy way: Cut two strips of cardboard about half an inch wide and 20 inches long. Cut two squares of cardboard about 2 inches square. Line the strips parallel to each other and place a square on each end. Staple the squares in place. Wrap ribbon (I used 3/4 inch ribbon) on the two strips. Don't wrap it tight or you won't be able to sew between the strips.

 

Ribbon Removed without Cutting Sides

Ribbon Cut on Sides Before Removing

Sew between the strips from one end to the other, pivot and return slightly to the side of the first row of stitching. (This makes it easier to gather.) Leave enough thread to pull for gathers. Cut the ribbon on each side of the strips and pull it out through the middle opening.

 

Alternatively, if you would like to have puffy ruffles that aren't cut, remove one square you stapled on the end of the cardboard wrapper and slide the stitched ribbon off the strips.

 

Pull the thread to gather the ruffle and use it for your crafts projects. This could make a garter for a wedding or an adornment for just about any fabric crafts project. You can also make flowers by cutting a fabric circle for backing. Starting in the center, stitch the ribbon in a continuous circle from small to larger.

 

Flower Made from Uncut Ribbon

 Happy crafting! 

Linda

http://www.cajunc.com

Silk Ribbon Embroidery on a Miniature Scale -- Jewelry and Ornaments

Silk Ribbon Embroidery on a small scale

 

Ribbon embroidery pins, pendants, bracelets or Christmas ornaments are creative crafts with fast results. Make your own design or purchase a book of small designs. You can make your miniature needlework item square, round or heart shaped. 

 

You'll need:

 

A small piece of fabric for the background

Embroidery floss

Needle

Silk ribbon in 4mm size and maybe 2mm size in colors you want to use

Cardboard for a template

Felt or your choice of backing for your completed piece

Pin back if you want to make a pin

 

 

 

I started with about a 3-inch circle, using a template cut from cardboard, and used black moire fabric for the background. I cut the moire to the 3 inch size, but started the embroidery about half to three-quarters of an inch from the edge all around. The design is worked without an embroidery hoop and without a pattern. If you want to use an embroidery hoop, stitch your little piece of fabric onto a larger one, and cut out the middle of the large piece of fabric where the stitching will be done.

Stem Stitch in embroidery floss is first

 

Leaves are Japanese ribbon stitch

Two-strand embroidery thread creates the circular stem with stem stitch (like a back stitch) and 4mm silk ribbon in pink, yellow and green are used for flowers and leaves.

Flower is lazy daisy stitch with French knot center

 

Stitches are Japanese ribbon stitch, lazy daisy and a French knot in the center of the large flower.

 

Once you complete the front of the item, cut another cardboard circle to use for stiffener. Make it about an inch smaller in diameter than the original circle. Cut a piece of felt the same size as the cardboard circle.

 

Sew around the edge of the fabric and place the cardboard on the back inside the stitching. Gather it all around and backstitch a couple of times to secure the gathers. (I used a color you could see, but you'll want to use a color that matches the background fabric.) Cut the thread.

 

Back with Cardboard Stiffener in Place

 

 

If you're making a piece of jewelry such as a pin or pendant, decide how you want to attach the pin. You can glue a metal purchased pinback to the cardboard, or punch it from front to back in the cardboard. A pendant can be hung with a purchased slide or you can use a piece of silk ribbon attached at the top before adding the felt back. A Christmas ornament can also hang with silk ribbon.

 

Secure the felt to the back with hand stitches along the edge or glue if you prefer. 

 

Completed Design is about 2 1/4 inches

 

Here's a book that may give you some ideas for miniature designs. It's 

American School of Needlework's Big Book of 101 Little Ribbon Embroidery Designs with designs suitable for jewelry or Christmas ornaments.

 

Other ideas: You can use a large button instead of cardboard, and attach the fabric to the button before you start the embroidery.