Busy Morning

This morning I finished the final bits of stitching for Charlotte. Her buttons are done with hot fix nailheads, and I also used them for the wheels on her cart and the clasp on her purse. Isn't she looking mah-velous? A flashy dresser, for sure.

My trusty side kick was right there with me as I selected the hot fix nailheads. He has nerves of steel, let me tell you. Of course, when I walked away from here, he dragged his tail over the little container holding the rest of them and knocked it over. Just being helpful, I'm sure.

 Starting March 1st, I'll be working on Millicent. If you're stitching along with me, however, please feel free to stitch whichever of the bag ladies you like. We're playing fast and loose with the rules here. (Rules? There are rules? There are no rules in sewing.)

But let's back up to yesterday when I peeked into the oven to watch the brioche baking. Ahhhhhhhhh.

When the timer went off, I had three beautiful loaves.

And the real object of my desire, French toast for breakfast this morning. Or...if you prefer, pain perdu (be sure to say that with a snotty French accent).

It only takes half a loaf to make French toast for the two of us, and so there's plenty for future French toast mornings. Life is good.

With Charlotte finished, it was time to make up the next block for the Summer Holiday quilt. As I mentioned yesterday, Road Trip is up. It's actual name is "On the Road," but I like my name better. 

After I whined and complained so much about having to embroider through applique and moaned about my aching hand, my friend Vicki Welch  from Field Trips in Fiber sent me a sample of Mistyfuse. I had the sample packet sitting right on top in the box to remind me.

Sorry for the blur in that image, but the description on the left says that it has "no added adhesives to gum up your needles and it won't change the hand of your fabric." Okay, so I'm going to give this a try. I'm accustomed to using Heat 'n Bond Lite, which has a paper backing. Mistyfuse is more akin to Angelina fibers. There is no right or wrong side, and it looks kind of spider webby.

So the first question was how to transfer the applique templates to the fabric, and freezer paper was the obvious answer. Since the Mistyfuse will be applied to the wrong side of the fabric, that means the freezer paper templates need to be on the right side. And that means the templates should NOT be reversed as they would be if I were using Heat 'n Bond.

So I traced those out and then pressed them to the right side of the fabric. If you're not familiar with using freezer paper for this purpose, then you need to know that the shiny (waxy) side goes against the fabric, and it will adhere with ironing, and yet pull free without leaving any residue behind. (Absolutely amazing stuff, if you ask me.)

So I applied the freezer paper to my chosen fabrics and then cut them smaller, but right away I realized I'd made a mistake. You need to use a teflon pressing sheet for this either way, but my mistake was in cutting the pieces so small. That left the Mistyfuse exposed where it would stick to the iron if I pressed it down.

Not to worry, I just bent the pressing sheet over and ironed over the top of it.

It did stick to the pressing sheet, but I was able to easily scratch and peel it up with my fingers. No harm done. In the future, I'd leave my fabrics a little larger and avoid this problem altogether.

On the positive side, the appliques all came up in one piece.

So you can see now that there is Mistyfuse on the wrong side of the applique template.

All I needed to do then was to fuse it to my prepared background. This one is a little tricky because some of the embroidery overlaps the applique. You can't see it in this image, but the cat's paws are overlapping the edge of the window, as is the dog's dog tag, and the luggage tag on the suitcase sitting on top of the car.

And if you have sharp eyes, you might have noticed that the left fender was applied upside-down in that image above. Doh! Not to worry, however. I was able to peel it up and then reposition it in the image below. Surprisingly, I ran the iron over it again, and it stuck!

So then I top-stitched over all the applique. For this piece, I'm using smoky monofilament to stitch down all of the applique.

Now it's hooped up and ready to go. I'll start on this tomorrow morning.

So, I'll have to get back to you on whether it makes embroidering through applique any easier, but if you're interested in this product, here's the information from the package:

And thank you so much, Vicki! Nice to be able to give this a try without having to buy a whole large piece of it. So far, so good!

Would it surprise you to know that Mike and I have been spending our evenings sitting in the camper? Yesterday, we hung the two little homey items I contributed to our little home on wheels. These came out of the old camper. We hung the little camper stitchery on the wall above the theater seating.

Remember this one?

And the little "Happy Trails" sign is above the future kitty window.

Sue gave this to me. It's the invitation to her husband's retirement party. I thought it was so cute, I put it in a frame, and it lives in the camper now.

We also hung some hooks and did a little bit of organizing yesterday. Then we sat down we looked at one another and said, almost in unison, "Let's Go!" We already had a trip planned for mid-March, but Mike has a three day weekend coming up. We decided to see if we could get reservations somewhere, and found a spot at Nehalem Bay State Park on the Oregon coast. Cool! Nehalem Bay has special significance because it was our first camping trip after we'd been married several years. Erik was just a baby then, and we used a borrowed tent. We had so much fun that we vowed to purchase our own camping equipment, and we became die-hard tent campers. Until we got too old. And then...die-hard RV campers. The dying is less hard in an RV. So, the new camper will have its maiden voyage next weekend...a full month sooner than expected. Yay!

So it's been a busy couple of days, and I've barely done any sewing beyond hand sewing. Today for sure I'm going to get a start on the new little wall-hanging for the camper. Maybe I'll even get it finished for the trip this coming weekend.