Teaching Tuesday - bunch of flowers!

In September Lucy Goffin came to speak to our Guild. At the time, I was planning what to teach this term - hardly surprising then that this should happen!
  

Morag

Jill

Libby

also Libby

Sue

Carole H

Christine (work in progress)

Vix (work in progress)

Meg (work in progress)

Judith (work in progress)

Maureen (this is work in progress - it is now finished, but I forgot the photo!)

How did we do it? First, choose four or five fabrics for the background; Bondaweb them to calico (overlap them slightly)

Lyndsay (work in progress)

Start arranging flowers and leaves; don't worry about a vase for now.

Maggie (work in progress)

(you'd never guess that Maggie used my own stash of fabrics here? I just LOVE how this is totally different to what I did with the same fabrics!)

 Pin or hope for the best and then go for it, stitch them down - free machining - in swooping lines, starting from where the vase will be eventually! Use a cocktail stick to hold things in place while you stitch, not your fingers...

Carole B (work in progress)

Continue with the swooping lines to hold everything down, but don't knock the texture back too much. You can add further layers of petals and flowers on top, and keep it loose and open.

Sheila (work in progress)

 Morag used thread daisies on her finished piece, so we also had an impromptu thread-daisy lesson for the uninitiated!

If you want to learn how to make them too, get some calico nice and tight in a hoop, and free-machine some circles

Stitch around twice; cut out your circles (keep the fabric in the hoop).

Start stitching (free machining still) in the calico somewhere, then take a deep breath and go off the edge and across your empty circle - remember - it is just a sewing machine - it doesn't "know" there isn't any fabric there...

Reach the other side, take a few stitches around and breathe, then go back across.

Cross over in the middle but don't obsess about crossing your lines perfectly. Continue to build up a mass of threads

(NB When I do the first few lines, stitching across space, I find that my machine is "happier" when I push the hoop away from me (i.e. stitching towards me) rather than when I pull the hoop towards me (stitching away from me) - so I rotate the hoop to stitch back across, rather than push it back and forth. I do this until it gets a bit busy in the centre of the daisy, then I don't worry so much)

So now your daisies can be cut free!

and the holes can be re-used to make more daisies - enjoy!