Tag: inspiration

Charity sewalong: June 2018

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Magic Moments – Grandies

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Grandies was born to put a smile on the faces of a group of people often forgotten by society. This program reaches across Australia, focusing on the elderly, the grandmas and grandpas who may either be at home alone or in hostels or nursing homes with no family nearby to support them. Their teams of volunteers take time out of their busy schedules to give time back to these Grand Oldies (Grandies) to make them feel cared for, honoured and valued as important members of our community.

Sewalong brief

We would like to support Grandies by creating knit beanies and mittens, which will provide comfort and warmth this winter to a number of elderly men and women Australia-wide.

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If you would like to get involved simply download the free sewing patterns below.

Add some embroidery

If you have an embroidery machine, why not embroider these mittens or beanies with the Magic Moments logo to help support the Grandies Charity.

Or feel free to decorate these with an embroidery design of your choice.

SENDING IN YOUR DONATIONS

Send your completed projects to Magic Moments—Grandies. Be sure to include your name, postal address and contact details with your donation.

Postal address: 228 Forest Acres Drive, Lake Macdonald Qld 4563

OR

Drop your projects into your local Echidna store.

HOW LONG DO I HAVE TO CREATE THE PROJECT?

The Magic Moments—Grandies sewalong will run from 1–30 June 2018.

PRIZES

We’ll be giving away a number of prizes throughout in the year. To enter, simply take a photo of your finished project this month and post it to our Echidna Sewing facebook community!

THINGS TO REMEMBER

Sewalongs are a great way to get inspired by what everyone creates, while giving to a worthy cause. If you’re new to sewing and embroidery this is a great chance to get involved and have fun no matter what the outcome. Any excuse to put your sewing and embroidery machines to good use is a great one.

SEWALONG BADGES

If you have your own sewing/embroidery blog you can save the following badges and post it on your blog entry, linking back to this page.

MORE INFORMATION

Create a ‘shabby chic’ apron

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This project will teach you how to decorate an apron using lace, fabric, your machine decorative stitches and applique techniques.

To create this project you can use any style sewing machine. I have used a Brother NV110 sewing machine.

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What you will need

Apron

You can sew your own basic apron using the pattern from our May Charity Sewalong. I have purchased this apron from a Daiso Japanese store for only $2.80. You may also be able to find aprons like this from $2 stores across Australia.

Materials

  • Download the Applique Shape Patterns (PDF, 400KB)
  • Hot Melt Web for the applique
  • Range of matching fat quarters for the applique
  • Lace style 1 – 2 x width (plus 2 inches) of the bottom of your apron and 1 x the top width (plus 2 inches).
  • Lace style 2 – 1 x width (plus 2 inches) of the top of your apron and 1 x the width of the pocket (plus 2 inches)
  • Lace style 3 – 1 x width of your pocket (plus 2 inches)
  • Fabric – 6 inches x (2 x width (plus 2 inches) of the bottom of your apron and 1 x the top width (plus 2 inches))

How to create your apron

First you need to get together all of your fabric, lace and applique pieces. Start cutting out your applique shapes from the fat quarters. You can choose any colours for these applique shapes but I would suggest you choose a white fabric for the circle and then style your cupcake shapes differently.

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Create simple applique using Embrilliance software

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In this project you’ll learn how to create a simple star applique design using Embrilliance StitchArtist software then apply it onto a garment. This project is perfect for 4″ x 4″ (100mm x 100mm) embroidery hoops, using machines like the Brother NV180 sewing & embroidery machine.

applique-jacket
We’ve used BurdaStyle Vintage Nina Jacket sewing pattern to create a jacket using sweatshirt material

Creating the applique design

  1. Open Embrilliance and select the hoop size for your machine. This design will only be small, therefore you can select the 4″ x 4″ (100mm x 100mm) hoop.
  2. Hit the Program Preference icon and select your hoop size from the preferences.Preferences.jpg Continue reading →

Embroidering on Problematic Fabrics

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by Leanne Church

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Project Description

This project involves creating the Echidna Sewalong Dog Jacket and then applying the Lindee Goodall and Animal Welfare League embroidery designs onto it. As the material used was fur and heavily patterned, I have created an instructional tutorial to show you how to create a background for your embroidery design to make things a little easier.

The project itself was very easy and recommended for beginner sewers. The embroidery designs by Lindee Goodall were also easy to follow with clear, step-by-step instructions.

How I Created This Project

I have used fur for the fabric and a stretch lining, which can be a very problematic combination. Therefore, I wanted to share with you some tips and tricks that I discovered along the way to deal with this type of fabric and pattern choice.

To start with, I marked out the pattern on the fur fabric on the right side with a sharpie pen. I wouldn’t normally do this on a garment but for this occasion it was much easier to see and since it was a pet project, I figured I could get away with it.

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Girl’s Craftsy Dress with John Deer Flowers

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by Leanne Church

Description: Create this cute little Abby’s Sweet V-Neck Crafsty Dress and apply your own embroidery design, or use the one included in this project.
Embroidery Design: This design is from the John Deer Ultimate Ladybug collection called Stylized Flowers in a Corner, which was edited using Embrilliance Enthusiast or higher.
Pattern: Abby’s Sweet V-Neck Crafsty Dress (Free when you sign up to Craftsy)
Skill Level: Intermediate

Photo

Watch the How To Video!

Leanne explains how to edit the John Deer embroidery design to suit this free Craftsy dress. Using the embroidery template she then shows you how to place it onto the dress and finish the project off with some embellishments.

Fashion and Fabric Tour of New York

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by Leanne Church

In May 2017, I travelled to the USA where I was lucky enough to start my trip as a guest teacher at Virginia Beach for Lisa Shaw of Embrilliance. It was here that I presented my recent trunk show of projects which I created using the ScanNCut CM900 and the Embrilliance software suite.

Sewing Guild of America

The second highlight of my trip was a Fashion and Fabric Tour of New York which I attending with the American Sewing Guild. I had been planning this trip since 2013 so I am very excited to share my experience with you.

This tour was hosted by Marsha McClintock and Marla Kazell who are very well-known garment teachers in the USA.

I stayed in the heart of Manhattan, which was the perfect location as it was within ten blocks of most attractions. However, you still end up walking a lot, so good shoes are essential! I met up with eighteen lovely ladies from all around the America, and I was the only one from outside of the U.S.

I feel lucky to have been part of this tour as I was able to access a number of incredible places that I may not have been able to if I was travelling alone.

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Cabin Fever Quilt Block

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Inspired by the latest Echidna Sewalong for the Royal Flying Doctor Service, we have designed an aviation themed quilt block which can be used for a number of projects including pillows, mug rugs, quilts, table place mats, runners and much more! The quilt block design has been created from Lindee Goodall’s Cabin Fever Quilt Block project, which you can purchase for $39.95 (Platinum $35.95).

Cabin Fever by Lindee Goodall

This project requires piecing in-the-hoop (also known as pattern piecing) to create a finished block size of 5.5 inches (140mm x 140mm). The project contains 20 embroidery designs and an instructional pdf which includes full-size templates, patterns, colour sequences and step-by-step illustrations.

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This collection contains designs with the following minimum sewing field requirements: 1 for 130 x 180mm, 9 for 140 x 200mm, 15 up to 200 x 300 max.

Purchase Cabin Fever by Lindee Goodall – Price $39.95 (Platinum $35.95)

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