Thank you for joining me for another Friday Flashback. Sorry for my lack of posting last week, the time got away from me. However this week, I am bringing you one of my favourite collections to look back on. Give a Hoot.
Give a Hoot was born at the end of 2010. The girls were in preschool a few days a week, Cameron was in Kinder, and for the first time in 6 years, I had a little bit of freedom (between the hours of 9 and 3).
The owl craze was just taking off, and I really wanted to do a set of designs with Owls as the focus. I had a lot of success with applique, and I love that applique is quick for most people to achieve, and so the Give a Hoot collection was born.
I love the applique stitch that I create. As well as being just a little wider than the standard, it has a triple stitch edge, giving the applique a totally finished look. I am not a fan of applique with a really wide satin stitch, because I like to create a more precise look, and focus on creating great trimming, than covering all of my errors with a massive, thick stitch.
There are 10 owls in the Give a Hoot collection, and all of them have their own special characteristics, making them great for a myriad of different projects.
The first thing I created was t-shirts for the girls (every t-shirt they wore in those days was a design sample). They loved the owls (based on a tv show at the time), and enjoyed wearing the t-shirts so much, that I made them pillow cases for their rooms, and finally, a great wall hanging/lap rug/baby quilt.
When I created the quilt for this collection, I wanted to mix it up a little. So I started searching for different ideas, and came up with the idea of mixing painting and embroidery. Now unfortunately, I have no artistic talent, so I went for a “naive” look to my tree. To try something else new, I also used waffle weave fabric. Now if any of you have attempted embroidery with waffle weave fabric, you know it can be troublesome. I solved the problem here, by embroidering on regular fabric, and then trimming carefully away, before appliquing onto the tree with invisible thread.
Initially when I created this collection, we gave away the first design in this collection as a freebie. You can access this design HERE. As a thank you to all of our loyal customers, for the next week we are also offering a second Give A Hoot design as a free download. Simply click HERE to collect your copy.
Thank you for taking this trip down memory lane with me, I hope you have enjoyed looking at this collection, and that it has inspired you to try some of these amazing designs.
Until next time, have a Stitchin’ Day. Julie
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