Monday, January 01, 2007

Viking-Husqvarna Rose

Someone asked me what kind of sewing machine I have : Viking Husqvarna Rose.

This is a very nice machine that has served me well. But let me say that what I do does NOT require any special or expensive sewing machine. Most machines can be set up to do free-motion quilting and embroidery. Figure out how to drop your feed-dogs and get a spring-loaded foot, and you can do what I do!

All the projects below were done on my Viking Rose. The one exception is the bear at the very bottom, who was done on a Rikar (very sturdy, solid work-horse of a sewing machine).

I have recently acquired a few new gadgets :
Fabric Mover with Stitch Regulator
Viking Husqvarna Designer 1 (a hand-me-down from my Mom, who upgraded to a newer machine). I haven't taken it out of the box yet ...

Oliver is complete!


Here's the final Oliver portrait quilt.

You'll notice that it is not properly squared up. This was an intentional choice. I wanted to keep the sky "bigger" and not cut off the bubble on the right. These choices were also somewhat dictated by how much material I had for some of the background pieces--I just didn't have any more for some of these fabrics.

The "Little Blankie" at his knees was made of scraps from another blanket I had made for Oliver.

The Bubble Bottle - Detail :

The beads on the bottle are sewn on by hand (that only took 4 hours! I'm not a beader ...) The beads in the flowers are the iron-on Hot-Fix Swarofski (sp?) crystals. You can also see some of the thread-painting in the folds of his shirt here.

When I did cut this piece down to the trim size, my family and I experienced an unexpected grief. He's been on my design wall and growing for the past 2 years. It's a bit sad to see him get smaller. Sigh!