Crochet, Embroidery, and Quilting

It is a beautiful Saturday night.  The older girls are outside playing with the neighborhood kids, the baby is asleep, the husband is grilling and me?  Well, I'm using this free time to pin, read my favorite new blogs, edit photos, and now to write a new post.  I could lie and say I'm sitting outside doing this but um, I'm not (I'm surrounded by windows though - does that count???)

I very much enjoy handstitching the binding on quilts but since I've been exploring and practicing machine stitching the binding, I haven't had many tv watching projects.  For the majority of my crafting years (it has been about 4 years since I first picked up a pair of knitting needles which I quickly turned in for a crochet hook), sitting on the couch in the evening with my hands busy crocheting, embroidering, needlepointing (don't think that is a word!), etc has been my normal.  But since I've lately been (overly) obsessed with quilting (and other sewing machine related projects), I've been thinking I should plan some projects that combine two or more.

Since I crocheted A LOT of hats this fall and winter, I had lots of little yarn bits left over but as with fabric scraps, I didn't want to just toss them.  Instead I used them to make lots and lots of little circles and flowers.  I used several of those circles and flowers to make the crochet mobile that I blogged about here.  I also used some to make pillows.  

I've made three of these crochet/fabric pillow and used two different techniques.  For this one, I cut a square of fabric and basted it to a piece of batting around the edges.  Using a sharp needle with an eye big enough for the yarn, I stitched the circles and flowers to it.  It was a little hard on my hands so I spaced this out over a few nights.  And then I just sewed on the back with an envelope closure.  For my second pillow, I used an embroidery hoop so that I could just sew them on to a piece of fabric and not the batting - it worked well for the first batch of flowers but when I had to move the hoop, it was hard to close it over the flowers I had already attached.  I then added the batting when I added the pillow back (I like adding batting to my pillow fronts - I feel it makes the pillow cover hold it shape better and not get too floppy.)  I'm not sure which technique I prefer - guess I'll have to make more - any suggestions?

As for embroidery, I made a set of these little houses recently - basically to practice the different flower styles.  This was all embroidered by hand but I wonder if free motion sketching on the machine would give a similar, but more interesting, look for the house and bunting and then I would use my tv time to hand embroider the flowers. 

I like these little houses as wall hangings but I think I'm going to plan a quilting project soon that involves embroidery - either a freehand design on a solid piece of fabric or using embroidery to embellish a printed fabric - or maybe both?!?

Linking to Annemarie's Crochet Blog, Serenity Now, and DIY Home Sweet Home.