LMP+QG november challenge: bird ornaments

Each month, my friend Kait and I are making a project from the book, Last-Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts ("LMP+QG" for short). You can see previous projects here.

After taking off the month of October (our trip to Sewing Summit kept us busy!), Kait and I jumped back into the LMP+QG challenge last month with bird ornaments.

I opted to make two birds, using a vintage floral print from my mom's fabric stash paired with white.

The birds were a bit finicky to make (and these were actually my second attempt at the pattern; the first attempt was gnawed on by our dog), and I found that the pattern worked best when made from two fabrics that contrasted really well with one another.

Coming up next: Quilted Coasters

embroidery project: vintage birds

So in addition to the doily that I made during an embroidery class at the Stitch Lab earlier this year, I also worked on this piece, which I finally got around to framing last week. After falling in love with this vintage bird embroidery I found on Flickr, I decided to use it with a new-to-me image transfer technique: printable fabric. 

I printed the image out onto printable silk, removed the paper backing, and ironed it to a navy blue cotton. I then stitched over the image's lines using a lovely greenish gold floss, passing the needle through both the silk and the cotton.

I love the final image and had a lot of fun experimenting with stitches. If I were to do it again though, I would try another transfer technique. I would have loved to have seen the floss directly against the navy background; I think the color would have really popped. The printable silk is better suited for full-color images, like photographs, which could be beautifully embellished with different stitches. Have you ever tried stitching on printable fabric? What did you think?