Creating Christmas Cards!
I look forward to the month of December, because I love to plan for the Christmas presents (shopping), and what to give to each person. Hopefully we will be getting some snow soon, which will make the days a little lighter, as we now have less day light hours.
I do also love receiving beautiful Christmas cards from my friends, decorated with embroideries and lovely Christmas poems. This year I will make some of my own cards to send to my family and friends and I will share my ideas with you here. To sew your own Christmas cards can be fun, creative and easy. And it is a great way of using small scraps of fabric, felt, paper, buttons and ribbons.
My first Christmas Card
On the first card I embroidered a design on the inside. Since the design I used containe 3 angels, I cut out one of them by using the edit tab in HUSQVARNA VIKING® 4D™ Embroidery Extra. The embroidery design comes from the HUSQVARNA VIKING® Design Collection # 70, “Happy Season”. As I have a handwriting that is difficult to read, I did also add text using the same software module. You can cut the design using a pinking sheer scissor or a rotary cutter with wavy blade. Sew it on the card with a straight stitch or a zig zag. I used a metallic thread that I liked.
On the front page of this card I did use Tear-Away Stabiliser underneath the paper when sewing the text: Merry Christmas. I used the possibility to program one single stitch with a tie-off in the beginning and at the end of the single stitch. That way I did secure the ribbon on the front.
My second Christmas Card
How to create the Christmas Card with the Christmas Tree appliqué.
- Cut a Tear-away stabiliser as a template for the Christmas tree.
- Then cut out the Christmas tree in a green silk fabric.
- Use a narrow satin stitch 2mm, to sew the appliqué on the linen fabric, that is slightly bigger.
- Sew the linen fabric on to the card, using a zigzag ¼” from the edge.
- Pull the threads from the edges, to create the fringe look.
- Sew on felt to write “Merry Christmas” and sew it on the card with a straight stitch.
Here are even some more Christmas Cards that you can try!
And don't forget to check out the HUSQVARNA VIKING® Holiday website where you can find even more inspiration for some Christmas cards and a couple of free designs to download and a lot of other Christmas gift ideas. Click here to get into the Holiday spirit now!
I am sure you will come up with your own way of sewing Christmas Cards. Until next week, have some happy sewing!.
PS: If you have any questions regarding the topic of the week, please just send me an email: lena.kantis@vsmgroup.com (English only).
Lena Kantis - den 20 november 2009
Coming up...time to personalize for the Holidays!
What a fantastic weekend I have had, parties two day’s in a row. My husband had his 50th birthday. Friday night we had a surprise party for him. All his colleagues, almost 30 people were waiting in our house when he showed up from a trip.
What would have made it easier with all the glasses with drinks would be to create wineglass charms, as there were many who lost track of where they put their drinks. It would have been beautiful and at the same time we would have saved lot of dishes.
There are lot of holidays ahead, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year. Therefore I will make these wineglass charms starting now using HUSQVARNA VIKING® 4D™ Express Monogram Wizard. It will be easy to fit at least six of them in one hooping. I will decorate them with the initials of my relatives that will spend Christmas and New Year together with us in our house. To differentiate them more I will add different pearls and beads.
Of course there are much more possibilities with the HUSQVARNA VIKING® 4D™ Express Monogram Wizard. I have included a few more samples I have made below. 
Tip; One thing I did learn at a fair in London, England, was to cut a yard of a light metal thread, and make it into a small ball, by rolling it like you would make a snowball. It is also a beautiful decoration for the wineglass charms instead of using the beads!
Next week, we will start to make Christmas gifts and cards.
Until then, Happy Sewing!
PS: If you have any questions regarding the topic of the week, please just send me an email: lena.kantis@vsmgroup.com (English only).
Lena Kantis - den 12 november 2009
Create the Folklore look!
I was very happy the other day as I was organizing my sewing room in the basement of our house. I found a half-made sewing project in a paper bag that I did not have had time to finish last year. It is a skirt in medium weight wool, with two different matching fabrics. It is a lovely blue-green color (in Sweden we call this color Petrol), and the quality of the fabric is very easy and smooth to sew on.
Here is how I am planning to decorate this skirt:
I have the seams on the outside of the front and back pieces and I will make fringe of the seam allowance. It is very easy to sew the seams together with a straight stitch, wrong side to wrong side. To make the seam safer I also added a narrow three step zig-zag seam just outside the straight stitch. Finally, I pulled out the threads in the seam allowance, all the way down to the zig-zag seam.
The embroidery is chose to use on the skirt is the HUSQVARNA VIKING® Design Collection #210, “Handlook Needlework”. I have wanted to embroider these designs for a long time, but have not had a project to sew on. Here is a picture of the first embroidery on the skirt. For this skirt I used stronger stabilisers; one layer of “Cut-Away” plus one layer of “Tear-Away”. To embroider this design you should use the “30 weight cotton thread”, but I couldn’t find a nice color to match the blue-green color of the fabric so instead I used 2 threads of the “Sulky Rayon 40” in the same needle.
My colleague Ingela has sewn a magnificent skirt too. Look at this picture how nice it is! 
I’m glad I found this half-made project to sew on – maybe you also have something half-made which you should go back to and finish up today! Take a look in your wardrobe!
PS: If you have any questions regarding the topic of the week, please just send me an email: lena.kantis@vsmgroup.com (English only).
Lena Kantis - den 5 november 2009
Creating a nice gift – fast and easy!
This week, all children that are going to school are having autumn holidays. My youngest daughter Athina, wanted to spend some time on her holidays to create a little garment for her youngest cousin Cornelia's birthday. Cornelia will become 1 year old on Thursday. You can follow Athinas progress in the pictures below.She started off with choosing a pattern for a little baby tunic and then she drew the pattern. After that Athina and I went to buy a fabric that she liked. She picked a pink velour for the tunic. Athina then cut out the little tunic and she also chose to have a small embroidery design on the front. Athina selected Design Collection #74, Fuzzy Wuzzy Bears.
Athina was so happy when she had finished her little baby gift - now she just have to wait and see if Cornelia likes it as well!
PS: If you have any questions regarding the topic of the week, please just send me an email: lena.kantis@vsmgroup.com (English only).
Lena Kantis - den 28 oktober 2009
Majestic Bedcover!
One of my many ongoing projects is a bedcover that I am sewing in off-white satin, using the biggest embroidery hoop the HUSQVARNA VIKING® DESIGNER™ Majestic Hoop. The size is 360x350mm/ 14.2” x 13,8”. I started to create these blocks at a quilt show in Gothenburg a couple of months ago. It was attracting a lot of people to see what I was doing.
The Design Collection "Majestic Yarn quilting", #209 is what I selected for the embroideries. It is fabulous as it has got many possibilities and you can sew them with embroidery thread or sew the designs with the HUSQVARNA VIKING® Yarn Couching Feet set. The design collection also includes designs for the HUSQVARNA VIKING® Do All Quilters Hoop 150x150mm/ 6”x6”. What to choose is often the trickiest part!
I will use my new overlock machine, the HUSQVARNA VIKING® HUSKYLOCK™ s25, with the large extension table and the large sewing area to piece the blocks together. After calculations I found that I need 20 blocks. I also plan to add a border around the edges that I will create in a new software module; the HUSQVARNA VIKING® Quilt Design Creator.
Come back next week and let me show you!
PS: If you have any questions regarding the topic of the week, please just send me an email: lena.kantis@vsmgroup.com (English only).
Lena Kantis - den 23 oktober 2009
Play with Textures!
The new HUSQVARNA VIKING® Texture Hoop, (#920225096) is a fun and very out of the box sewing tool! It is perfect for a person like me as I like things to be unique and out of the ordinary- nothing boring for me!
This weekend I will be teaching how to use the HUSQVARNA VIKING® Texture Hoop at a dealer event. We are going to sew a mini bag (please see the image below/beside), and decorate the little bag with a Texture Hoop design. The design we will use is from the new HUSQVARNA VIKING® Design Collection 213, “Flowers and Ribbons”. If you would like to sew it yourself you can find the sewing instructions for the mini bag here.
But I also needed some accessories and yesterday I cut the pieces to the kit; fabrics, a stabiliser and a piece of organza. To create textures, I also brought the new Inspira Ribbon Kit, both in Bright colors and in Neutral colors along with yarn, ribbons and wool.
Several projects have been created at our office since we first started to work with the Texture Hoop. I have added a few of my favourites here, and I can assure that only your imagination can set the limits for what you can create.
There are several tips on how to use the HUSQVARNA VIKING® Texture Hoop.
Below you can find a few of them:
- Trace/transfer the design to the included template using a template marker, or print a copy of the design from the PDF and place the inner hoop directly on the copied design. Line up the inner hoop with the center lines which is number 8 both horizontally and vertically, and place the ribbons/yarns according to the lines of the printed design.
- Secure each ribbon/yarn with a clip. Then add the outer hoop, slide it under the fabric and stabiliser.
- If you add a lot of yarn, do also add a layer of water soluble stabiliser on top of the hooped fabric to prevent the presser foot for getting caught under the embellishments.
Until next week, Happy Sewing!
PS: If you have any questions regarding the topic of the week, please just send me an email: lena.kantis@vsmgroup.com (English only).
Lena Kantis - den 5 oktober 2009
I am”sew” inspired!
Thank you for all the positive feedback! I appreciate your comments. I have been asked to show a close up on the dress I showed you a few weeks ago. Below you can see a photo of the waistline embroidery.
This week, I went to a fabric trade show is Borås, Sweden. Borås is famous for all textile design, development and textile trading. It was interesting to see the trends of different qualities and colors. It was such a great inspiration and we found several interesting things that can be possible to use for new products and techniques.
When we got back I continued to sew on the overlock machine HUSQVARNA VIKING® HUSKYLOCK™ s25, since I wanted to finish the collar of my tunic from last week. One thing I discovered when I turned on the HUSKYLOCK™ s25 was that it does remember the last stitch I had selected. That is great!
Below you find a few of my best overlock tips:
- When you change the needle positions, lower the presser foot. It will give you more space.
- Make sure you bring the needles all the way up in the shaft when you change to cover stitch. That makes it much easier to see that the needles are all the way up because you can watch each one of them.
- If you have moved the needles between different positions, tighten the small needle screws so they will not fall out when you sew due to the vibrations. However do not tighten them too hard because that can damage the shafts so that it will not be possible to tighten the needles properly afterwards. So, tighten the screw after taken them out, but not too hard.
- Before you sew on the garment try it out on a scrap piece first. You might want to change the settings slightly.
Click here to find more overlock tips and tricks from the HUSKYLOCK™ family launch site.
We are several people here at the office that has been created similar tunics. In the photo you can see Karin, Kerstin and me.
Karin created her tunic without sleeves and added embroideries from the HUSQVARNA VIKING® Design Collection 165, “Venetian Embroideries”.
For the collar on my tunic, which I created as a big tube, I used a two-thread wide overlock stitch and I set the differential feed on 2. It gave me a fun shell-look on the edge! Finally, I added a big button with black pearls.
Next week I will be teaching at a dealer event in how to use the Texture Hoop, sew a beautiful design and make a small project out of it. So make sure to check back next week to see the photos.
Until then, Happy Sewing!
PS: If you have any questions regarding the topic of the week, please just send me an email: lena.kantis@vsmgroup.com (English only).
Lena Kantis - den 5 oktober 2009
Great news!
Out on a business trip.
I am part of several projects at my work at HUSQVARNA VIKING® and for one of those projects I had to go on a business trip this week. Of course this is one of the times when I’m panicking a bit about what to wear since I always feel that I don’t have enough fun (new) outfits. Because of this I went right ahead to create a few things before I left.
I started by creating an embroidery. A “luggage tag”, in a purple colour from an absolutely wonderful new embroidery collection called “Hoop, Sew, Go” (#215), which I absolutely love! I made the back side a bit different (as I have a very bad hand writing) by using the 4D embroidery software to write my name and address with the font category “Decorative” and the using font “Chance” 10-40 mm. To the left you can see the result!
To extend my trip wardrobe I also bought some new tops, that quick and easy can be personalized with embroideries and get a totally different look in just a few minutes. I used my HUSQVARNA VIKING® DESIGNER DIAMOND™ to sew a lot of beautiful embroideries while I packed my things needed for the trip. The embroidery collection is a new collection called “Precious Crouchet” (#217), and they are sewn on water soluble stabiliser. I tested two different water soluble stabilisers and found that “Inspira, Aqua Magic™” Dissolvable Stabilizer gave the best result. After I had washed the embroidered piece I placed it on the neckline of a new T-Shirt. To match the clothes I also made a bracelet using the designs number 13 and 23 from the embroidery collection.
The secret!
Last time I mentioned that I had some great news to share from within the HUSQVARNA VIKING® factory and now I am “sew” happy to be the first one to tell you about it. HUSQVARNA VIKING® is releasing a new line of overlock machines as we speak! I’m so excited as well as all my colleagues. The overlock machines have innovations that focus on ease of use and professional results. I love to use the new overlock machines, and I have since some time back used the new HUSQVARNA VIKING® HUSKYLOCK™ s15 and it’s so fast. It sews 1200 stitches per minute which you can never beat on a regular sewing machine! The result is really professional and neat. Everybody who ever sews should have an overlock machine. It is such a great complement to the regular sewing and/or embroidery machine. I would never ever want to be without one!
The new HUSQVARNA VIKING® overlock machines are the two new models HUSKYLOCK™ s21 and HUSKYLOCK™ s25. (The numbers are referring to how many stitches you can use on the different models.) There are many great features on the new HUSQVARNA VIKING® overlock machines and below is what I find especially attractive with the s25 model: The new Graphic Touch Display where you can see the stitch, in actual size, and in any kinds of adjustments before you sew. The Exclusive SEWING ADVISOR®. Simply enter the type of fabric you are sewing and the settings will be set automatically. The sewing advisor will tell you “everything you need to know to sew”; the best stitch length, differential feed, the thread tension for the chosen stitch, recommend needles and more to give you a perfect result. The HUSKYLOCK™ s21, is offering a great value for any sewer, because beside the 2-, 3- 4- and 5-thread stitches, it has got Coverstitch wide, narrow, triple and Chainstitch.
I look forward to finish my bed cover for my king size bed by using the new extension table that is coming with both HUSKYLOCK™ s21 and HUSKYLOCK™ s25 and I will definitely have use for the large sewing space! I also think both of the new machines have a wonderful soft and gentle sound. Don’t forget to visit your nearest dealer to try them out!
I have been sewing on overlock machines for a long time. I bought my first overlock machine in the 80s when I got my first child as I wanted to sew baby garments in knits. I bought several yards of navy striped jersey and made sweaters for me, my husband and my little baby. The biggest difference from back then compared to now is the animated threading guide which goes with the machines and can also be found on the HUSQVARNA VIKING® website. It is doing wonders to help! This is the easiest way of learning how to thread the machine and it gives you lots of answers on how to set and use the overlock. No more guesswork!
Tip of the day!
The fastest way to get a new trendy garment is to ask your friend, when she is showing up in a nice new sweater, if she would lend you the sweater she is wearing for five minutes. You put it on a pattern paper and draw the shapes of the design. Next step is to adjust the
size, by using the pattern you normally use to create a sweater, to fit at the shoulders and neckline. By using the pattern mentioned above you can match it to the shoulders and neckline.
This is how we used to do in the 80´s: We laid ourselves on top of the paper and created a pattern to use for a sweater or a cardigan. We sewed it on the overlock machine and then added the shoulder pads. Here is how it looked when I made the pattern - easy!
It took less than 15 minutes to sew it.
Next week I will tell you more about using overlock stitches to decorate a top I created on the new HUSKYLOCK™ s25. So make sure to be back next week to see it finished!
Lena Kantis - den 28 september 2009
"Shoot for the stars and you will at least reach for the moon!"
Here is a summary from the wedding last weekend:
We all enjoyed the most lovely late summer weather when we attended the wedding, no raincoats! I have taken some pictures that I will share with you. The new wedded couple and their daughters all looked amazing, and we all wish them a long wonderful life together and that they will live happy ever after!
I told you that my plan was to sew a second dress in bright orange silk, however,
I did not manage to finalise it, and I am still sewing on it. I selected the Design Card 198, “Candlewicking Creations”, unfortunaletly I did not manage to finish in time, because I had to take care of a lot of new projects, that was a bit more important, like helping my daughter with her move to Sundsvall, “the Mid Sweden University”. She was very happy to be able to attend a new programme starting this year in Criminology. She will study there for three years. Second of my children has left,
I miss her, but I am also very happy for her and of course very proud. Here is the detail of the dress. I will take a picture of the dress when it is finished, I promise!
How I love the changes of the seasons, we are now moving into fall. The days are becoming shorter and the temperature is getting a bit colder here in Sweden. The leaves on the trees are changing into red, orange and yellow. There is also more time to spend on sewing, as I do not need to drive the children to the lake for a swim, and the garden does not need any particular attention. So new season - new outfits!
I have started to plan what I want to sew for this coming season. I like to dress myself in layers, so I will sew some new tops, and cosy sweaters. I have fallen in love with the color purple, so I will try to find some new nice fabric in that color. (Of course I do have fabric in my stash that could be used as well, but I do not think it is purple.)
I will reveal a new HUSQVARNA VIKING® secret; I am going to sew on a new developed sewing machine to create my garments. When I sew I like to have a professional and perfect appearance of the outfits, and at the same time it should be a bit unique as well as getting it sewn very quickly. That is exactly what this new machine is perfect for. Next week I will be able to show you the new product line, I know you will fall in love with it too!
Lena Kantis - den 21 september 2009
Busy Sewing!
Hi everyone and welcome to my Sew Fun! blog.
I am “sew” happy to be able to share with you, a lot of sewing inspiration, tips and hints as well as provide an “inside” look at w
hat is going on in the factory at HUSQVARNA VIKING®. I´ll share updates and sneak peeks of our new products, and my personal opinion on the new exciting features of our products. You will be the first to know about items you won’t be able to live without! The blog will be updated weekly. And of course I will also share what I am sewing, quilting, and testing, as well as fun stories from my trips.
Right now and am working on a cocktail dress, or actually two dresses using the same Burda pattern number 7829. One is already finished (please see picture to the right). I have been using the HUSQVARNA VIKING® embroidery collection 185; “Lovely Lace on Tulle” to decorate the waistline piece. The second dress will be in bright orange, and I am to decide today what embroidery designs to use and what colors. The reason I am sewing a beautiful dress is that I have been invited to a wedding next Saturday, and I look forward to go, not only because both the bride and the groom has been working here in our company, but also because the bride has been sewing a lot for the wedding, Her own dress, and four dresses for the bridesmaids. The wedding colors are vanilla, pear, and strawberry. I will take lots of pictures and show next week, so please come back next week to see all pictures, and read more about the wedding! Let us hope the weather will be nice, as the party is going to be in the Garden after the ceremony at the church, otherwise you will find pictures of us, sitting in our raincoats.
There are many things going on right now back stage within the company. Next time I may be able to share some very exciting HUSQVARNA VIKING® news with you from inside. So don´t forget to check back later to be the first one to hear about it…
Happy sewing!
Lena Kantis - den 16 september 2009