Left or Right?

The other day I sat down to do the blanket stitch on this flower, and I suddenly thought that I'd been doing it wrong up until now! I've always stitched blanket stitch from left to right, I guess because I saw it that way somewhere. But I'm right handed, and I've been finding that stitching is generally easier when I go from right to left. It was! It's a much more natural way for me to hold the needle.

Do you ever struggle with a stitch, only to turn it in a different direction and have it all fall into place? It was an interesting experience.

Anyway, this is the first motif from Month 4 of Rosalie Quinlan's Best Friends Forever.

I managed to get some purples back in the mix this time, and I added the lazy daisies to try to minimize the "sliced eggs" look of the ovals. I think that stitching them in green helped too.

I'm starting to think that Best Friends "Forever" may be prophetic on this project! Maybe after this month is completed I'll put it aside in favour of this project with the Flight Patterns fabric that I showed you earlier in the year. I have an immediate use for that project, but not for BFF, so I may re-prioritize. Despite my best intentions, I've got new projects sprouting out all over again, and my sewing area is getting chaotic. Time to clean it up and make some choices!

Shirtings vs. Blenders

or

Scrappy vs. Stained

Today's cautionary tale is not about something I did, but rather about a quilt I saw at a show here in Ontario a few years ago. I've been to shows from Burlington to Trenton and all points in between, so I'll be no more specific than that!

Walking around the show, I saw a great log cabin quilt a few rows away, and as I approached I could see that it was badly stained. "Oh dear," I thought, "I'm surprised she still put it in the show." It looked like the victim of an encounter with a pack of untrained puppies.

But when I got right up to it, I saw that it was not stained at all. The quiltmaker had sewn all the light parts of the quilt from strips of light coloured blenders, that from far away had indeed blended together into a mottled disaster.

Since then, I've paid attention to how quiltmakers can make a successful scrappy quilt with light coloured fabrics. I've found that the difference is to use shirtings rather than blenders.

Every quilt shop in Southern Ontario has a shelf full of light coloured blenders -- those white on white, white on cream, beige on white "background" fabrics. So our anonymous quiltmaker was likely dependent on the local supply. I have quite a few myself:

But when you look at a great, light coloured quilt in a book or magazine, these are not the fabrics they used. In the Summer 2014 issue of Primitive Quilts Catherine Hughes has a very satisfying quilt called "Shoofly Delight" that shows what I mean:

"Shoofly Delight" by Catherine Hughes, Primitive Quilts magazine Summer 2014

Hughes used shirtings, light coloured fabrics with simple stripes or prints in dark colours. The difference is that with the variety of prints, the eye can clearly see the edges of each piece, even though all the fabrics are light in value. So the quilt looks scrappy rather than blended and/or stained.

And, to finally make this post relevant to my current projects, shirtings were also used in the background of Barb Adams' "Trick or Treat," the applique quilt project that came up in my "quilt lottery" back in April:

"Trick or Treat" by Barb Adams, When the Cold Wind Blows 2008

When this project came up I thought I had all the fabric in my stash and I could start right away. But this shirtings vs. blenders issue put things on hold. I very nearly made the same mistake as that other quilter a few years ago! I needed more shirtings for the backgrounds if I was going to be happy with the result.

I tried to go back to a different applique project instead, but I couldn't let this one go. So, I started shopping online for some new fabric. A dangerous situation! And a very surprising result, which I will show next time!