Sunday, July 22, 2012

Clarissa Cow

You saw yesterday that Sophie had a nice quilt on her back.  Clarissa's blanket also features a great quilt block:


I think the colours stand out beautifully against her black and white cowhide!


Quilt blocks are featured throughout these designs, in the blankets and also in the upper corners, so sewing them into a quilted banner seems like a natural evolution.  My first plan was to put a solid fabric border around them, with just enough quilting to hold it all together.  Then last summer both my quilt guilds were sending out reminders for us to submit our quilts for their shows in the fall.  Wouldn't it be nice, I thought, to put some fancy pieced borders on these cross stitches (the last one, Clarissa here, was almost done), and enter them into the show(s)?  Well, I missed the entry deadline, and it is probably just as well, because the shows are long over and I am still not done!

That "fancy pieced border" turned out to be quite a sticking point.  Once I had the idea I couldn't give it up and go back to the original simple plan.  I came up with the idea to put 1" x 2" Flying Geese around the sides almost right away, and that part has stuck.  But the big question has been what to do in the corners.  The plan got more and more elaborate!  First I thought about tiny pinwheels.  Then I was obsessed with daisies.  Maybe I could design a little cross stitch daisy for the point at the end?  What about thread painting it?  Maybe I could fussy cut some daisy fabric?  At one point I thought I would do stumpwork daisies in the corners.  Thank goodness I backed away from that!

Finally in April I went back and pulled out the actual stitcheries again for inspiration.  This seems more reasonable:


Stay tuned!

Previous Posts:

Percy Pig

Sophie Sheep

4 comments:

  1. Wow, you sure are making headway with these. Very nice. Don't forget to post a photo of the finished project.

    I know what you mean about getting things done for a guild quilt show. Ours is coming up in March and I have been madly trying to finish up ancient UFOs, but of course, I am constantly getting sidetracked with all sorts of other interesting things.

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  2. "Finished project," lol. It's been quite a while since I've had one of those!

    Thanks, though, Mary Ellen. You still have a while to finish one or two things by next March!

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  3. I've been distracted from stitching blogs for a couple of weeks and am very impressed with your progress. I do like Clarissa, but I think Sophie is my favourite.

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  4. Thanks, Jillian. I think Percy is probably my favourite. I love his blanket!

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I'm told Blogger has been bouncing some comments, so if it happens to you I'm sorry! But the settings look right so I can't explain it. In any case, thanks for reading!

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