New Direction

I apologize for the radio silence that's been going on here for a while now.  Recently I've been doing a lot more thinking than sewing!  And a bit of experimenting:

As I mentioned a while ago, I was very inspired by Sandy Lawrence's fusible appliqued and machine embroidered quilt.  I particularly liked the way the thread was a design feature of the quilt.  And I really loved the way she used more than one colour on the edges of the appliques.

I, however, do not have an embroidery machine, or even many decorative stitches.  But I did think that with careful sewing I would still be able to get some interesting multicolour effects.  You can see that I had mixed success with that!  There are some good bits, but there is no room for error.  This is all 50 wt thread, and my plan was to use 30 wt for the "blanket" stitches so they would show up more.  But it turned out that my local quilt store was closed for the Creativ Festival the day I went to buy the 30 wt thread.  So I had more time to think!

The other thing I've been investigating is quilting techniques for both machine and hand.  I came across this website where she hand quilts big stitches with pretty perle cotton thread.  I've seen this before, but this time, with Sedona Star on my mind, the whole thing instantly jelled into a plan.  I can do both the seam treatments AND the quilting with some nice colourful perle cottons!  My sewing machine does a decent satin stitch, so I will start by satin stitching all the appliques, and then embellish them by hand.  It will also allow me to throw in a little embroidery here and there within the shapes as well.

I am VERY excited about this plan!  I can finally see how the whole thing is going to come together.  And I am pretty sure this will be a unique approach!  Right now I am waiting for my threads to arrive, but there is plenty of piecing to do in the meantime.  Happy sewing!

Sedona Star Month 3

No, I haven't fixed my wobbly Month 4 ring from last week yet.  I decided it would be better to regroup on something easier, and then go back to it.  So, I've had a very satisfying day doing my first ring from Month 3:

I also put together all my Month 2 templates, so they are ready for paper piecing too.  A couple of weeks ago I said I was going to applique the Month 2 points.  But, when I pulled out my paper-pieced practice block I still really liked it.  With the fusible applique my background fabric would show through.  Plus, all these sunflower blocks are paper pieced, so it will be more consistent to paper piece the points in Month 2 as well.  So, that's what I'll do!


Related posts:

Sedona Star Month 4

Designing the sunflower blocks

Month 4 Disaster!

I definitely should have stayed in bed this morning.  But instead, I spent the morning merrily working on the last ring for Sedona Star Month 4, congratulating myself the whole time because I felt I had really mastered it.  I got it all together and this was the result:

The first two were perfect!  What happened with this one?

I checked my seams again with pins at the corners, and found that even though I was right on the lines, several of the corners were off by about 1/16".  And because they were always off in the same direction, it added up.  Overall, the size of the circle is 9.75" instead of 10".  And you can see how wobbly it is.

So for the rest of the afternoon it looks like my seam ripper will be busy.  Without fail this month, every time I let my mind wander or I get cocky, I make a mistake.  It really requires complete focus.

Oh, well, it is fixable. 

Plus, halfway through the morning, a heavy painting spontaneously fell off a shelf and broke my beloved Enso meditation timer/alarm clock.  So that's going to be expensive to replace.

What a day!