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