Deconstruction

This is an old UFO that I started in 2010. Recently I've been tossing around ways to rework it, so I dug it out again today. It had a variety of problems:

• The fabric wasn't washed
• The HSTs were not cut accurately
• The design didn't use its feature fabric to the best advantage. These blocks were so bold, they drowned out the border print.

Because the HSTs were inaccurate, the blocks were a bit of a mess too. The red one is not too bad, but you can see the yellow one is worse:

So, I have a new design, and my plan is to take these 8" blocks apart down to their square units, wash them all in lingerie bags in the machine, and then square them up to make 6" blocks and re-use them. Fortunately, there are not that many finished blocks to deconstruct.

The seam ripper is not usually my friend, but this time I am enjoying it because I am interested to see how my plan will turn out.

Think it will work? I'll let you know!

Sweet Hearts Update

Happy Valentine's Day!

It seems appropriate to show how far along I am with the Sweet Hearts redwork designs that I first showed last Valentine's Day. Not far at all! But at least one is done:

Adding the loop knot to my repertoire was a big help, but I was still struggling with these for a long time. I used a ceramic pencil to trace the designs, and it rubbed off quickly, so I had to guess where to stitch half the time.

Finally last fall I saw that Pigma Microns come in red, so I bought one in the smallest size, 005. Pigma Microns are permanent, archival quality pens, and I found that the 005 makes a very fine line:

Now these are finally easy to stitch! I sincerely hope that they will be done before next Valentine's Day!

But honestly, I am not sure that there is a lot more redwork in my future once these are done. Even though I love things that are red and white, I have been finding it hard to warm to this technique. We'll see how I feel when they're all done. There will be nine in all, so lots of time to change my mind...