Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Snowberry, Part 1



In early January, while I was busy with my little Highlands Houses project, the 80th issue of Inspirations magazine finally arrived at my house. I'd begun to think it had been lost, because it must have been two months in transit.

I was immediately enamoured of Yvette Stanton's Snowberry biscornu, which uses a variety of traditional Mountmellick stitches on white jean fabric. I realized that I could adapt it to my current needs with supplies that I already had on hand, and I started it right away!

I wanted a general purpose pincushion to replace this poor chicken, which I bought to support Quilts of Valour at the Trenton quilt show a few years ago. Somehow I always feel bad about sticking needles in animal-shaped pincushions! But, he has been extremely helpful, because the fabric is loose enough to hold both embroidery and tapestry needles.

I didn't have any Mountmellick thread or white jean in my stash, but I did have some leftover pieces of 28 ct flax-coloured Cashel linen, and a ball of No. 8 perle cotton in ecru, which I thought might work instead. I stabilized the loose Cashel linen with a knitted polyester fusible interfacing, which has been working very well.

I like that my old chicken is fairly compact and doesn't take up a lot of space on my side table while I sew. That's prime real estate! So I reduced the Snowberry biscornu design on my photocopier from 4 3/4" down to exactly 4". While I was at it I changed the number of berries from five to three, to make the whole thing more symmetrical:


I drew my changes right onto the photocopy with a pencil, and then fiddled around erasing and re-drawing until I was happy with the layout. Then I re-drew the final outline with a Sharpie. Sharpie ink seeps through to the back and gives a clean outline to trace onto the fabric. No one will ever know that it is a mirror image of the original!

With the loose weave of the Cashel linen and the dark lines from the Sharpie, I didn't even need a light box to trace the pattern onto the fabric. I traced first with a pencil, and then again with the blue water-erasable pen to give a clear line. I hate it when the lines disappear while I'm stitching!


Then I jumped right in! The flowers in the first picture were pretty straightforward, stem stitch and padded satin stitch. The berries were a little different for me, though. Some of the French knots in the centres have eight wraps! I think they would look better in proper Mountmellick thread, which makes a smooth knot. But overall, I like the way the flax linen and ecru perle cotton look together:


At this point I had to stop, because the edges were fraying and my sewing machine was then in the shop. So I packed it away until recently. But now I'm making progress again. One set of leaves is outlined with Cable Plait Stitch, which is a bit of a stinker. I'll talk about that next time!

Sunday, June 15, 2014

Making Lists


I believe this image (from here) of Andy and Sam in Rookie Blue is from season two, but I like the way Andy looks like she is not quite sure if Sam is right -- in the scene, or for her at all. In last week's episode, now season five, her friend Traci asked if Andy and Sam were back together, and Andy replied that she was making lists. Lists of pros and cons, trying to make the list justify what her heart wants, which is Sam.

In a completely different context, I realized that I have been using lists in a similar way, to try to impose some left-brain order on the right-brain chaos that is my creative life. Just one day before this show I wrote a detailed "project plan" that would get all the quilts that are promised to others finished by the end of the year. In my corporate life developing new products and services I never missed a single deadline, and I was known for keeping my eye on the ball. Sometimes it's hard to understand why I cannot seem to meet a creative deadline to save my life. But recently I've been remembering that it was like this in school too. Problem sets -- on time. Essays -- consistently late, but usually worth the wait.

So, I give up.

Goodbye project plan, goodbye UFO lists (again). The heart wants what the heart wants. You'll be seeing lots of new projects over the next few weeks. Let's see what happens when I let my intuition drive for a while. :)

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Starting the Baskets


As I hinted last time, you can see that I went in a completely different direction on my new project, Trick or Treat, designed by Barb Adams. For now I will just be calling it my baskets quilt.

I started out looking online at reproduction shirtings, and somehow I ended up on Hawthorne Threads (my new favourite fabric website), looking at Heather Bailey's True Colors collection. I've had a green and grey colour scheme on my mind for over a year now, and this time it clicked. So I clicked too, and bought mostly this collection and a couple of other fabrics here and there to fill it in.


I know some of y'all are looking at this with doubt in your heart, wondering if the whole thing is going to be too busy for words. I feel that doubt too, but I also have a really good feeling about the project, so it will be interesting to see how it develops!

I do like how some of the baskets, like the top one, will be clearly outlined, while others, like the second one, will blend a little into the background. Because there is such strong repetition in the pattern, I think this will give an added dimension to the final result. Hopefully!


The original pattern had a diamond cut out in the body of the basket. The diamond would be lost in the large prints on my fabrics, so I left that out. The pattern also has the basket handle and body cut separately, but I joined them in one template to preserve the continuity of the fabric design as much as possible.

I thought about different applique techniques, and even cut out a bunch of freezer paper templates, but in the end I went with one template plastic template, and regular needleturn applique. Template plastic lets me position the template on the fabric to the best advantage.


I was hoping to stitch the project with cotton thread, but when I searched through all my different thread boxes, this Kimono 100wt silk thread was the only one in the right colour. So that's what I used, and it's completely invisible, so I think I am committed to it now. It is a bit of nuisance to work with, but, you can't argue with the result!

Previously I've stitched this silk thread with a #9 applique needle, but I found these longer #10 sharps from Clover, and they are working very well too. They are not as long as a milliner's needle, which I find awkward sometimes, but are still long enough to smooth out the seam allowances when needed. I'm sure I've said before how much I love Clover needles -- they are so sharp and smooth that you hardly feel them go through the fabric.

The whole queen-size quilt calls for 313 of these 5" blocks. I am already considering a large lap quilt instead, which would still be 179 blocks. I have enough fabric either way, so I'll see how it goes!

And, I'm linking up again with WIP Wednesday at The Needle and Thread Network.
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