Housekeeping

I'm claiming my blog on Bloglovin, at last:

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

I've had the Bloglovin button for followers in my sidebar for about a year, but I'm finally making the switch myself to use it as my main blog reader instead of the Blogger dashboard. The dashboard reader has been very unreliable lately, some posts have been late or missing. And the Bloglovin reader is very clean and easy to use, with nice large photos (the most important part!).

Otherwise, it's been a steady stream of birthdays and holidays all spring, plus several trips to the garden centre, so I haven't done much sewing lately.

And, I finally got rid of my guild's historic archives, which were stored in my basement for the past two years. Now, though, I have no more excuses to avoid cleaning out a lot of my own old stuff, so I hope to do that in stages over the summer as well.

On a side note, one interesting offshoot of my effort to use more purple in my projects is that I've become obsessed with purple flowers this spring! These Johnny Jump Ups, or small pansies, seed themselves between our patio stones every year:

They look a little worn, but the colours are inspiring!

Back to stitching soon! :D

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!

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. :)