Page Progress

With lots going on in the background, a lot of things have come together at the same time and have been added to the ledger.

Based on the embroidery transfer, I drew and stitched a design onto silk, but it didn't stay like this,

It was used to fill in the cutouts on this piece of silk and an appliqued centre.

This was mounted in card, and forms a flap.

This is the page now, with it's fabric page and card flap.  I can't believe how much came from just one transfer.

Next it was time to turn to the peacock feathers.  The centre eyes are filled with french knots,

so a plain page has some textural interest.  This page isn't yet finished, but I like the idea of adding to it over a period of time.

Fabric swatches have now been added to the paisley page.

The tissue paper painting has been mounted in card and attached, so that's another piece safely inserted.  Now, I have lots of annotations and info to do and add to the pages.  I'm hoping to do that this week, and get them added to the appropriate pages.

End of Embroider, Embellish, Create

I can honestly say, illness aside, the last seven weeks have been the most enjoyable for some time.  I have learned so much and achieved something I didn't think possible, all thanks to a good teacher.

This is the cloth as a whole.  The backing arrived while I was in bed Thursday, but I finally was able to spend the time to put it together, with the final embellishments yesterday.  I certainly hadn't intended it to be this big when I started.

I put a row of puffs along the bottom edge

You need to rotate this clockwise in you mind, blogger won't play properly this morning.  This is along the bottom edge, with more puffs going up the side and a small cluster of knots on the right

There's another puff alongside the muslin "bump"

This is the right edge, a row of prairie points.  They only go along this section, not top to bottom

On the right side, just three points, and three more puffs along the top section

 And now some of my favourite bits

The heavily embellished hanky

The cut work section

Again this should be rotated clockwise.  I love the applique and the little "pies"

More pockets with my special things

 Hidden delights

And the embellished "bump" with lots of loose muslin which I hope will get more raggedy with age.

This has been an exciting journey, and although I shall be pleased to catch up on some other things, I will definitely do some more of this.  A very big thank you to Karen for the opportunity, and I'd recommend any of her classes.  In fact, I'm doing her next one, Buttons and More, and now this is finished and everyone has stopped being sick, I've got work to catch up on.

Week Three

Time is certainly going quickly on the embroidery course and I'm enjoying every minute.  Here is a progress report so far.



 This is Jonathan's piece completed.  Jonathan wants me to make this into a book cover, though it would have to be a very special book, that didn't get a lot of handling, lol.  There are some quite open spaces, but these will be filled with rouleau loops and prairie points when it's joined to the main cloth.

This is Daniel's piece that should be finished today, it just needs a couple of finishing touches, then it will be ready for joining to the main piece later this week.

As I've finished Jonathan's piece, and getting to the end of Daniel's, I need more blocks to work on. I have one started and in the early stages or embellishment.



 This one features appliqued pieces, and the centrepiece will eventually become a flower.  The other technique to be used this week is cutouts.  I shall be putting a couple on Daniel's cloth and the next cloth yet to be put together.

Earlier in the week, the first two pieces were joined together.

  The prairie points were added in the seam and then embellished.  After feedback from Karen, some button hole lace was added above the prairie points.

This is the final result on that section.

An Apple a Day

Now that I have an apple in my collection, I think that is all the easy fruit options done.  Next stage will be to find some recipes and get them stitched up.  I think I am going to go for some traditional recipes, using a recipe book that used to be my great grandmothers.

Pretty Pear

The next in the fruit series, a pear.  A lovely simple shape to applique which suits me fine.  Hopefully, it should be joined by an apple today.

Plums

The next in the fruit series is plums, and fortunately easy to do.  They are quite an easy shape for applique, and just needed the addition of stitched stems.

Jonathan brought home some plums last week, ripened a lot earlier than we are used to, but a delicious crumble nevertheless.  I don't think the crumble recipe will make the wall hanging, I think it might be jam.

Thank You, Terry!

The wonderful thing about blogging, is the help you get from fellow bloggers.  I know that my quilting has come on in leaps and bounds because of  their help and I'm eternally grateful to them.  Other times, they make suggestions on how to best finish projects, and these ideas are gratefully received.  On the odd occasion, they even suggest how to take a project further, and this is what Terry did last week.

When Terry saw the cherries, she suggested that I did lots of  different fruit and make a wall hanging.  Now that, for me is quite a challenge, I don't do drawing, but the next morning, I sat down and came up with a few more passable drawings of fruit.  The next stage is to make the blocks, the first one being an orange.



This idea hasn't stopped with pictures of fruit, more of which will follow, but I have thought of incorporating it with recipies for the featured fruit.  So thank you, Terry, I think I have a bit of a project on my hands.  I am going to enjoy seeing where it takes me.

A Bunch of Cherries

As I'm not buying any new fabric for a while to finish quilts, I've been looking through some of the patterns I've saved on my computer.  One of them was this applique bunch of cherries.

It's come from the DMC threads blog.  I did try to do it by machine, but the hand applique block definitely came out better.

The leaves and cherries are appliqued, but the stems are embroidered using stem stitch.  I'm not exactly sure what I will do with this, though I do have a couple of ideas floating around.  Whatever I do will have to wait until after my fabric diet ends.

Garden of Tulips

It's been a great week this week for getting things finished.  After a big piece of batting arriving in the post, I could get the tulip applique wall hanging finished.

I've used the same stripey fabric for the binding, which I hand finished.  As this could be used for a table topper or a wall hanging, I put in a hanging sleeve.

So glad to have something else completed to clear some space.  Next thing on the list is a pile of flying geese units.

Purple

I seemed to go on strike during the purple month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, so when the theme for this week's Creative Tuesday was announced, I knew I had to make up for it.   I don't know why, but the first thought I had was tulips.  I was going to do a single tulip, but while I was looking for a suitable picture to adapt, I came across a couple of tulip patterns that took my fancy.  I ended adapting a pattern from freepatterns.com

Unfortunately, I didn't have enough batting to finish it into a wall hanging or table topper, but hopefully, it should arrive later today.  With a bit of pink in it too, it will fit in with this month's Rainbow Scrap Challenge too.

All the pieces are fused to the fabric then, using invisible thread in the top of the machine,  I stitched them using a zig zag stitch.  The petal details are done with a straight stitch. 

This was the first time I've done mitred corners on the outer border, and, though not perfect, I am happy with the result.

If you click on the Creative Tuesday link over the next couple of days, you'll be able to see how other artists have interpretated the theme.

Simple Start

Monday of course, is the day for the next installment of Mystery Monday.  This week was definitely short and sweet-cut 9 41/2" blocks.

With that done, I thought I may as well get a couple of other bits done too, so now the Flyboy has his sky.  I had forgotten I had this cloud fabric, but came across it last week looking for something else.  I thought I'd better put them together before it got lost again, or used for something else.

 At the moment he is only fixed to the background with bondaweb, though I will stitch him when I get to the quilting stage.  I still need to get some fabric to get this one finished, but a little progress has been made.

None of these too much time to do, so the next thing on the list was to sash the Raggedy Blocks.  This definitely took more time than I had expected.

 I usually avoid cornerstones, but these worked out a lot better than I had expected.

A lot of this fabric came from my "old" stash and I didn't really like them.  However, getting them back out and seeing them altogether has been quite a revelation.  As a whole, they don't look too bad and it's a great feeling not to have gone out to buy all new fabric.

I did have to buy black for the sashing and a shopping trip will be needed to progress further with this quilt.  I need fabric for the sashing, backing and binding, as well as some batting.