WIP: Tree Quilt

My instructor, who likes things to be the colors that they are, suggested that perhaps suns aren't orange. They are yellow.

So I've got the sun appliqued down, and am now embroidering over it in the color that the sun is. (Which, really, while we're on the subject is actually white, which I know because I've looked at it. It is white, and there is a blue shadow along the left and top side, and a red shadow along the bottom and right side.)

In my awesome embroidery stitch dictionary, I found "Burden Stitch," which changes the look of the 'beam to a much stronger yellow.

The bottom thread is rayon, which I tend to try to avoid because it's generally gotten from trees in non-sustainable ways. But it was on sale, and that either makes logical sense or I'm totally rationalizing. It's very shiny, and I like how it looks. If blogger will let me upload this picture, you will see that this first attempt is not so great - the long stitches are too far apart, and because of the properties of the rayon (it's kind of stiff), they curve. Which means, if I choose to do all of this embroidery on the beams, that I will need to do each long stitch individually, and that is a LOT of knots.

But, I didn't get into quilting so that I could get things done quickly. If I'm going to pride myself on insane patience in the face of tedium, I can't back down from a challenge like that.

Okay. Blogger's rejecting the photo. So... none of this makes any sense to you because you can't see it. I'm going to go eat a bagel.

WIP: As yet unnamed

I am very much a "Ta-da!" kind of person, by which I mean that I like to see something - movies, art - all at once, rather than bit by bit. I hate previews, and have a husband who is kind enough to haul me along to movies that I know nothing about but that he thinks I'll like. (We have discovered together the "no movies wherein a person gets shot in the face" rule, and live by it happily.)

So, doing this type of blog like everyone else does, where I show you things as I go along is, I'm finding out, contrary to my nature. I loved ceramics, because I loved the moment where you pull whatever it is out of the kiln, and all of your work, in that one moment of revelation, becomes something else. (Sometimes, it becomes something kickass.) Quilting and knitting are not so much like this, but I have mounds of fabric and yarn, and no clay or kiln, so I can learn to work with it.

Plus, I have questions.

But first:



This is the Quilt that Justified the Stash. For that reason alone I will always love it, despite the fact that it is also the Quilt that Taught Me that I Kind of Hate Strip Piecing.

The course supply list said something like 20 fat eights or large scraps of fabric. I interpreted that to mean "bring your whole stash!" which luckily fits into a small-ish rubbermaid container. How would I know which fabrics I'd want to use? And bringing the stash - and owning the stash - totally paid off.

I've read that people tend not to stash light fabrics, and thus that when you find light ones you're drawn to, you should pay attention to them. So I've dilligently stashed a few light fabrics here and there -- turns out, though, that I've completely neglected brown. Which wouldn't be an issue except that I really like to make images of trees. So. My instructor delicately suggested that perhaps my tree should be brown, and I pooh-poohed, not because I didn't agree, but because I'd just strip-pieced (ack) a purple and green tree trunk together and wasn't about to go purchase, wash, and iron a whole bunch of brown fabric to make a tree that actually looks like a tree. Anyhow, my point is: yay stashing stuff you like. But don't forget brown.

Now the questions.

At what point do you stop designing? I feel like this quilt needs more to it somehow, and I have a metric ton of potentially appropriate beads and yarns. But I'm also feeling like, because I wasn't envisioning that stuff in the beginning, to put it in now would look kind of silly. This is a real problem I have with embellishing -- I never feel like it looks like part of the design, it just looks like a bunch of crap I've decided to glue on. Integrating the 3-d with the 2-d is the problem, I guess.



I'm happy with the blanket-stitching around the leaves. Although the sunbeams are looking kind of catywampus (this is a word that quilters use!), it's only because I pinned it back on uncarefully, after I took out the original pin that was holding it down with my poor, poor arm skin.

Work in Progress: Huhu wela loa a ula

I'm hand quilting this baby right now. The applique took a millionty-billion years, and the hand quilting part is going to take a billionty-trillion. I'm really enjoying the hand quilting part, though - it's like knitting in its repetitiveness, in the muscles learning how to do it. My muscles like it.

Right now this one is (of course) in its quilt sandwich, and the top is white and the batting is white and the backing is an unbleached cotton muslin, so the edges of the sandwich look like the skirt of some kind of 1980s punk-rock girl. The image is a lovely contrast to what the quilt actually looks like.