Birds and butterflies

"Photo tomorrow, rain or shine."

That's what I said yesterday. What I didn't allow for was the wind. Waaay too blowy outside to get a nice natural-light pic of my quilt, so I had to resort to pinning it to the curtains in the living room.

Why did I pin it to the curtains? Because I wanted to take a front-on photo, rather than laying it on the floor and having it look like a trapezoid quilt. (If you know your maths, and you  have some experience of trying to take a decent photo of a quilt, then you'll know what I'm talking about.)
So anyway, the lighting wasn't the greatest, but at least it was natural light, which is way more real than that yellowish hue lightbulbs exude.

Newest border on left and right sides - crazy-patch blocks and crazy-patch applique butterflies. Good fun!

One little bird (if you don't count that chicken below it)

And I finally got around to finishing off the birds, which belong in the second round. Which was way back in November.

For the embroidering part, these are much like the butterflies, featuring blanket stitch and running stitch on the applique pieces, and beak, feet and plumey tail in backstitch.

Two little birds (again, minus the chicken)

  


I so love these birds! I drew them myself, working through a series of design developments, until I got it right.

(Hey, there could be a blog post in that - I still have all my roughs, AND, I have to post every day for a month - NaBloPoMo.)







What I learned today:  Pinning a quilt top to the curtains will make tiny little pin-sized holes in the curtains. These little tiny pin-sized holes look rather big when you first discover them, but that's only because the light from outside is shining through, showing them up. I bet I won't be able to tell tomorrow.

So, in the immortal words of Douglas Adams... Don't Panic.

Two down, two to go...

So these are the butterflies I was talking about in yesterday's post. Blanket stitch on the wings, running stitch on the body sections, and back stitch on the cute curly antennae.

And these are the other two. Each butterfly has a different colour body, which I've matched with embroidery floss for all the stitching on that particular butterfly.

Crazy patch blocks, to be sewn with the four butterflies, to make a crazily colourful border.

What I've learned today: Do the daily blog post earlier in the day. At 10:51 pm, as I write this, I'm too tired to think up wonderful prose.
Good night.

7th of February

Cat update: Tabitha's tail is no longer drooping. The vet medicine is doing the trick!

Weather update: It didn't snow today - no surprises there. But it wasn't hot, either. Cold and wet, not summer weather at all. Although it made a pleasant change to yesterday. And the plants are no longer drooping.

Round robin update: I feel I've done quite a bit today, with crazy-patching.

Yesterday's progress pic: two untrimmed blocks, another trimmed to 6.5", and showing the reverse side of another.

Back and front views: all that paper must come off, and it's so fiddly to get the little pieces out from under the stitching lines! These two blocks are for the butterfly wings, so I used my very small scraps in order for them to be wildly colourful.

Butterfly bodies, waiting to be stuck down and winged.

What I've learned today: Don't use very small scraps for crazy-patching, especially if you're stitching to a paper foundation. Smaller pieces to sew means two no-so-good things:

1.  The paper must come off, eventually, and all that stitching is going to impede progress.
2.  All that stitching, close together, creates bulk. Which will be hard to sew through. And I'm planning on doing (yet more) raw-edge hand applique. Yes, by hand. How crazy am I.

Which means I'd better find my thimble. That nice thick metal one.

The hottest day ever

It has been an unbelievably sweltering hot day. I honestly can not ever recall being hotter. The official temperature was 36 degrees C, with Timaru (which is closer to the South Pole than we are!) reaching 40. Ugh, I am so over summer. I'd gladly swap hemispheres for a week, even if it meant snowstorms. I don't mind snow. Right now, snow sounds rather attractive.

A Grundle, a thistle, and a tabby cat tail

 Did a bit more sewing of the crazy-patch blocks. I'm up to about 9 or 10. Took a progress pic, but haven't uploaded it yet. So I've found another random photo for today's post.



Today I learned that when doing foundation paper piecing, you need to adjust the stitch length shorter. And then make it a bit shorter than that. And use the thinnest paper you can - junk mail can finally come in handy for something!

The weather and the weekend

If I wasn't taking part in NaBloPoMo this month, I probably wouldn't do a blog post today. It's been muggy hot, so I haven't done much. Is that a good enough reason, I wonder - to blame it on the weather? Oh, and it's Saturday. So, the weather and the weekend.

And because it is the weekend, I have done a bit of sewing. For the next round robin border, I have to make 14 crazy-patch foundation blocks, 8 inches square. So far I've completed five. Except mine aren't all 8 inches, and they certainly aren't square. They end up being trimmed down to 6.5 inches, so I've taken a few liberties with the sizing, as in, they're probably more like 7 inches, kinda-squareish. Yeah, I hate wasting fabric. Why make something so much bigger, if you're just going to trim a big chunk of it off anyway?

There probably is a good reason; and I'm sure in due course I will find out what it is and add it to my store of knowledge.

No progress photos though; things are rather messy down in the sewing room.

Unfinished art quilt experiment from 2010: 4" squares of calico which I hand-dyed.

What I learned today (and/or yesterday) is that if you don't have a relevant photo to add to your blog post, just add something else, because the large majority of blog readers would like to look at something.