Flowers

Even though I've had a break from blogging, I haven't had a break from sewing. While watching TV coverage of the natural disasters occurring around the world, I was busy with a needle and thread. Various things have been worked upon...

This pic I took in February - the last "official" border on the Patchwork Posse round robin. I've actually added another border of my own devising since then. I'll show you that in a day or so.

Border of flowers, embroidered and appliqued

Pretty cool huh? Each flower centre is unique, and all made from leftovers of other fabrics used in the quilt.

Yellow flower on the left will have a button in the centre, after quilting.

What I've learned today:

It's not always a good idea to work on more than one project at the same time.

There is the above quilt, which I'm itching to get quilted (first have to get/make the backing). And there is also a quilt I began early last year, which my daughter was going to have to keep warm with last winter (i.e. June - August). Then, the goal was for xmas. Now, the goal is her birthday - which is in one month.

I'm trying, I really am. (In case you're wondering, I've yet to show any pics of it.)

It doesn't help that I've "misplaced" two blocks. Instead of wasting time looking, I've decided I'll make a couple of replacement blocks.

That's bound to make them turn up.

Pink, yellow or blue?

The quilt so far

So I was playing around yesterday, auditioning which colour background to use on the next border in my Patchwork Posse round robin quilt. Just as a recap, here's a pic of the quilt so far:

The next border is made up of tall flowers. I couldn't decide which fabric to use as my background in this border - this one will be rather dominant, so I really don't want to get it wrong. I thought about making up some practice blocks, to trial several colours. But I'm too lazy - AND I don't like having spare blocks left over that won't be used.

Now, I wouldn't normally show this sort of thing; I usually prefer to display the finished product, and not the messy in-between stuff. But I've been reading a number of blogs lately that show the design steps people take, and why, and that made me realise I like these peeks into other people's thought processes. So I think it's important to share our ideas.

So what I did was, I laid the quilt top out on the floor and arranged around it some of the fabrics that I'd used in the quilt already (I'm not introducing any new colours into it this late in the game). Then I chose some other scraps in colours I thought would go, for the spacers between the flowers. Then some stems, and the flower heads. Yes - the flowers are white - each flower will be decorated with applique and/or embroidery. I used more scraps to show that in this wee exercise.

There is no sewing or cutting involved here; I'm just playing with folded fabric. Just to get a basic idea.





What do you think?

 -- Which colour do you prefer?

--  How do you "test run" an idea?









What I learned today:

You can use Paint to edit a photo.
(The program, not the art medium! Although the latter would work, just not in the same way. And there'd be a bit of mess to clean up afterwards.)

Simple, huh? I thought I needed some fancy photo-editing software; instead, I can just use the same thing that my kids use to draw scribble pictures.

I do realise that everybody else out in Blogland, and probably the world at large, knows this already, or better yet, actually has some fancy photo-editing software - but this is me, and after several years of feeling my brain turn to mush after having kids, I feel strangely empowered when I'm able to figure something out. And if I can help just one other person with these sometimes irrelevant things-that-I-learn-every-day, then I haven't wasted my time.