More Wind

Yesterday I spent some more time on the Wind in the Whiskers block I've been plugging away at.

I'm at a place now where I can begin to fuse the pieces to the background, being careful of the layers of leaves and branches. I don't want to fuse anything down if something else is supposed to go underneath first.

Here's the template I pieced together for myself (since this portion of the template was on the back of the other half...which still frosts my nostrils). 

Anyway...I'm ready to start making the dark green and light green leaves and the branches. The flowers, birds, and cat are already made. So I'm ready to start with the large dark green leaf in the upper right of the block. And that's all fine and dandy, but it also requires that I place three flowers over the top. 

Here they are, all cut out. The backing has been left in place and they are marked. The centers have been fused to the other side.

So how are you going to get the placement right? Enter wax paper. Simply trace in a few lines from your template. You don't have to trace the whole thing...just enough lines that you can tell where the pieces go.

Then, you can place the flowers in the proper place.

Remove your wax paper template, and fuse away.

And to keep things simple, I just added the lines I needed as I went along. Here, I'm adding another branch, a light green leaf, another flower, and a little bird.

Place the pieces as indicated on the template, and fuse.

Then just keep going. After that, I added the small branch and light green leaf on the bottom.

Now, this next one is a little trickier. I'm adding the branch on the upper left that hangs down, another flower, and another bird. Only, the cat has to fit under the part of that branch that is hanging down. I left that part of the backing in place, and fused only the parts that were on top.

Look closely in that image above, and you can see the part of the branch that is hanging down has a slight shadow where it is left loose. I stopped there for the day, but before I did, I placed the cat sleeping on the next branch under the other branch so you could see what I'm talking about.

I was kind of tired of working on it at that point. I'm anxious to finish fusing the cat and the branch, but there are other flowers, leaves, and branches that go over the top of the long branch he's sleeping on. It's better to wait to work on these complicated placements when I'm fresh and have more patience.

After that, I decided to sandwich this little embroidery piece I finished up a while ago. I'll bet you forgot all about this one, didn't you?

This will make a good piece for me to quilt on the new machine. I have an old embroidery piece I've never liked and I'm going to practice first with it. My plan is to stitch very close to some of the embroidery for texture, then stipple the open areas. It'll give Eliza's stitch regulator a good work out. 

What I've figured out about the stitch regulator is that it is very good for projects like this where I want to stitch very slowly. When I'm stitching fast, on long sweeping motifs, I think it's easier to work without the stitch regulator. This is only a theory at this point. I'll know more when I give it a try. Anyway...I'm using a leftover scrap from another quilt for the backing and I have a pale yellow thread for quilting.

That'll be my project for the day. If I get that finished, I'll go back to that cat sleeping on the branch.

As for the rest of the day, I'm going swimming and doing a tiny smidge of housework. Other than that, sewing all the way.