Stitching in the Wee Hours

It was one of those nights when I woke up and then couldn't get back to sleep. This may seem strange, but I actually think sewing is keeping me awake in the same way my job used to. When I wake up, I start thinking about a project I'm working on (particularly if it is challenging me in some way). Then, I just keep thinking about it until I've been awake for more than an hour. At that point, I figure I might as well get up and work on it. Fortunately, my time is my own on all but rare occasions, and so I can go back to bed after Mike leaves for work.

So what was keeping me awake last night? It was the latest block for Lisa's Retirement Quilt. Of all the blocks, I think this one has challenged me the most. Here is the block. This one was submitted by Natalie M. and her four children, Ty, Alex, Destiny, and Allyah. This is what Natalie said about the block design:

It is a butterfly on a sunflower. The wings of the butterfly have the stages of the butterfly on each heart; eggs, caterpillar, cocoon, butterfly. On the edges on the wings it says "loving education transforming generations" all four of my children have been in Lisa's class and they all combined their ideas to make this design. 

It was challenging for a number of reasons. I've been relying on embroidery and applique to recreate these more often than not. In this case, I was trying to figure out how I was going to get all of the layers included and still have something I could actually hand embroider through. I scanned the original design as it was submitted and then resized and cropped it to the size I wanted. For the past several days, I've had it sitting out in view where I could study it and plan my attack. Finally, it came to me that I could applique the orange and the white fabrics, leaving a gap for the yellow background to show in between. That way, I had no more than one layer of applique to stitch through on any part of the block. (I hope that makes sense.) 

Here it is rendered into fabric.

The block was completely constructed before I went to bed last night, and I'd started on the embroidery. Still, while lying awake, I was thinking about stitching it and that I could finish it today, etc., etc., etc. Finally, I just got up and did it. It's hot off the needle as you see it here.

But that's not all the sewing I did yesterday. I finished my project for Let's Book It and Another Little Quilt Swap 9. This is free motion machine embroidery. 

It's really no different from free motion quilting. The lines of stitching are just closer together. Here's a close-up of the stitching.

Here's how it looks from the back.

The pattern is from this book by Ann Fahl.

She went into quite a bit of detailed and helpful instruction about how to stitch, what threads to use, what stabilizers, etc. She also suggested hooping the design to stitch it. I didn't do that. I just did it the same way I do free motion quilting, except instead of using batting, I was using a stablizer.

Today I'm going to go to the grocery store, but I'm hoping I'll have some time to start quilting the little Sew Helpful quilt. It shouldn't take long.

That's next on my list of things to do for the month. There is still a week left in the month, and I have just two things left on my to-do list. I think I'm going to make it easily. And hopefully, I'll be able to get some more sleep.

Do you have any projects keeping you awake at night? It isn't necessarily a bad thing.