10/11/15

Stitch by Stitch

This morning I finished Block #30 for the Live, Love, Teach quilt. Here is Frederick's original block submission. My friend Lisa tells me that Frederick gave a "How To" speech in the 4th grade about how to make chocolate chip cookies. When he was finished, they got to eat the cookies. Wish I'd been there for the cookies.


Here it is rendered in fabric and floss:


The cookie is printed on fabric. It doesn't look as orange in person as it does here. Isn't it weird how sometimes you can't fix the colors in an image no matter what you do? 

So aside from that, I'm just quilting, quilting, quilting today. I finished one row of the sewing machine blocks yesterday, and then started working on the surrounding sashings. Taking my cue from the ruler fabric, I'm outlining the rectangle and then putting ruler hash marks along the sides. It's a little hard to see here. I'm using a white YLI machine quilting thread on the top.


You might be able to see it a little better from the back. I'm using a pink YLI machine quilting thread in the bobbin.


I don't have a particular fondness for YLI machine quilting thread, but I won some in a photography contest once. It was a kitties on quilts contest put on by The Quilt Pattern Magazine. Actually, Gracie won the contest with her cuteness in this image.


So in deference to Gracie's fame and the fortune she's generous enough to share with me, I continue to use the YLI thread. How could I not? And, helpfully, it's pretty good thread.

Here's how the quilting is looking from the back of the quilt:


Tonight, we're getting together with the rest of the family to celebrate Erik's birthday this past Friday. Erik chose Indian cuisine for his birthday dinner, and so that's what we're doing.

It rained hard yesterday, but today we're back to a lovely day of sunshine. Fall tends to be nice in the Pacific Northwest. This is the view out of my window this morning.


The recent rains have greened things up, and the cool temperatures after sunset are causing the leaves to change and fall. For now, it's lovely. It's looking like the birds need to be fed, and so that's where I'm headed. Have a lovely and relaxing Sunday, and Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian friends!

4 comments:

Kate said...

It's been fun watching you transfer the pictures to quilt blocks for the Live, Love, Teach quilt. Another fun one finished. Hope everyone enjoyed Eric's birthday dinner.

Doreen said...

You definitely 'had' my attention with that yummy cookie!!!!!! Love those fabric colors!!!!

Anonymous said...

Hello,

I'm very impressed with your embroidery. What stitch do you use for the lettering? And how long are your stitches? I'm getting ready to start an astronomy quilt project. I want to embroider the names of the constellations. I had thought I would use stem stitch with two strands of floss, but maybe you have a better idea. My practice piece doesn't look anywhere near as good as yours.

Molly

Barbara said...

Molly, your settings are at "no reply" and so I can't reply to your personally. I'm hoping you will see this. I am using a simple backstitch. The stitches vary in length depending on what they need to be. The key is to remember that your stitch will be straight, not curved, and so to stitch around curves, the stitch length can only be as long as the "straightness" of the design. By that I mean, try to imagine a straight line through the design, and then take only as long a stitch as can be accommodated by the straight line. Sometimes it will be only a 16th of an inch or less. In no case do I take a stitch any longer than about 1/8th of an inch unless it is intended to be a straight stitch. For outlining, I keep the stitches short and shorter as necessary. I hope that helps. Please use the "email me" button at the top of my right side bar if you have other questions, and we will be able to have a better conversation about this. Oh yes, one more thing...I use stem stitch on some designs, but it is a difficult stitch to use when your design curves around in a circle. Stem stitch is worked from left to right. The stitch works best when the curve is concave to the stitching, and so it sometimes means turning the piece around to acccommodate convex curves.