Threading My Way

As usual, my day started with slow-stitching yesterday. I finished filling my hoop, and then moved it to the left. That brought me almost all the way across this rather large piece.

After that, I was ready to get back to the thread work on the Peruvian Sunflower piece. As I mentioned yesterday, I decided to go ahead and add the batting. It'll need to be held in place by the stitching, and it will give some texture as I stitch. 

Among my batting scraps, I found a long strip I could cut in half and butt together to make a piece large enough for my quilt. Often, I'm stitching the edges together, but I decided to use this Heat Press product this time around. I forget who told me about this product a long time ago. If it was you, then thank you. It's easy to use. It's about an inch and a half wide, and it's laid across the edges and then ironed down. I do it on both sides to be sure it holds fast. Here's how it looks when the edges are pressed together. It makes a tidy and flat connection.

From there, I was ready to go to work stitching the sunflowers. My apologies for all the thread names, numbers, and colors I'm about to show you. This is for my own reference if I ever want to look back and remember what I did. I decided to start with the largest yellow sunflower, and I worked from the center out. For the brown center, I started with this King Tut variegated brown.

In the very center, I did some pebbling, and then thread painted from the center outward.

After that, I switched to a variegated gold for the darker portions of the petals.

I'd already marked the outlines of where I wanted to stitch. I stitched long, closely spaced lines for the shading on the flower petals.

And then I switched to a brighter yellow variegated thread for the rest of the petals. It looks like someone disagreed with the color number there. I don't even remember where I got this thread, but it was some online source.

I'm hoping the subtle difference in color is visible.

Here's how it looked when it was finished.

Looking at the back...I was kind of surprised. It doesn't look half bad!

Sadie showed up about then to see if she could be helpful. She was a chatterbox as I worked away.

For variety, I decided to stitch the foliage and stems next. I first added the veins and details to the leaves using this dark green. There was no labeling on this, but I know it's an Essentials thread from Connecting Threads. Essentials cotton thread is the thread I like most for general piecing. It comes in a wide variety of colors, and it's relatively inexpensive.

When I had the details stitched in, I switched back to another variegated thread for the stems and the thread painting.

I was just following along with what the shape of the leaves might be if I could see them in three dimensions.

When all the greenery was stitched, it looked like this:

There was still one more sunflower to stitch. For the center, I used this Coats & Clark Star variegated thread. I loved the colors of these threads, but they aren't available any more. I'm glad I bought a lot of them when I could.

The center of this sunflower was stitched similarly to the other one, but in a different color.

I used the same variegated gold and yellow for the flower petals. When it was finished, it looked like this.

And then, I just needed to stitch the mortar on the tower.

For that, I used this YLI variegated tan machine quilting thread.

I stitched all around the bricks to give them some texture.

And then, all the thread work was finished.

Here's how it looks from the back:

The only thing left to do now is to add the back and some light quilting, and it will be ready for binding.

I want to make the back blue and yellow to honor the people of Ukraine. There wasn't an appropriate blue in my stash, and so I ordered a half yard of a solid blue. It should arrive this afternoon, and I'll be able to finish off the quilting then.

After a busy day of catfoolery, the kitties were exhausted. Smitty was ready to nap in his quilty chair...

and we found Sadie snoozing in the little house in their catio. See how the edges of the door are all chewed up? You can thank the squirrels for that. We might need to put some duct tape around the edges to keep it from getting any worse. On the other hand, the squirrels will probably chew through that too. 

They managed to get inside the catio when they chewed through the fencing last year. After so many years, we were surprised by that. Mike replaced the fencing with holes chewed in it, and they chewed through it again within about an hour's time. Now Mike is threatening to replace the fencing with metal, but he hasn't done it so far. It's been too wet. It'll get done sometime this summer, I suppose.

While we were watching the news last night, I finished stitching all the way across on the Calendula Patterdrip piece. 

It's about halfway finished now.

My hoop has been moved up now, and I'll start stitching back the other way. The left side will be finished, but the right side extends up a little higher.

If there's time for sewing today, I'm going to get started quilting the Charm Stars quilt. For a couple of weeks, it's been lounging over Eliza and my sewing chair to let the wrinkles relax out of it. This was made for the 2019 Rainbow Scrap Challenge, and it's finally getting its turn under my quilting needle.

There is a big stack of quilts in my sewing room, sandwiched for quilting. I've decided to take a FIFO approach (first in, first out) with them. This is the oldest quilt on my list of WIP's and so it gets to go first. I already have an idea how I'm going to quilt it. It's just a matter of sitting down to do it.

I'll make a quick trip into town this morning to pick up a couple of things we need. Today is going to be a kitchen day. I'm making a salad and some deviled eggs for our dinner with the kids tomorrow. Also, I'm getting a head start on making a Lemon Meringue Pie. I'll make the crust today, and then finish it off tomorrow. If there's time for quilting, the Charm Stars quilt will have its day.