Making Peace with Pieces from the Past

Good morning, my friends. I'm late out of the starting gate this morning. Mike and the kitties got up early, and shut the bedroom door upon leaving. It meant I had a couple of blissful hours of sleep uninterrupted by cats walking on me. Amazing what a little alone time can do for one's chances at peaceful slumber.

It was a fairly productive day yesterday. I finished up my housekeeping chores early and then did some slow-stitching. Top spot on my sewing agenda was to prepare my fabric for the "Time to Stitch" piece from Crabapple Hill Studios for February's International Embroidery Month. You can find all the skinny about it right here. I'd printed out the instructions and pattern. My first task was to trace the pattern onto a background fabric.

That was easy enough. Next, I needed to do the coloring. For this piece, I'm using colored pencils. Meg Hawkey has an excellent video tutorial on the steps for coloring fabric with colored pencils. If you can't see the video, then click right here.

 If you're stitching along on this project, I highly recommend watching it before you start. Although I'd watched it before, it's been a while since I used colored pencils. I watched the video first, and then colored my piece and painted on the "extender." From there, I hung it to dry for a few hours. I was guessing on some of the colors. I have a full set of the Prismacolor pencils. What I didn't realize is that there are three layers to the box, not just two, and so I missed a whole layer of pencils in my box. Duh.

Okay, well, no harm done on the colors. When it was dry, I added a muslin backing and then my longest length machine basting stitch to finish it off. I'll remove the basting stitches as I go.

Now I'm ready for stitching when the first design is posted on February 1st. It's my favorite stitch-along, and I can't wait!

From there, I had to decide what I was going to work on next. Sewing together the blocks for Pieces of the Past was at the top of my list, but I was still feeling put-off by the level of hassle I'd found when I went to embroider the last section. It seemed safe enough to take it out of the box and look at it. Sadie was there for emeowtional support.

If she has to be a kitty therapist in addition to being a stitching assistant, then she'll take her catnip in advance, thank you.

So, looking at it, I decided I could sew the blocks together at the very least. I had a note to myself that I'd cut the bottom panel too close to the top, but it turned out it didn't matter. A border will be added next. When I had it all sewn together, the dimensions were all correct. Yay. 

So, it seems safe to go ahead with this, and I'll continue on today. The next step is to add a border around the whole thing. For that, I'll be using the blue in the lower right corner of the image below.

The rest of the fabrics were in the project box, and they were included for using on the 16 crazy quilt blocks that will go on the sides of the quilt...eight blocks for each side. These could be done by making templates and piecing them the traditional way. I'm going to paper piece mine. I have 17 paper piecing sheets ready to go. (The extra one is insurance against F-ups.)

And if you've been reading for a while, then you know I hate paper-piecing. These don't look too hateful, though, and so it seems easier than piecing with templates. When I bought this pattern originally, I had in mind to use some of my grandmother's vintage linens here. Now, I've already started my own vintage linen quilt, and so it no longer seems desirable to use hers. Instead, I'll just pick from the box of scraps I have going for that quilt and leave those uncut fabrics alone for the time being. 

All right, so slow-stitching is next on my agenda. My morning ended up a little out of order today after sleeping in so late. I've been gnashing my teeth about the Pieces of the Past quilt, and now it doesn't seem so daunting. I believe it's going to be a good sewing day.