Surprising Sunrising Sunflower

Good morning, my friends. It's looking like a pretty day outside. We're expecting snow overnight, and so it might be a good day to get out for a walk. I sat down earlier to write, but only got as far as my pictures. I had overnight oatmeal on the stove top, and that needed finishing. When I come up to write in the morning, I always say to Mike: "Breakfast or blog post?" And that's when he lets me know if he's too hungry to wait for me to write my post. This morning, he gave me the choice, but I was completely distracted thinking about the oatmeal. So, I had to go do that. Sorry for the interruption. Maybe you didn't even know I was gone. But now I'm back...so let's have a chat.

Of course, no morning can be called complete until the inchies are posted and stitched. This was yesterday's contribution. Blanket stitch on the left. Backstitch and cross stitch on the right. 

After my comment about wondering when the more difficult stitches will make an appearance, I was interested in this memory that appeared on my Facebook feed this morning:

If you read the caption, you'll see we were waiting for some of the more three-dimensional stitches so they wouldn't interfere with the "flatter" ones. There's quite a bit of design in the lower half of this particular piece, 

and so that might be the reason we're not doing some of the more complicated stitches at the outset. In any case, it's an enjoyable project, and so I'll just keep stitching away until the stitch-along ends.

From there, it was time to get sewing. The prompt for the latest Project Quilting Challenge was announced. This time around the prompt is "A Novel Idea," with the explanation that we should choose a favorite book as our quilt inspiration. Okay...well that was easy. My list of truly outstanding books I've ever read...ones that were of the greatest influence...is fairly short. When I was growing up, it would have been To Kill a Mockingbird and The Grapes of Wrath. Both books probably influenced me to become a social worker. More recently, I listened to the audio version of The Warmth of Other Suns, written by Isabel Wilkerson, and beautifully narrated by Robin Miles.

It was an eye-opener, and the narration made it an even better story. I liked it enough I could easily listen to it again. And so all of that to say that I decided to go with that for my "novel." To be fair, a "novel" is supposed to be a work of fiction, and this is documentary non-fiction. So I'm breaking the rules again, but I'll fight anyone who says I can't do it. (Puts up her dukes.) No takers? Okay, then.

Speaking of putting up your dukes, Smitty decided to help by barking orders...Oops. Sorry, Buddy. Poor choice of words. Let's try that again: Smitty decided to help by meowing orders from the closet.

He told me I couldn't start on the Project Quilting quilt until I finished making a back and cutting the binding strips for the "Maps" quilt. And that didn't take long. I used all but about a fat-quarter sized piece of the backing fabric.

Sadie came to help with the challenge quilt.

So I'd gone in search of a good image of a sunflower, and my quilt was inspired by this image from Creative Commons.

"sunflower" by foxtail_1 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

It was to be used as a template rather than the actual subject, and so I taped it to my work surface and drew in some lines on a transparency. This is the way I do the portrait quilts. I wanted to trace the petal lines directly onto the fabric, and so the template was for tracing purposes only.

Here's where things went off the rails a little bit. If you look at the image above, you can see the center of the sunflower petals are tinged more orange/red than the outer edges where they are mostly yellow. As I went digging through my stash for appropriate fabrics, I found the dark orange you see below. 

It's a hand-woven cotton Matthew's friend, Lyndsay, brought to me from Bali, and it was among the fabrics I used when I made the Sonora Sunset quilt.

My plan was to do thread-painting on this, and I loved the color of that fabric. I envisioned the thread doing most of the work on this. Having it cut halfway like that looked a little weird, but I still thought it would work out when I started adding the thread. First, I needed to add borders. This quilt allowed me to use some sunflower fabrics I've had in my stash a long time. The blue border made me think of sunflowers against a blue sky. It still looked weird to me, but here it is.

This is the fabric I selected for the back, but that would be added after I did the thread painting. Thread painting was to be done with just the top and the batting.

From there, I went digging through my thread stash. I have such a fun thread stash these days, thanks to my quilting fairy godmother, Ila. Thank you, Ila. All of the threads I'm about to show were gifts. This first one was to stitch in lines for the petals.

The labels are included for my own reference. I think these are all 30 weight threads.

For this, I left myself some long tails. By doing this, I can simply cut thread later without having to cut every time I come to the end of a line of stitching.

By pulling the piece off the machine a few inches, it also leaves a long tail on the bobbin thread. When I'm finished, I can go through cutting in the middle of the "jump stitches" on both top and bottom, and then pull them through to the bottom.

Okay, and now I was ready to get serious about the thread painting. I used this King Tut variegated brown for the center of the sunflower.

Looks like this is a 40-weight thread.

I did some pebbling in the darker brown center.

The lighter brown center was done in more of a picket fence shape.

Sadie was especially helpful for that part.

From there, I moved to the orange/red tinged part of the petals. Here is where I was really hoping the thread would fix the part that looked strange to me. For that I used a darker variegated orange thread.

It's another of the Coats & Clark's "Star" threads. I can't help thinking they might still be making these if they'd used a better labeling system. There's really no way to save the label for future reference. Even sticking it to the inside of the cardboard spool doesn't allow it to be read easily. As usual, no one consulted me about this.

Okay, and then for the outermost yellowish petals, I wanted to switch to a lighter orange variegated thread.

This one is from Sulky.

It's easiest to see the quilting/thread-painting from the back.

Okay, and I still wasn't happy with how this looked, but finished is better than perfect, right? And when it comes to these one-week-from-inception-to-finish quilts, finishing is highly desirable.

When the backing was added, I stitched two straight lines around the blue border, and then squared it up. Yeah...I can't say I'm real happy with this.

Okay, but what if I turn it this way? Then, it looks more like a rising sun. And if you know the story of the book, it makes me think of how a rising sun signals the beginning of a new day. The people in the book were seeking a fresh start, and so it kind of works, even if it is weird.

And then, there was just one more thing to do...add the binding. I selected this yellow stripe from my scrap bindings bag. That yellow stripe is one of the first fabrics I purchased when I returned to sewing in retirement. There are just a few little pieces left now.

Edited to include this image of the completed quilt so that I can link up. Not one of my better efforts, but it was good practice for the thread painting.

So, this morning, I'll get to work sewing the binding...just after I stitch today's inchy. After that, I'll get started on Tiny House #5. It will probably take my whole sewing day, but then, I'll be kind of back on track with my "meat and potatoes" projects...temporarily, at least. I've pegged Wednesday of this week as the day we'll set up the sawhorse tables in the garage so that I can sandwich the nine quilts in the pile.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, we went out for dinner for our Valentine's Day celebration last night. We were on the 30th floor of the US Bank tower, known affectionately in these parts as "Big Pink." 

The city was so pretty from there. To get these pictures, I had to press my phone directly against the window to avoid reflections. I still got reflections in the top half of the photos, but the city was so pretty after dark. The first one is looking due east. If the sun were shining, we'd be able to see Mt. Hood from here. Have a look. The Willamette River runs horizontally near the middle of the image.

This next one was taken after we were seated. It's looking toward the north, and this was our view for dinner.

I had to angle the phone for this next one, and so I really couldn't avoid getting reflections. I wanted you to see the spires of the Portland Convention Center.

And then these two photobombers took a turn. And may I just say, I hate selfies. But hey...ya gotta do it, right?

Okay, so I'm ready for more coffee and some slow-stitching. After that, I'll build a tiny house.