One More Mini

Lazy Circles (C) 2013

A Christmas gift for friends, based on a photo of one of their fields.  The golden fibre is hand-dyed wool bat, needle-felted onto the background before sandwiching, thread painting and quilting.  Finally used my embellisher in one of the ways I'd envisioned!

...and a couple of blocks.  These are the last 2 blocks from one of the three Blocks-of-the-month kitted projects I'd collected.  I'll start another one in January.  Meanwhile, I have to come up with some sort of setting/sashing for these.  There are 12 that will finish at 10" square -- a nice throw size for a give-away, methinks.

Cinnamon BOM #11 - "Fireflies" 

Cinnamon BOM #12 - "Our Editor"

And that's all that's really new around here.  My kitchen sinks seem to be working again.  I suspect there's still some ice down in the out-going pipes below the floor, but with no basement, in this weather there's really no way to check.  More snow is in the forecast, and another cold spell, so I just have to remain cautious...

I've been nursing an on-and-off head cold for 2 weeks now...today was an "on" day.  It's a wonder I got anything done at all.  I'm not even wanting to knit -- and I have 1/2 a hat to finish, plus two scarves...and one more sewn gift before Christmas.

Ah, well...I do believe I'll post this to WIP Wednesday over on the Needle and Thread Network (in my books, the BOM is a WIP till it's at least a flimsy), brew up some hot lemon drink and wend my way to bed.

'nigh-night!

Under Construction

There's been a good deal of building going on around here the past couple of days.  It started yesterday, when I had a hankering to get back to work on "Posh Poppies", the pattern and fabric provided me by my long-ago quilting friend, S.

Remember?  S. bought the materials and then panicked when the first instructions she read in the pattern were for painting the background fabric.  I wrote about doing just that, 'way back in mid-August during my Self-directed Summer School (scroll down).

Well.  I'd not only painted the fabric but drew and cut out the templates for the flowers, centres and buds.  I was ready to roll!  Or...so I thought.

Getting into it again yesterday, I discovered the Next Tricky Thing about this pattern: it's not simple applique.  Appearances on the cover of the pattern are deceiving.  It's not fused applique.  It's not even needle-turn applique.  Uh-uh.

It's three-dimensional applique.

That is, the blossoms and buds are all two sided.  I knew the small white flowers were 3-D, because I'd seen a sample wherein they were done in silk ribbon and sewn on.  I'm talking about the poppy flowers themselves.

Even the tips of the leaves are two sided.  The bodies of the leaves and the flower stems are needle-turn, for which I should be grateful, but the blossoms are attached only by the thread painting that decorates them. The buds and stems are two-sided, with the latter being cut on the bias and sewn into tubes that are then turned.   

I tried my hand at a portion of the top poppy (#1 in the pattern), which is constructed by tracing the template -- right-side down -- onto the reverse of the fabric and cutting it out with 1/2" all the way around.  This is then placed, right sides together, on a second piece of the same fabric and they are sewn together on the tracing line using a smaller-than-usual machine stitch (I used 1.5 instead of my machine's default of 2.5 for straight stitching).  The edges are trimmed to 1/4" and you snip deeply into all the corners.  Then you make a 1" slit in the "back" of the flower and turn it carefully right side out.

Oy vey.

I learned the following from my first attempt:

• Trim the seams to less than 1/4: if you can but be careful when you're poking the edges out with your turning device (I use a "Purple Thang");
• Clip all curved edges;
• Use red thread in top and bobbin; any other colour will show through the seams.
• I can't tell which is considered the "back" of the flower because it's already been reversed twice (template 'wrong-side' down on the 'wrong' side of the fabric.

On my second attempt -- which I postponed till this morning! -- I still got the petal section reversed, but decided it was a flower; it could cope.  Here are two petal sections and the centre of Poppy #1, lying on the painted background, just to get an idea of what it might look like.  It looks well in the photo but "up close and personal"?  Well...maybe after I add some stitching...

"Posh Poppies" first blossom attempt!

And some people think creating an original design is tough.   Not compared to following Someone Else's Instructions! LOL!

While I was in the mood for SEI, I made the October block for the "Cinnamon" Block of the Month series I've been doing since January -- designed to finish a top from the first of three BOMs I bought years ago at the now-retired Freckles Quilt Shoppe in Calgary.

"Chicago Pavements"

In addition to this 'finish', there was one in the knitting department -- a second hat that had been commissioned by a non-knitting customer at the shop.  It's now washed and has been laid flat to dry.  It looks rather nondescript right now:

Swirly Slouch Hat - (C) Lori Nowochin, 2013

But here's how the first one looked on a mannequin in the shop:

And last but not least...

Our parish's Annual Fall Dinner is tomorrow night, and as usual, I've made a couple of pies.  This year I had more rhubarb than anything else, so I made these Rhubarb Crumble pies this morning:

Sorry if the photo makes you a bit queasy; I'd rotated it in my photo program, but clearly something got lost in translation to cyberspace!!

Linking up to WIP Wednesday on The Needle and Thread Network before I head out for a jog, now that the rain has stopped.

What are you building today?

Piece-full Sunday

After a busy week in the sewdio, concentrating on new and ongoing pieces, I often like to take a complete break on the weekend.  This weekend I turned to piecing, as I did when I was working on Easy Street.  My in-progress Block of the Month, "Cinnamon" is one example.  I finally finished that fussy Block #3 that I was worried about, shown here on the top of the triangle with her sisters.

This weekend I started another pieced quilt -- a form of Hunter's Star done in two 'colours', from a pattern in the June 2006 issue of Better Homes & Gardens Creative Collection: American Patchwork & Quilting.  The designer for this piece is Jackie Robinson, and she uses a rotary cut formula to create the star effect.

I'm making this piece for my friend P in Montreal, who's having a Significant Birthday in June (even more significant than my 60th last fall).  I'm making the quilt from stash, and will make it only as large as materials allow, because all of the fabrics in question are long out of print.  Here are the first blocks positioned on my design wall:

I'm using a small-scale tone-on-tone print for one 'colour' and a large print for the other, so that they read as mauve and blue respectively.  There's a glint of silver and a hint of turquoise in the large print, which may figure in the border(s) or binding.  So far, anyway, I'm delighted with it, and hope to have it finished by the time I see P on a trip down East later in her birthday month.

As for the reason I took the break?

"Vespers II" is properly finished and matted now:

And "Waiting for the Train" is partially quilted.  It was fun going 'round the graffiti:

The sun is now high and it's as warm outside as it's going to get today, so I'm off for a walk.  This evening, perhaps a bit more of the Hunter's Star will take shape.  Have a great rest of your Sunday!