A creation from Way Back: a florid appliqué heart Valentine designed by Elinor Peace Bailey.
(Pattern for heart blocks on this post.)
Valentine Hearts, with a wee pocket with a wee Valentine note tucked in. The hearts themselves are about 4″ tall, with attached ribbons and keys.
WIP Wednesday–here we are again. This is a good mid-weekly progress check every week, and many thanks to Lee of Freshly Pieced for hosting us all.
Well, I met a goal.
For two months, goals have been something to hide from or add to a already-too-long list or wistfully stare out the window while contemplating goals. But yesterday, Valentine’s Day, I met my goal of getting this quilt quilted. And had I not had to stop to read 50 pages of the novel I’m teaching (Moon Over Manifest), I probably would have had the whole thing done. But sometimes it’s okay to leave a project at the cusp of completion as it will draw you in for tomorrow. So, I guess you could say, this is still in progress. But in a good way, not a moaning way.
And under Krista’s enthusiastic encouragement, I tried my hand at English Paper Piecing. You know I had an English great-grandmother, who I’m named for (Elizabeth). So I called up my mother and asked her if my gr-grandmother ever did English paper piecing. “No,” she said. “She was a gardener. She spent any free time she had in her garden. It was my mother — your grandmother — who was the sewer in the family.” So, in homage to them both, I’m making something with flowers.
I finished the middle, sewed some more together and attached them to the central flower. Kind of a stuck space for knowing where to go from here in terms of sewing things together, but IF I can imagine myself as a young bride in the late 1800s far away from my mother and hometown of Bloxwich, England, and IF I were a quilter, carrying forward my mother’s traditions, I’d either have been doing this since I was a child, or I’d figure it out.
I’ll figure it out.
I hope you noticed the new notice on the side of the blog: On Leap Day, check back for multi-blog giveaway.
Now head over to Freshly Pieced and see some more fabulous Works In Progress.
Many thanks to Lee of Freshly Pieced Fabrics for hosting this Works In Progress posting frenzy, commonly known as WIP Wednesday.
So last week I was unpicking this quilt. The thread was too skinny on top (although I like a thinner thread on the bottom–Bottom Line by Superior is my favorite), I was using PolyNeon on top. I have sewn many quilts with this thread, but it just wasn’t cutting it for this Valentine Quilt. I’d picked up a spool of tone-on-tone red that I had in my thread stash, and thought it might work because King Tut is a heavier thread. I like that look. [Wait. What? You don’t have a thread stash?]
I overlaid some of my trusty-dusty wax paper on the quilt, sketched an idea–liked it. Now how to get that design onto this quilt.
So I cut out a punch of petals and pinned them on, and while listening to This American Life proceeded to stitch around this little shapes, impaling myself on the pins. This wasn’t going to work.
I mean–it worked because I liked the design with the thread, but it wasn’t going to work being pricked to death.
I realized that all the petal shapes were merely overlapping circles, so I cut out a circle, did some research on marking pencils. I went to my pencil stash (don’t tell me you don’t have one of those, too) and grabbed Quilter’s Choice in silver. I also pulled out a soapstone marker, for the deep reds, but ended up using the silver most of the way through. Apparently it will wash out. Stay tuned.
I finished teaching today, and fairly skipped to the parking lot. It is one of those days that makes people in Wisconsin want to move to California–warm with a slight breeze, but not overly hot. A lean-your-arm-out-the-window-while-you-drive sort of day. I teach Mondays and Wednesdays and one of my friends and colleagues coined the term WedFrinesday for what we feel. We generally work all week long, but it begins Thursday morning with our stacks of grading, continues through the weekend, and ends on WedFrinesday, when we yes, skip to the parking lot.
So, working on the red and white is going to be on this sunny day’s agenda–listening to a new book on the computer (my mother and I listen in tandem, although she’s always faster) and stitching away. I keep calling this the Valentine’s Quilt. I think I’d better get to it!
What else is on my list? Too many things! I received some Malka Dubrawsky’s fabric that needs to be washed up, ironed and caressed. I have a stack of things from my purchases at Road. I still haven’t spent my son’s Christmas Gift of a Fat Quarter Shop gift certificate, and that certainly needs to be taken care of. Quickly.
That same son gave me the gift of my own web address, so if you want to reach this more quickly, type in opquilt.com. It refer back to here.
Thanks, Peter!
Unhappy Quilter: Unpicking quilt stitches
Happy Quilter: Thinking about the rainbow pack of fat quarters from Purl Soho that I bought yesterday.
OccasionalPiece--Quilt! 