Art, Craft and Needlework, March, 2012

[sherinjoy]

Sunny - Thank you so much for sharing your photos. I love the colors of your quilt pattern. The yo-yos are perfectly matched to the color scheme. Your DGD will enjoy using this quilt for years - what a wonderful legacy you have provided for her.

[Harmony]

I have the whole top done except for the border strip; I ordered online and waiting for that to come in. It's nice, the stitching in accurate and straight, pressing good, picture interesting. I think the quilting will add a lot of interest to the plain spots. I'll have to get creative with that, and probably the time I spent with a simpler design I'll use up with the quilting. Anyway, I think I'll go back to something more symetrical (sp?) next time, I think that's a nicer look.

[Harriet]

The colors are beautiful, Sunny, and the quilting came out so neat and attractive. I agree the binding looks flat and firm. I just LOVE the yo-yos! Perfect little touches. She will be so happy. Thanks for including us in the "look-see"!

Goodness, Harmony, you are so far along.

[Harmony]

Drat, that took a long time to clean up all my messes. I folded all the material like colors together, and stacked it away. I've been tracing patterns and copying stuff and I organized all that into a folder and notebook. I took the dustmop to the floor and got all the threads that escaped the wastebasket. Most of my tools are corralled.

The top went pretty quickly because nothing was seam-matched except for one row of individual printed sailboats. They were all different sizes and I had to put water underneath and sky above and match the water seams so they were all "floating" in a straight line. DH says it looks like a marina to him! Haha, no, but I get the concept. The middle section of fishes is 10 x 10 and 10 x 5 blocks, 3 rows all the way across. The sand and beginnings of blue water is just random size pieces. I spent the longest time on the paper piecing, but I really like how that turns out if I can get my brain to think backwards and insides out! I made a sunburst, a beach umbrella, and the lighthouse.

Course, now I've been to the library and found some paper piece patterns for walking sea gulls, so I'll try them....and I might applique some white clouds...my material came today for my 4" border, it is sand color covered with fancy seashells. I really wanted a paper piece sandcastle, but have been unable to find one. Putting everything away till company is come and gone now.

[Sunny]

Thank you for the nice compliments. I am pleased with how it turned out. I am anxious to start on the next one for dgs10. Some time this week I will shop for the last two prints I need. The pattern looks easy, all straight sewing.

Harmony, your new project went together fast and sounds really nice. Hmmm, sandcastle... I'll have to look through some of my stuff to see what I can find.

I like hearing about everyone's projects here!

[Harriet]

There is a little bit about a sandcastle paper piecing at Creative Explosions. http://creativeexplosions.blogspot.com/ ... astle.html That's the only place I could find any. But it is just her results and her initial graph-paper plan. I don't really see how she calls it paper piecing - looks like straightforward piecing to me. But then you don't see her steps. Looks like she just pieced by "towers" in tall rectangles and then sewed them together.

I'm surprised that doing a search these days for paper piecing turns up so much scrapbooking. It didn't do that in the past. You have to be sure to use "quilt" in your search now.

[Harmony]

Thanks, Harriet. I agree with you, looks more like straight piecing to me. But I did copy it. If I don't find one to applique onto the quilt, I'll just use the outline of one and quilt it in the quilting stitches. I have a whale I'm doing that way, and a swimmer too. I found lots of ones for scrapbooking also. I didn't find a paper pieced one in 2 whole shelves of quilt books in the library today. DH thinks I need to put people on the sand. Right...but I'm not an artist, have no way of doing that. He says buy them and glue them on.

Oh, when I tried to do the compass, it was way too many pieces, only a few paper pieced, then 8 sections sewed together. I gave up. When you did your forrest squares that you showed us here, were they done in sections and then sewed together?

[Harriet]

Harmony, remember (but I maybe didn't say this before) my compass piecing was try, give up, start over, try, give up, start over. And I still wonder if I just got lucky! Yes, it was manageable segments, then carefully putting them together. As I recall, I did a little better on some of the putting-together seams when I at least basted a stitch or two first, to make sure critical seams were matching. Those things are pistols, but so pretty. I will tell you this, if you ever finish one it's like childbirth - you forget the hard part when you admire the results, LOL! You know, I don't have any desire to try to put a person's image into a quilt. It's not that I haven't seen it done and I'm sure it was lovely, it just never seemed like "my" art style to me. It immediately takes the "fabric" feeling away and makes it "painting".

[Nancy]

I'm making hats and have done the ripping out and re-knitting quite a bit seems I've forgotten how to make said hats! LOL!

Harmony If I change yarn color at the top of the head part it sort of looks like a hat easier and can't be lost!

[Harmony]

Nancy, you can make smaller hats and put them on your puppets!

I've seen lots of portrait "quilts" done, and I think they're beautiful, but I don't really think of them as quilts. More like regular art. I found a wall hanging in one of the library book I'd like to do. I have a big empty wall in my dining/sewing room, it'd look great in there. It is 3 rows of apples and some patchwork. Maybe next year.

The best thing about the compass I tried to make (and really it was working out ok, I just didn't want to have to do so much and then have to sew all those pieces together) was that I was able to reuse most of those pieces in the beach umbrella.