Yesterday's Mail

 

Yesterday was a Good Mail day™ because my subscription box from Pink Door Fabrics arrived. It is chock o' block as per usual with all kinds of fun stuff. But I have to say, I really really enjoy the boxes and have a hard time throwing them away. I've been using them for storing current projects, they're roomy enough and easy to move around. Better than buying even more P.O.T.S. (Plastic Organizer Thingies).

There's always a pattern included and this one is super intriguing to me, I've always liked this block but have never tried it (due to the curves and needing to make templates. Well, it includes the acrylic templates, and equipment for doing it EPP style. There also directions for piecing it by machine. We shall see. I quite like the examples on the pattern cover of the fussy cutting these great Tula Pink fabrics.

I'm excited about the Renaissance Ribbons that were included, they're so pretty and match the fabric so well. Another Sewline fabric glue pen is always useful, now I can have one in my to-go box and one in my workroom, some very pointy butterfly scissors, John James Milliners needles, a spool of DecoBob for hand sewing. Oh and a package of seeds, alyssum.

There was also a swatch deck with pictures of each of the prints in the Untamed fabric line. Not sure what those are really for, maybe I can use them in a collage?

Untamed is all about flowers,  there are no animals included in any of these. Except for the check and houndstooth fabrics, it's all gorgeous flower or plant related shapes like seeds..

I really enjoy the variation of patterns used in the backgrounds of the florals.

I'm really into the rainbow houndstooth fabrics. And the patterns on the seeds (or water droplets).

The neons are Very Neon.

A lot of these would play very well with other Tula Pink fabric lines, there are similar motifs that are similar and the colors would work together.

The Tula Pink solids are super pretty. The fabric quality is very good for a solid.

The neon checkerboards are super stinky with the heavy neon print. It's very stiff and plasticky as well. I hope that it washes out and softens somewhat.

Always fun to check out the selvedges.

I like the colors on the selvedge being represented in water droplet (or seed) shapes.

I used my laundry marker to write in the names of the solids, just in case I end up needing more of one color.

Green Giving

 

Adding binding to one of the BAMQ community giving quilts. The front and back of this one was made by friend Jaye, not sure who quilted it. The quilting is very nicely done.

First I stitched around the outside of the quilt edge before trimming the excess backing and binding.

Went on pretty easily, now to either hand stitch while watching the 49ers game or maybe machine stitch it with some green thread in the top and bobbin.

Friendship Back Bits

 

Time to use up the scraps and bits left over from making the Friendship Star blocks for the back of the quilt.

Those are some long seams to sew. At least I got some of my scraps sewn together in time to be included in the quilt back.

Maybe just maybe I'm on a roll with quilt backs at the moment. Hopefully I am so I'm ready to bring a quilt to the long armer next week. 

Actually Metro Twist Back

 

The Metro Twist quilt top now has an official backing made. I had worked on this at the last Sew Day and without measuring had made a quilt back that was just shy of fitting. The width was just a little bit too small. I'm still very pleased with how close I came just intuitively sewing pieces of fabric together. And I don't mind the addition of the orange strip along the right hand side. Now to make the binding out of the strange blue from the quilt top background.

Gone in Circles

 

Back to hopefully finishing the walking foot quilting on Running Out of Raincloud. I want to do some piecing and I need to swap over the feet, so time to get this done.

Even though I didn't get it done in time to submit it to the quilt challenge, I still want to see where I'm going to end up with this one. After alllll those straight lines, it Needed Circles.

Yes, yes it did. It was hard going at some points to follow and echo the correct line of stitching.

The complexity of all the lines of quilting intersecting is really fun to look at.

Am I now done with quilting this thing? Maybe. Probably. 

Most of the quilt has more than one direction of quilting line, some more than four. But there is some space that only has one line of quilting. I think it's okay. It lies flat enough and doesn't stick out like a sore thumb.

Really like the look of this circle. I think I"ll put the facing on and sit with it for a bit.

Sister Artists Butterflies & Bird

 

I got the other two butterflies and the one bird embroidered pieces inked up. This is the only piece that was on a cream colored background. I was little concerned that the blue color would end up being drastically different. I think it turned out just fine. I still need to figure out what this brown flower (maybe?) is, although it looks a bit like four yams arranged together.

The embroidered initials are signatures of the artists. I kind of like them hanging out there like they're smaller butterflies or other insects off in the distance.

My current plan is that the bird will be pieced into a tree sort of situation.  I'll continue the brown of the tree branch and blend in greens with the rest of the background.

On the bird I used some yellow in the background and instead of inking over it with blue, I added dots of green fabric pen for more texture.

Sister Artists Butterfly

 
Time for me to start working on the Sister Artists piece I need to do.  I have received these really great hand-embroidered butterflies (and one bird) made by women artists in Uganda. They're all done on white or cream fabric, and I need either a blue or green background to make the quilt work that I want to make with them. The white is just too high contrast.

I started out with some sky blue Tsukineko ink all around the butterfly, the ink wicked up through the fabric pretty quickly. I added it a small distance away from the embroidery so that it didn't change the thread color too obviously.

Then I added some "orchid odyssey" aka lavender.

That mixed together pretty well for a nice sky effect so I put in a bit darker of blue with Cerulean blue.

Here's how it looks after it's dried overnight. I like the look of it much better now, it'll be so much easier to incorporate into a quilt without the glaring white background. And even better the ink didn't affect the embroidery threads.  Now to do the other embroidered pieces in a similar manner.