Circle Coralled

 One of the free P.O.T.S. (plastic organizer thingies) I got from the free table at Sew Day is now in use containing all the threads and most of the tools I'll be using for the Circle Sampler. 

Here's what it looks like with the label taken off.

Now that I have my felt cut to the right size, I can finally get started stitching.

Poetic Supplies

I'm taking a class, called Poetic Cloth from Jane Dunnewold which is really fun so far, but it required me to source some new fabric from a new supplier that she suggested. Online Fabric Store (yes, that's actually the name of it). For the class I bought two fabrics to try printing with, two yards of 60" white cotton broadcloth, and 2 yards of 45" bleached cotton muslin. What an interesting picture this is for white on white, right? I tried my best and held the two fabrics up to the window. I need to wash and dry them before I actually get started on pulling prints.

These fabrics will be used along with the new and much bigger Gelli Plate that was suggested that I just invested in. The one I had was only 8x10", so buying this much larger one will make it easier to print something as big as FQ which will be more usable in quilt making. Think of this as the before picture, taken while it's pristine and untouched.

I had most of the paints, and inks on the supply list already, but I didn't have these four. I've never used a paint retarder before so I'm interested in learning how that works.

Also at The Online Fabric Store, I found two kinds of felt. In the class notes, it was suggested to try out the display of smaller works we'll be making on this sort of sturdy dark grey felt, it seemed like it would be a good thing to learn. 

And after looking all over to source it locally, I finally found a grey wool felt that I can use in the Circle Sampler. Wool is really hard to find, especially in the size that I needed. I should have just bought it fro Sue Spargo back when I bought the pattern. I had even tried buying a wool coat at GoodWill and deconstructing it, but the largest rectangle wasn't even close to big enough. Now that I have the background, I can actually start this project.

So, after adding in those 7 yards, it brings my fabric tracker up to a net inflow of 11.8 yards.

To-Be Embroidered

 

I think I've found my wool for the background of the Toned-Down Circle Sampler. I snapped this up at the local Goodwill shop.

 A very nice quality but small-ish ladies wool coat. Perfect size for my uses.  The front was a bit worn but the back which I'll be using is in perfect shape. It's a good weight, heavy enough but still flexible enough.

I think it looks pretty good with the circles and threads. Now to get cutting to size and get down to start some stitching. And now I'm think how cool this project could be on a coat that someone would wear. I'd love to see that in real life.

Circling Round

 

I'm gathering the supplies to make the Sue Spargo embroidery sampler, Toned Down Circle Sampler. I had bought a bag of wool circles ages ago. I used some of these to make my 5-4-5-7 quilt earlier this year. The circles came in two sizes, 1" and 2". The pattern calls for 1" circles so I counted out all the 1" circles required. Almost enough to do the pattern.

I chose four of the 2" circles to cut down to 1", so now I have enough circles for the pattern.  I now need to find a piece of wool for the background to appliqué these onto. The only piece I have on hand is a FabMo sourced one that is a very bright orange and is quite heavy-weight. I haven't gone through my felted wool box yet though. 

I'm trying hard to use what I already have on hand, but as I said earlier I did buy this package of threads along with the pattern. They are a wool-acrylic blend thread called Ellana which I've never used before. The other three spools of Eleganza perlé cotton were previous purchases that happened to match up with the specific colors called for in the pattern. 

I still have to look through the rest of my embroidery threads to make sure I have a good enough assortment of colors and types that will work well enough with the colors of the circles. Hopefully I'll have enough of the embroidery threads of many of the types and weights that are called for. I think I'll likely have enough as I'm not trying to exactly match the sampler pattern. The actual Toned-Down Circles pattern is basically a recipe book of stitch combinations with fairly simple illustrations that refers to the Creative Stitching book by Sue Spargo. That's a book I've had for a while but haven't worked with too much yet. It's a really well-done presentation of a variety of stitches that I've seen but never tried myself.