Muddy Hours

 It's done, my entry for the 15.4 Project Quilting prompt: Hourglass. This is called Muddy Hours.

Details, so many details.

I used machine embroidery and also normal echo stitching.

I like this corner the most. This on its own would make a cool quilt.

I like the muddiness of the printed image and the muddiness of the over dyed check linen/hemp. vs. the very clear and vibrant color hand dyed cottons.

Up close and personal, in the lower right hadn't corner, you can see my family's standing order at our favorite sushi restaurant. I was testing out the printer before I printed the fabric by printing the sushi order. There was a little hiccup and for unknown printer reasons it reprinted itself on the fabric. I then over printed with the image. Adds a little visual texture, especially because it's upside down and mostly illegilble.

Edges Out

 After a whole lot of machine embroidery stitches, I called this Project Quilting 15.3 entry done for the prompt "Inside Out". And I titled it "Edges Out."

I was thrilled to discover that if I did one of the embroidery stitches in one direction and then in the opposite direction it created this cool interlocking circle design. 

Yes, I used the embroidered circle stitch on each of the plaid intersections.

Edges are definitely out, they are fluffy, they are stringy, they are full of texture. This is one of those pieces that feels really really nice to my fingers.

Fringing And Raveling

 I began work on my piece for Project Quilting 15.3, the theme of which is "Inside-Out". This is where I left off last night. I'm shooting for something about the same size of the previous two 8.5"x11"pieces, for Sky Color and Nest. That size was dictated by the use of a digital sketch printed out on fabric.

 The theme of Inside Out made me think of ravell-y raw edges. Which of course led to me going to the extreme of ravell-y goodness causing me to pull out my bin of smallish squares of silk and linens from FabMo. These are always so fun to work with as they act so much differently than plain ol' quilter's cotton.

I began stitching some of these pieces together with a kind of loopy machine embroidery stitch, with wrong sides together. I made sure to leave a lot of seam allowance and then spent a lot of time picking the threads to get it fringing and raveling right down to the line of stitching.

I'm using two different color threads in the top and the bottom for a little bit more color among the neutral fabrics.

This neat and tidy side is showing the wrong side for this piece as made so far. Although in any other context it'd likely be the "right" side. It's still somewhat interesting because of the different fabrics, the checks vs. stripes, but not nearly as much texture.  This piece is due to be posted by 8am tomorrow so I'll be hopefully finishing it off today.

Un-nested

 

I found out about Project Quilting last year, even though it's been going for quite a while. It's inspired by Project Runway with short term challenges, just like the show. But we don't have to all come to NYC, live in an apartment and shop at Mood Fabrics. We get to stay home and create. This is the first time I'm participated and I was inspired by the first challenge: Bird House or Nest. 

I sketched this out in Procreate on my iPad. This deconstructed nest is somewhat loosely based on the mess that the blue jays leave on our patio every year. They don't make an actual nest there, they just store their materials, ie lots and lots of sticks in a big untidy heap.

I printed it out on some Dharma Trading cotton (which they no longer carry, only no-steam silk now) and sandwiched it. I used a pressing sheet just in case of ink transfer.

As you can see my printer is having a bit of a hard time, even though the paper backed fabric worked perfectly. The colors didn't come through (reminder to add more ink), there are black blotches on the leading edge and those allover pink lines, oy! It looks a bit like an instagram filter has been put over the original image.

I made it work though (just like on Project Runway, haha) and used the pink lines as quilting lines.

I like that all of a sudden I'm right back to Journal Quilt size (8.5 x 11"). 

Some closeups of the stitching. I used one of the embroidery stitches that almost looks like a Richter scale reading in a few places on the edge. 

I switched over from walking foot quilting to free motion and tried to go over my awful handwriting. It made it less clear, which is what I wanted, to make it a bit more abstracted and non-communicative.

My signature was clear though, probably because I wasn't trying to stitch over printed out handwriting.

I quite like it, even with the printing issues. Now to go post mine and check out what other people have already come up with.

Dyed Strips

 Each of the original 12 fat quarters has been torn into four strips and then those have been grouped into 10 different dye colors that'll be used in the over-dyeing process.

Here are strips from the original 12 fat quarters as seen in the group shot yesterday. These are working as the "control group" for this over-dyeing process. They've got their little paper tags with the safety pins because they're no longer going to be getting in a dye bath.

Some of the groups have more strips than the other groups, but that's how this works out with the dye colors we're working with.

I had to accordion fold and then steam iron the folds for each strip. I'm hoping this will create a sort of cross-hatch grid work look.

Here you can see one group's strips, with their machine-embroidered codes on the selvedge. Other methods of marking are also used like various waterproof markers, sewing on small squares of Tyvek with the information written on them, etc. But with 36 strips now, you've got to keep track to see which color interacts in which way with the other dyes.

Now they're all rolled up and ready to dye. It's a little fiddly, but keeping track of which color got over-dyed in what other color is going to be very interesting. I can't wait to compare them all!

Summer's End Post Card

 

I have a fabric postcard to make and send by tomorrow, so here's the beginnings before I began stitching. Yes, those are mostly Metro Twist scraps.

I went a little extreme on the machine embroidery.

A lot of stitching. Some of which was impacted by stitching on only one layer of fabric and batting.

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A detail before I added the final fabric piece.

The finished piece.

Details including stitched edges.

I like how this one piece of + + + + + + fabric looks like a ribbon.

I had fun doing circles on the "roof edges." Hopefully my recipient will enjoy receiving the card.

Graphic Letters

 The plumber is here to replace our hot water heater, the power is still out but the sun is out charging up our battery, and the internet has remained up and running, so I'm happy as can be.

I'm working on finishing up the words on the second SJSA block.

Tne block maker asked for graphic letters in black and red. I knew it had to be mostly red as the background fabric has that awesome black diamond shaped pattern. And I just happened to have a small length of red satin ribbon.

I think the first word turned out pretty well. My DH says the first T looks a little like a J because of the background fabric so I may extend that down a teeny bit. It needs to read ProTect not ProJect.

I traced around the block letters with a Sewline marker to give myself the right spacing and to fit the letters in the space. Just a little glue stick to hold the ribbon sections down and then a slow zig zag  and tah-dah. 

The next two words are also done in red ribbon, of a slightly different width and color but with similar zig stitching. 

I think using the red really helps it pop out past that visually strong background fabric.

I'm happy with how the two blocks worked out and I hope the blockmakers, if they ever the finished quilt, will like what I did with their blocks.

While I had my box of ribbon out, I decided to put away the ribbons that I'd cleaned up out of my scrap basket and worktable area. 

I had these out and hanging around (literally) because I liked seeing these, because they're all so interesting and beautiful like little art pieces, so I hadn't put them away in the box. Hopefully I won't forget about them...

Stitching on SJSA Blocks

 

Most of the stitching of the two SJSA blocks is now done. They both had a lot of tiny details, so I chose to use machine stiching this time. This one in particular took a lot of time because of the trees and roots.

This wording was done as directed by the block maker in a comprehensive note that accompany the block. The first time I've ever gotten any direction or input from the block maker. I tried my best to do the lettering just as they asked. I briefly considered making letters out of red fabric on my Circuit but they would have been so skinny that they'd have been covered up by the zigzag/satin stitching I'd be doing anyways. I think the words read really well.

This one is all done except for the lettering, which I may accomplish with some couching of yarn as the block maker has requested black and red letters. I might do some testing on that one first.

The instructions were very clear on this one too, they really wanted the pen/pencil lines stitched which really help with the 3-D-ness of the shoe.

Close-up of the snake face.