Applique Handwork for a Road Trip (Part 2)

There was a slight change of plans for our road trip.  At the last minute I went by plane, rather than by car.  I was actually quite bummed that I would not get all that nice time to do hand sewing.  So I ended up taking just one project with me, as well as some crocheting.  

First of all, I went to my LQS (Local Quilt Shop) to buy some Perle Cotton in ecru to do my stitching.  They come in those cute little balls, all wound so precisely.  Well, that was until my kitties found it!  It happened just a few minutes after I got home.  So I took this photo and emailed it to Marva, my LQS owner, because I thought it was so funny!  She ended up putting it on Facebook, which I found amusing.  

 Those cats had gotten an awful lot of thread removed from the ball!  So the next thing was to re-wind the thread onto the ball. 

No, it's' definitely not the neat little ball that it originally was!

So here's the project.  I had a piece of tan-colored silk, kind of a very light cafe au lait color.  It's quite a few years old.  I acquired it by going to a class that was teaching us how to use traditional Japanese shibori dyeing. That's when natural plants are used to naturally dye fabric.  And the dye patterns are determined by how the fabric gets folded, pleated, or otherwise manipulated.  It's been so long since the class that I can't remember exactly what I did with my fabric. But it has some little random circles on it.  Some of the circles are square-ish shaped.

I paired it with this tan/red floral fabric for the backing.  I sewed the fabrics right sides together, but left the ends open.  My idea is to do some sashiko-type stitching in a random, free-form all-over design to hold the two fabrics together to be a scarf.

Here is some of the stitching.  It's quite fun to just go wherever I feel like with my stitches!  This photo shows the end of the scarf where I started the sewing.  You can see some of the pink basting threads in the photo.  I needed to keep the two fabrics stabilized, so they wouldn't shift around on me as I was handling it and stitching it.

And here's how it looks on the back.

I'm starting and stopping each thread by pulling the small knot through to the wrong side of the backing fabric, so they are all buried between the fabrics.

Applique Handwork For a Road Trip (Part 1)

For our road trip to southern California, I prepared a few pieces of hand sewing that I could work on in the car.  As long as it's a straight highway, like Highway 5, I can sew in the car.

I found this image on Pinterest.  I really liked the design of the blocks, and thought this would be a fun way to use up some purple-ish fabric that I have.  

There was no pattern or diagram, so I had to make my own.  This is my first attempt at drawing the design.  I decided on 12 1/2" blocks, and below is the left-hand side of the block.  It took a little experimenting to get the right size for the petals and leaf.

Here I refined the drawing  so that I could make templates.  

I made templates from double layers of freezer paper.  I made a cutting template and a separate actual-size template.

Below is where I am using spray starch and a make-up sponge brush to press down the edges of the leaves.  I didn't have a proper brush when I started, so I was using a Q-tip for an applicator.  Of course, that became fuzzy after a bit and was unusable.  But they're cheap, and they do have two tips on one handle!  Then I decided to try a makeup-applicator.  It seemed to work well, but then it, too broke down after not too long.  I guess it's not intended for this purpose!

Spray starch in the can's lid.

Here are several finished pressed petals.  They look a little like small canoes, don't you think?!?

Or maybe pea pods!?!

Here is my test square.  I have lots of this purple batik fabric:  different "dye patterns" but the same colors.  I sewed the purple to a few different yellow fabrics that I had in my stash to make the background for the flowers.  

I glued down the stem and petals for the appliqué  and that worked fairly well.  But there was a definite presence of glue!  Maybe I was a little heavy-handed.

This close-up shows the purple fabric showing through the paler yellow fabric of the flower petals.  I took care of that by using a scissors to trim out the back purple fabric.  That went pretty well, until I snipped a hole in one of the yellow petals!  AAARRRGGGGGHHHHHH!  I think excess glue on the petals made it too hard to separate the petal fabric from the purple background fabric, which aided in my snipping the petal fabric.

I can fix this by removing that damaged petal and sewing on a replacement.  So the whole block is not wasted.

 Now I have about 16 blocks all ready to take with me in the car.  I have used pins instead of glue.  On this test block, I hadn't yet added the green leaf to the stem, or the light green circle to the center of the flower.

Crocheted Baby Afghans

Here are the latest baby afghans I've crocheted.  The first is a nice peachy-pinky color.

I simply used single crochet and double crochet for the whole thing.  Then I added in one row of "filagree," creating a little interest to the overall pattern.

This purple one ended up to be square.

On each end I crocheted some filagree spaces in two bands across the afghan.

And, just for fun, I purposely made a little square "hole" in the body.

This light blue one turned out very nicely, I think.

I used a stitch where I skip a stitch, then do a single crochet and a double crochet both in the next stitch.  It makes a nice little pattern.

And this afghan is made up of my leftover yarns.  I really like making these scrappy afghans.

Here are all four of the afghans.

Asilomar 2018

I went to Asilomar again a few weeks ago, to attend Empty Spools Seminars.  This time my teacher was Louisa Smith, and her class was called Strips and Curves.  So, of course, our class was known as the strippers!  Oh, what a fun class, having nothing to do with stripping!!

In preparing for the class, I first chose a focus fabric, which is the large floral Kaffe Fassett in the foreground of the first photo below.  Then I pulled as many fabrics as I could find in my stash that even remotely went with that fabric.  Those are swatches that I've glued onto a piece of paper next to the focus fabric.  At the last minute I also threw in a set of 1/2 yard cuts of turquoise fabrics that I found.  Really glad that I did.  

Our class instructions (before we arrived at class) said to cut one or two 1 1/2" strips from each fabric.  So here are all my strips, plus the turquoise ones I cut later, during class.

Louisa then played with my fabric strips.  She grouped all the purples together, the aquas, etc.  She also took into consideration hue, making a pleasing "array" of the strips, so they all flowed nicely together.  I pieced all of these strips together, the result of which was a new "fabric" consisting of one-inch (finished) strips.  You can see in the photo below how nicely the turquoise/aqua strips play together and show up the tiny bits of that color in my focus fabric.

I have to say, sewing all of these strips together was not a piece of cake!!  Each seam had to be pressed open, so the new "fabric" would lie flatter than it would with seams pressed to one side.  

A couple years ago I made for myself a "gizmo" to help with pressing seams open.

Here it is.  I don't even know what the tool is called, but I know a quilting tool exists which is shaped like this.  At the time, I needed one NOW!  Living in the boonies as I do, I decided that I could make one; it's fairly simple.  

This tool is like a wooden dowel that has been sliced in half length-wise.  So I went to my local hardware store/lumbar yard and asked if they had any half-round molding, which is what this shape is called.  No, they didn't, but they did have quarter-rounds.  So I bought a strip of that, and they cut it into two equal lengths for me, about 17 inches long.  

 This photo shows the end of the thingy, and you can see that there are two quarter circles, which I glued together with wood glue.  

Then I covered the whole length with a strip of batting, then a piece of muslin, which I glued on top of the batting.  When it's lying flat side down, there is a nice curved surface on top.  That is a big help when pressing seams open, because the seam line lies on top of the "hill" and is very easily pressed open. I needed this when I was making Disappearing Four Patch blocks.  Those have a lot of intersecting seams, so it's a good idea to press them open.  

Flat side (bottom) of the pressing tool.

Anyway, I knew I would be pressing seams open, so I wanted to take my pressing tool to Asilomar with me.  I thought of it in the middle of the night. . .  You know the story:  completely forgotten!  (BTW, I've since decided that in the middle of the night I should send myself an email if I have an idea about something.  I don't have paper and pen beside my bed, but I do have my phone charging.)

So I forgot to take the pressing tool with me.  That would have helped a lot, but I managed to get things pressed flat.  

Louisa Smith has created a set of curved cutting templates.  We proceeded to create blocks by cutting pieces of our focus fabric, pieces of our strata (sewn together strips), and pieces of some of the accompanying fabrics.  In the photo below you can see the large piece of focus fabric making the curve in the top left of the block.  Then I used one of the templates and cut a piece of my strata to put next to the focus fabric.  I used the turquoise part of the strata, so there would be nice contrast between the two pieces.  The "spikey" piece made up of bright pink and turquoise fabrics, the next curved arc, was paper pieced.  Louisa has also designed paper piecing diagrams as another way to combine fabrics.  And the small flowered piece in the lower right of the block is one of the fabrics from the strata.

The rest of the week's class was devoted to putting together pieces like this.  Although it sounds simple, it can be very tricky to find the right template to use when cutting the next piece of fabric.  As anyone who has done curved piecing and/or drunkard's path blocks knows, those two fabric edges do not look like they will fit together.  But they do!  

We used our design walls, and moved pieces here and there, trying to find the best arrangement of blocks.  Below is a photo of my design wall during the process.

Here is my group of 20 blocks which I ended up with.  They are not sewn together in this photo.  Some of the individual blocks are not even sewn together into the blocks.  I used many, many pins to secure the blocks to my piece of white fabric piece (which covers the design board), in order to transport them home with some sort of order!  I also took a lot of photos before I left.  I rotated the photos to decide which configuration looked best to me.  

Now I'm working on sewing together the pieces of my blocks, then I'll sew the blocks together.

This has been (is being) a very fun thing to do.  I learned a lot from this class.  Louisa Smith is a great teacher, and I recommend taking a class from her if you ever get the chance.