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.

A Giants Blanket

As some of you know, MisterStitches and I go to a lot of San Francisco Giants baseball games.  San Francisco is not known for having warm summers, so many of our games get quite chilly, especially the night games.  As do many people at the games, we have a blanket to cover up with on cold nights. It says "SF Giants" on it, and we bought it quite a while ago at the ballpark.  But it was never just right.  It wasn't quite wide enough to go comfortably over both our laps, and it was too long--always dragging on the floor.

So I made us a new blanket.  I bought some fleece fabric, in a Giants design, of course!  And the two of us measured how big we thought the blanket should be.  This one would be wider than it was long! At about 2 yards wide and 40 inches long, it's the perfect size.

The Giants logo looks a little blurry here, but it is just the fuzzy fabric.

Both kitties were very interested in it.  They like to help me with my quilting A Lot.  Percy is on the left, and Cassie is on the right.  She thinks the blanket smells really good.

I also bought a piece of plain black fleece for the backing--I wanted the blanket to have two thicknesses.  A lot of the fleece blankets I see have the edges cut into "fringes" and then the two layers are tied together with these "fringes."  But I wanted to do it a different way.  

I first of all sewed the two layers together right sides together, leaving an opening to turn.   After turning it right side out, I sewed again around the edge about a half inch from the edge seam.  It makes a very nice finish on the blanket.

I think Percy approves of the new blanket.  I bet he thinks it is his.  He might be disappointed when he can't find it lying around the house!