Plenty to Go Around Part 7

Plenty to Go Around Part 7

This is one very cheerful post.  As a few of the batik designs I made did not look so hot in the making. In my mind, I could see the final product, but I wasn't sure if it was real or not.  Today, I am happy to share with you that both ideas actually look okay, and not, in fact, a disaster!

The first is the chickadee, which I have blogged about before here:
This is the photo of where I left off:

Add here is the first one I have finally appliqued to the quilt top:

I am still debating whether or not to add eyes to the birds. As for the logistics, there are 48 birds to sew on.  For each one, I change thread colors as I go around the little bird, about 6 times.  I have completed about 15, so I have a bit more work to do.  Ha! I will have to say that the hard part is the little beak.  It is so hard stuffing under the fabric edges into such a small space.  Yikes!
After the first ring of birds was completed, I started on the little orange flowers. I have also posted about the making of those orange flowers here.
When we last left off, the fabric looked like this:

Then they were all individually cut into stacks waiting to be appliqued to the surface:

And now, I have a few sewn on with their edges turned under.  I love how sweet and delicate they look!

And once again, on both of these, a batiked white section was used to define the shape of the design and make the hand sewing just a bit easier because the white blends into the background.  You can see it on the tail of the chickadee, and just ever so slightly on the stem of these orange flowers.  I am feeling rather pleased that this idea was useful and worked the way that I planned. 

Meanwhile, progress on this project is still a bit slow, but is moving forward.  I have a funny story to leave you with.  I was working on this project in a public location and a large group of older women (ok, my age women!) came by.  One of them asked what it was that I was doing and I replied making a quilt.  Then another looked a bit shocked and said, "a proper quilt? All by hand?"  It was all I could do not to get offended or even laugh at the suggestion that if it wasn't all by hand then it wasn't proper? I just smiled and said yes.  Because in this case, it will all be made by hand.  I don't know if it will ever be considered proper though, at least not once I finish the imagery for the back side.  Stay tuned!

Plenty to Go Around: Part 6

Plenty to Go Around: Part 6
The Illusion of Thin Stems

For the spiral flowers, I wanted really thin stems.  Unfortunately, if I cut the fabric as thin as I wanted, I was worried there would be too much fabric to be able to stuff all the edges underneath.  So, I came up with this for a solution. I would try to match part of the stem with the background fabric (which is white). I batiked some simple 1/2" wide white stripes and dyed it blue.

Then I cut some strips and folded the ends, and then the sides.  You can see a sample in the photo above.

Then I pinned them under the flower heads, slightly to one side.

I hand stitched in place along the dotted line above, and then folded the remaining piece over.

With all the edges turned under, I pinned them in place.  I think they look kind of scary with all the pins, and was afraid my thread would get caught on the pins while I was sewing.  I was pleasantly surprised that the thread did not catch much at all!  After a quick applique stitch with matching blue thread along the blue side of the stem, they are done!

It is a narrow little stem, but half of it fades into the background, and only the blue part is obvious.  The actual fabric stem is now about 1/4" wide, but just the blue part is 1/8" wide. There is a delicate and playful quality to it.  I am really pleased with the way this little experiment has worked!  Adds quite a "pop" to the little spiral flowers! I love how cute it looks with the fawns and the hummingbird! Very sweet and happy!