Stitching Randomly

No, this isn't the same picture as last time. All the wool strips have been tacked down so the project is now portable.

I'll be filling it in with stitches, beads and sequins. I don't know exactly how and I don't care. I'll figure it all out as I'm stitching. When I'm not following a pattern that's how I work. I sometimes think that if I had started the project a day or an hour earlier the end result would be completely different.

I call this random stitching - this is one I did a while ago. It is actually work to be random. It's easy to fall into a pattern and then start repeating it again and again. I had some lessons in randomness early on and I can now easily stitch randomly.

Back when I was a teenager, my sister and I read the Dune series by Frank Herbert. Briefly, it is science fiction and takes place a planet made up entirely of sand dunes. Outside of the main city on Dune it is dangerous. The main predator is a gigantic sand worm that can easily eat people whole. It is attracted by regular sounds. So, the natives have perfected a method of walking without rhythm.

About the same time we found ourselves at the Sand Dunes National Monument (now Park) in Southern Colorado which is a mini version of Dune. It even had the same wildlife (except for the evil sand worms) like kangaroo rats. As soon as we got into the sand one of the first things we tried (besides running down the dunes and pretending to be stranded in the desert without water) was the "dune walk".

The "dune walk" is not easy. After a few steps you either freeze up unsure of what to do next or trip and fall. We gave up and went back to normal walking and playing.

A few years later I got another lesson on randomness that really helped. More on that later ...

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More Wildflowers of America

Since I have framed the stitched Bleeding Heart from Curtis Boehringer's Wildflowers of America I decided to track down the other 3 wildflowers that had I stiched earlier. I chose these flowers because they reminded me of the forests of Ohio where I grew up - Jack-in-the-Pulpit, Wake Robin and Bloodroot. The Jack-in-the-Pulpit and Wake Robin where both finished with fabric frames. This was a favorite finishing technique of mine for a long time. On the back they are dated 1999 - that was a while ago. I remember the quilt store where I purchased the fabric, but not its name. It's gone now but it was in an old Victorian house in Old Colorado City. The turrets where lined with bolts of fabric and hey had a great selection of plaids. I had never heard name Wake Robin before and it means nothing to me, but the flower is definitely a Trillium. Back then, I dutifully followed the pattern. Now I would have used the name Trillium ...

Diverted by Dorset Buttons

I learned how to make Dorset Buttons yesterday at our monthly EGA meeting . These little buttons are so much fun to make! We only got three rings so that's how many I made. If I would have gotten more I'd probably be still making them. One nice thing is that they are very forgiving. I made countless mistakes on my first one and you can't tell. A quick google revealed lots of websites with historical information and tutorials on how to make them so I'm not even going to try to describe the process. Some people made their buttons with yarn, others used perle cotton. One of the examples had beads on it, so once I got home I had to find some beads to sew on. That's it for now. I'm going to be keeping my eye's open rings to use. I'm also going to have to go through my yarn stash. Using yarn gives a totally different result and I want to try some yarn ones too.

It's about time - the big reveal

My bright quilt was finished in June but I wanted to wait until both were done before sharing the pictures. Quilting the blue quilt didn't take long but finishing the binding sure did. I did procrastinate a bit as it was too warm to have a huge quilt on my lap for most of the summer. After this, I'll probably do all the binding on my sewing machine (and stick to smaller quilts). Notice the cut-out corners? That was a challenge. I found instructions here and it looked easy enough but I wished I had practiced some. After a lot of finessing I finally got good miters but I could have done much better. The cut-out corners allow the quilt to hang nicely over the edges of the mattress and it's a perfect match for a full sized mattress. But, the top edge isn't even close to the pillows. I wonder how the quilt fit on the bed it was made for. Here, at last, is the original quilt that I was copying. I just...

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