Skip to main content

Alphabet Heart


Alphabet Heart, my latest design evolved from my Red Flowers design.  As usual, my mind wandered as I stitched the Red Flowers.  I imagined it stitched with overdyed floss instead of plain old DMC floss.  I also realized I was not restricted to a square or rectangle.  The colors reminded me of Valentines Day and I remembered a heart shaped Altoids tin tucked away in a drawer.

Sidetracked, I abandoned my stitching and rooted around for the tin and traced it onto graph paper.  I transferred the flower design into the heart outline.  The next challenge was colors.  I knew I had the perfect overdye.  I found it right away but was dismayed to find there was no tag on it. 


I went to the local needlework store to play detective.  It is definitely silk, not cotton.  But, nothing at the store was the same colors - I must have gotten it in a kit.  I passed on an Internet search.  There are so many flosses out there and identifying it based on a picture seemed unlikely even if I stumbled across the correct website.

My design has to be reproducible so I put the floss aside and found another thread that included a tag.  I definitely like the way it turned out, however, it would have been great in the other colors too.  Maybe I'll make another one in the future.  Luckily, the red and greens where easy to choose - I have plenty on hand, all with the tags for easy identification.

  When I finished stitching the design I discovered it was too big to fit on the Altoid tin.  In my rush, I had made a math error.  Instead of starting over, I decided to go with the design as is.  I was stitching on a big piece of linen with plenty of room.  So, I added a traditional sampler alphabet (which also made it fit into a standard frame) and am pleased with the result.

It was a rather roundabout journey, with the design/plan changing on me every few days.  That's the way it goes sometimes.  Perhaps if I had started a day earlier or day later, the final design would have been very different (it might have fit on that darn tin).  Sometimes it is hard to stop at one design, you want to play with all the different variations.

This design is available on http://www.patternsonline.com/.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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 noticed - all of the baskets are
Post a Comment
Read more

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 or omitted the letters altogether. I do miss
2 comments
Read more

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.
4 comments
Read more