Erica's Stitches

The fall colors are starting to show even though it's still August.  The goldenrod are blooming. The wild sunflowers are blooming. Unidentified yellow-gold flowers are everywhere. Even leaves are beginning to turn. Of all the colors, yellow reminds me the most of the fall.  To me this golden color signals fall more than red, orange or brown. Normally I don't think about yellow much.  When I'm chosing colors yellow always seems to be on the bottom of the list.  My yellow crayon was always lasted the longest. Maybe sometime I'll think of the fall flowers and build a color scheme around them.

I'm behind.  I've had a self-imposed deadline of the end of summer for many projects and they are not done.  So, I've been trying harder.  The result - finished pieces? No, the result is sore wrists so I stopped stitching last week and won't be stitching again for a few more days. So, I've had to find other ways to amuse myself.  I'm machine quilting and I tried fusing plastic bags.  There are many tutorials in books and on the web and I have no shortage of plastic bags so I thought I'd try. At first the iron was too hot and the result had holes and was distorted and bumpy.  Still, I like the result.   Ghostly echos of familiar logos show through the fused plastic. As I adjusted the iron temperature each attempt made better and better "fabric". I'm thinking of making bags.  Or book covers. This one was a gigantic clear pillow-case bag with some cut up bread bags inside.  Interesting results and some interesting "fabric&qu

Yesterady I got to forget about everything and take a class at the Local Yarn Store . I  learned to make something new - a felted basket. First we made a long felted cord.  I used 3 colors of roving and some silk strands. Next we started making a coil and sewing it together to form the basket. I got it almost finished in class but, after a nap, I was able to finish before it got dark. As usual, I came away with ideas for other projects.  As usual, it may be a long time before I get to make any more baskets.

Another wide open weekend arrived and I was full of plans of projects to work on.  Instead a 25 box of tomatos appeared unexpectedly. I found a recipe that used lots of tomatos and required 4 hour of cooking.  Perfect!  I could get rid of the tomatos and have stitching time while they cooked. The first hour was spent cleaning up the mess I made getting ready The second hour disappeared somewhere ... checking laundry, putting something away, finding something else. The third hour I actually stitched without getting an sauce on my stitching. The last hour was spent getting the rest of the dinner ready.  After all, you have to have something to put the sauce on. That's how it seems to be going these days.   For every 4 hours of planned stitching I get one hour instead.  Oh well, the house smelled great and the sauce tasted great.

Acorns!  There are acorns on the Gambel Oaks this year! Usually there aren't many and they are quickly picked off by the squirrels. According to Wikipedia the acorn is a symbol of patience.  I believe it because I don't see them that often.  We have planted many baby oak trees and it will be years before any of them have acorns. Thinking back, I have many samplers with acorns on them showing a patience of a different kind. I also have very patient friends.  These acorns were stitched on a round-robin sampler. Isn't it fun looking at all the variations on a simple acorn design.  They are all different and they are all obviously acorns.  Makes me want to stitch some more acorns.  Maybe later.

Here's my latest pattern available at patternsonline .  It's called the Striped Pumpkin and was done back at the same time as the Striped Mountain Scene and the Striped Snowman . I've been waiting for Halloween to get closer before releasing it.  It's beginning to act a little like fall so the time is right. I started with only an outline and filled it in like a coloring book starting with the face.  I collected 7 oranges and 7 greens to fill in the pumpkin and background.  The colors were alternated in my usual random style. However, adding stripes does add complexity.  I'm tempted to stitch it again with only one orange, green, brown and black.  First I'll have to finish the other Halloween design I'm working on.  I'm stitching as fast as I can and hope to have it done in a few more weeks.

I finished my 5 stitch challenge nametag . The challenge was to use 5 stitches and 5 threads. I used one thread to backstitch each letter of my name and picked a stitch include over each letter: E - perle cotton and eyelet R - overdyed cotton floss and rice stitch I - wool and interlaced backstitch C - overdyed silk floss and chain stitch A - silk perle and arrowhead stitch For the stitches above each letter, I used 2 or 3 threads.  Since the background is very dark and the thread differences are all subtle, I don't know if I got the full effect of using 5 threads.  I can't wait to debut the name tag at the September EGA meeting.

I finally finished basting my big quilt. Now I'll have to quilt it.  I haven't free-motion quilted anything in a long time so I'm going to do a few warm up projects first.  And practice on paper. I dug this cupcake out of my fabric drawer.  It was from the June 2009 quilt shop hop.  It's is only 8 inches square.  Layering the backing, batting and top and basting took under 5 minutes.  I wish they could all be done that quickly. First, I outlined the cupcake.  I am really out of shape for free-motion quilting - the thread broke a few times and the stitch size is way too small. Then I moved on to the stippling.  I started getting more comfortable and the stitch size improved.  My hands remembered how to move the fabric to stipple and my brain engaged. I've been blogging about stitching and knitting randomly and it clicked that stippling is quilting randomly.  I do the same random things.  If you start repeating the same pattern the stipple doesn't look right

Randomness - Part 3 My Random Lessons were forgotten for years. Then, when I started doing my own designs and picking my own colors the old lessons were remembered. For the Royal Gorge Postcard I needed to stitch the wall of the gorge.  To start, I pulled out every overdyed floss I had that was remotely brown.  Some were dark brown, others light.  One was brown with yellows.  One was mostly tan and purple but there was some brown. Without looking too closely I reached down and pulled one out and stitched a row.  Then I pulled out another brownish thread and stitched another row.  Then I had to start paying more attention.  It would be easy to alternate 3 colors.  Instead I thought back to the random lessons.  Sometimes I used a floss that was dramatically different next, sometimes I used a similar floss.  Sometimes the same floss.  Any time I noticed a pattern forming I would use a different floss. I used the same method of choosing colors on Purple Mountain Majesties.   I