Erica's Stitches

It's only 22 x 29 inches but its done! Nothing like hanging a quilt on the clothesline to cause the wind to start gusting.  Luckily it calmed down and I got a better picture. Small quilts are for experimenting.  The squares are flannel and came from a charm pack that's been sitting around for a while.  I lost the label so I don't know who made them.  The rest of the fabric is quilters cotton.  I've never tried mixing the two before. The rectangles are all Bliss by Bonnie and Camille for Moda and came pre-cut to 2 1/2 by 5 inches.  I have one flannel square left over and I used all of the Bliss.  There are 2 small pink squares I had to add.  I also had to find a binding fabric that looked good with the rest of the fabric. I had no problems blending flannel and cotton in one quilt.  The flannel feels luxuriously soft compared to the other fabrics.  I also like the combination of the darker flannels and the pastel...

Having made many simple striped shaped and having advanced to a striped heart, I decided to try something more complicated.  I sketched a simple mountain scene to fit in a small square and started filling it in with stripes of color to see how it would turn out.  I started with the trees and then the sky since they where simpler.  At this point I showed it to a friend.  Her jaw dropped and she said "You should be selling patterns".  Her words echoed in my mind as I continued.  I decided to make the mountains brown with a tint of purple.  The lake was the most difficult.  I went through years of accumulated mountain pictures looking at lakes deciding what color it should be.  Lakes are reflected color and don't seem to have a color of their own.  I decided to go with lighter versions of the rest of the colors and add some simple reflections.  Luckily, it resembled a lake when I was done. "You should be selling patterns" was sti...

I was shopping in an area of town I'm not in that often and discovered a Salvation Army store that wasn't there the last time I drove by.  Naturally, I had to stop and see what I could scrounge up. I hit the jackpot in the frame section.  I often stop here because you can find great frames really cheap.  A lot of times they are of higher quality than newer frames, but you have to dig and be prepared to discard the framed item inside.  I bought 11 frames sized 5 x 7 and smaller.  One came with needlepoint and the another with crewel.   The remaining 9 where empty.   At 50 cents each I couldn't pass up the discarded needlework. Even though the colors are somewhat dated and the work may be sloppy in parts they are works of beauty that somebody at sometime put effort into and I had to rescue them.  The finishing is rather crude on both of them.  Sometimes I do my own hack job of framing but never like this....

Well, I've got to start somewhere. This is one of my earliest samplers. I don't know how old I was when I did it or when I stitched it. If you look at the back there's a nest of long ends. I never finished it because I ran out of thread. Now, I think I could finish it with what's left on the back. More of my early work later.