Erica's Stitches

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 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 repeati...

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 s...

Random Lessons, Part 2 My first lesson randomness occurred at the Great Sand Dunes. My second lesson occurred a few years later when I found "Glorious Knits" by Kaffe Fassett.  This was in the late 1980's. I fell in love with the Toothed Stripe Waistcoat and decided that I had to make one, even though I could barely knit. Both the colors and the teeth are stitched randomly.  A small section of the pattern is charted with some advice on how to keep stitching the design without using the chart. Unike walking randomly, which I found impossible, I found knitting randomly to be easy.  After I had decided the colors for one section, I could think about the next section.  I would have time to change my mind a few times before I had to make another decision.  It turned out that I didn't need a chart. It was great fun to knit the sweater.  I enjoyed using many bright yarns and watching them come together to form a pattern. ...

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 ...