More Patriotic Progress

Well, got it all put together, now I can start adding borders. :)


A two inch red comes next, then the sawtooth half square triangles. Neither one of them should take me too long, all the hsts are already made. Looks pretty much like my EQ design, doesn't it?

I'm always amazed by the number of people that say... but have you ever used EQ to design and make a REAL quilt? Yes, All The Time. :D

Fairie Applique

I like to have something to do by hand as well as a machine traditional pieced quilt going, so here's my newest project:


Linda Poole got me interested in fairie applique, and as I haven't taken the class from her yet, I don't want to start on 'her' version of her fairie. She's coming to our guild's retreat in November, and I'm really looking forward to it.

But looking on the web for inspiration, I found another lovely site with artwork of fairies, and got permission from the artist to try one of her designs in fabric. I'll write and ask if I can tell you her name, she may prefer not to be recognized. :)

I have a lot left to do on this one - I'm using a teeny blanket stitch around the tree branch and leaves (I fused the bits down first) and I've used the smallest applique stitch my Janome had and some invisible thread to go around her body and the orange flower she's trying for a hat. I've got some lovely fabric with flowers that I'll fussy cut and add to this in some of the obvious blank spots, so it looks like she's picked the one on her head from the branch beside her. I'll also add veining on the leaves, and a lot of detail on her wings and little leaf outfit. Probably some beading too, but that will come much later. And her face right now is drawn on in one of those water-erasable inks, I'll do it with a pigma pen later, probably in black.

The only thing I am not happy with so far is the lack of contrast between her peach skin tone and the background. I really didn't want to outline her in black, but can any of you think of another way to make her arms and legs stand out a bit more?

I was planning on making 4 fairies, one for each season of the year, putting them all on a batik fabric, and giving them different props appropriate for their season. The fabric this one is on varies quite a bit, and there's enough of the bluey you see at the very top, but mixed with more pale purple and white, that might do for a winter scene. I'm not sure if this one will be Spring or Summer yet, I'm leaning toward Summer, especially when I get more flowers on. And because she's not really dressed for Spring!

Linda's fairie pattern has long blowing hair, and is wearing a long skirt, so I'm thinking that one might be good for either Fall or Winter.

If I can find appropriate fabric, I'd LOVE to make this wall hanging more ethnic, and make the fairies for the other seasons have different skin tones. I'm thinking it'll hang in my library, where we have a pretty diverse population. No luck in finding anything but this peachy tone yet, though. All the browns I found were just toooo dark to be able to put a face on.

Patriotic Progress

Well, got to playing on my EQ and decided I wanted to swap out the colors in the sashing, and put the flag print in the middle of dark blue. Then for the border around the middle, I'd been planning on using another fabric entirely, but EQ was trying to tell me I'd need a whole yard to border a 24 inch square... I knew that wasn't right, but still wasn't sure if I'd have enough fabric, so I switched it to the khaki I was using for background. Now I like this version, with the center star floating, better anyway:


And here's my progress on it so far:


I ended up making the border around the star scrappy, not because I was running out of fabric, but because I thought I'd like to bring some of these prints into the center. There was one print that was too busy for background, really, but it was patriotic, and this is an ENTIRELY from stash quilt. See it in the background of the edge blocks? Notice how carefully I left it out of the star block I picked for the center? :D

If I don't use the patriotic fabric up in this one, where will I ever use it? Anything left that remains from THIS, my second patriotic themed quilt, is going right into the Heartstrings bin. I promise. :)

More Fabrics!

Well, here's the batiks I won by bidding on eBay... no, I didn't need this much fabric (it's close to 25 yards) but I really did need the six yards of indigo batik on the upper left corner for my indigo project. And then I saw the two brown/yellow fabrics and thought they'd be wonderful for the fireplace screen applique I plan on doing some day. (Bet you can tell which one I wanted for bark on a flaming log and which I thought would make glowing embers or coals!) Then I saw the 6 yard length of the stripey batik on the upper right and couldn't pass up six yards for $9.99 so I bid on THAT. Of course, then I was into the larger flat rate box for shipping, so started bidding on the blue and the green/khaki batiks, got them all at a great price.


They're from Phillyfabrics, if you want to look them up. She's got a lot of poly-cotton up now, fabric for making scrubs, if any of you wear those.

And here's what I'm working on now, while I waited for my indigo batiks to arrive, a little something to use up all my patriotic stash:


I need a couple of hundred half square triangles for this, and I'm well into them. I print the papers from my computer and do sets of 8 at a time, then take the bits into work to remove the paper on my lunch and breaks. It's not often that a machine piecer has a project that can travel well!

And finally, I'll close with a picture of Libby:


Any of you ever gotten this Look from your cat? She's getting very irked at me for flashing the camera in her face - that quilt has become her favorite place to nap, and I was Keeping Her Awake.... lol The quilter's cats never have a soft place to lay, do they?