Artful Homemade Quilts Have A Way

[freedombecki]

Today, it was winding a lot more neutrals than before, and two packages arrived--all the "new" colors from 3800-3844 DMC I don't have, which someone just sold, all prewound and ready to put to the needle!

The other thing that came was a group of 6 Antebellum ladies that were said to be embroidered and ready to put into a quilt. April fool!!! The first one I picked up had no embroidered hands, so the 3779 color (flesh) I'd just bought was a perfect, plus the flower that dropped from her boquet wasn't done, so I had to scurry around and find colors to match her outfit, and I did. I was surprised that the colors were so close when they didn't look that way, but the 2 greens needed were 907 (bright hot lime) and 906 (bright medium light green). Just by looking I was guessing it was 911, but that color showed up too blue, so I tried, thinking better safe than sorry, and the 906 matched perfectly. The 415 dark ruby color was correct, so I was lucky it was in one of the collections of threads found on the internet last fall that came in a box, all wrapped and ready to cut and put to the needle.

I'm still checking colors against my color chart for accuracy (it's easy not to fix a wrapping error), but here's one of the Antebellum Boquet Lady, that I finished just a few minutes ago. It takes an hour to match, thread needles, and sew four colors, and I'm slow because this is still rather of a new craft to me. I noticed the back was a maplike network of an embroiderer who did not tie off, just went the distance to the next flower, so it is a scramble of wrong-side leaves, flowers, and what not with 1- to 3 1/2 inches of thread between flowers she did. It's a total mess, but the top looks nice. It's no wonder in that morass how one would miss the hands and a flower here and there! I know backs don't have to be pretty, but in the case of making a quilt, if the thread used is one that bleeds, the top is forever susceptible to fading at different washings, and it can get worse before it gets better.
Edit 1: added scan of back to show worrisome dark threads
Edit 2: added scan of bow at top

 

[freedombecki]

What really made me go for this particular sunbonnet/colonial lady pattern was the beautiful train of the skirt, which was too wide to photograph well on the above pictures, so I scanned just one more scan of this one, which shows at least partly, why I picked this one over the thousands of different colonial ladies (yawn) out there. This one is worthy of a lovely bridesmaid dress at the finest wedding, and the frames just added to the beauty of this block. I only have 6 of the blocks, but my, oh, my some little girl is going to get a pretty all-girl look quilt when me and my quilt terrorist society partners are done doing good and completing the work. <giggle>

 

[koshergrl]

Oh becki, you're so organized and precise, you put me to shame!

As I go along, I get better, but it takes me a while.

I'll take a pic of the swans tonight, I'm almost done with the second one and they are looking pretty awesome. I'm doing a much better job on the second one than the first..I suspect by the time I get to the fourth it won't look like the same person stitched it!

I've been watching Downton Abbey (I just started, watching it on Amazon Prime...) and I get a lot of stitching done while I'm watching it!

 

[freedombecki]

Oh becki, you're so organized and precise, you put me to shame!

As I go along, I get better, but it takes me a while.

I'll take a pic of the swans tonight, I'm almost done with the second one and they are looking pretty awesome. I'm doing a much better job on the second one than the first..I suspect by the time I get to the fourth it won't look like the same person stitched it!

I've been watching Downton Abbey (I just started, watching it on Amazon Prime...) and I get a lot of stitching done while I'm watching it!

Not hardly koshergrl. Keep in mind I've written about 11 volumes on applique and machine embroidered designs for other people to make quilts with. Right now, I'm just playing around, nothing too serious ever, try this, try that. But the nice thing about just plain embroidery on a background of white or muslin color, it's like drawing with a pencil, except one stitch follows the next. Also, I have been drawing from nature since the age of 4. My grandma was a teacher, and she kept our family together while Dad was in Korea. She loved my drawings and said mine looked better than children twice my age, because I drew things the way they looked. I think that is called precocious in children who can do stuff well at an early age. The only thing I didn't do was talk. But when I did start talking, it was in full sentences, but I don't remember that. I do remember my grandmother making a big fuss about my pictures, and everyone agreed, it was funny to hear a child who'd never spoken a word start speaking in full sentences just all of a sudden one day.

Oh, and I didn't think my china berry tree was nearly as pretty as the one out front of Grandma's house, but it was good to see my grandmother smile on account of my little scribblings.

I loved the work you did on the swans, koshergrl. I'm the one who's in awe of you. I started a sampler when the kids were small. After the youngest graduated from high school, the sum total of my progress was 3 flowers on the border and the letters I did first because I hated embroidering letters. Maybe a motif or two had been embroidered, too, but it was less than 20%. A month after I picked it up again when the kids left me with an empty nest, the rest of it was done. That felt so good, because I had enjoyed doing every stitch. Very shortly after that, I took a class in machine embroidery and loved it so much, I demolished my 10-year-old sewing machine with work, so I bought a new Pfaff because I knew from my factory days, Pfaff was the world's best, and there was a dealer in our town. My daughter is still using the same machine, and she loves it and repairs her own socks and police uniforms with it, sews the appliqued badges on her blue shirts, etc.

I think it takes a lot more together than I'll ever have to embroider early and late and raise children at the same time. My mother did it, but I couldn't do that. All my arts were put on the back burner until the kids were out of school, period. They got homemade bread only, however, which kept me out of mischief.

 

[freedombecki]

The lady who made the Christmas wreath below is not an extremist embroiderer-- noooooo-ooooo!

But I do think she favors pinks.

Photo credits: http://www.embroidery-methods.com/embroidery-wreath.html

 

[koshergrl]

You know there are embroidery transfers for pillow cases that are antebellum ladies with skirts that expand to the wides of the entire pillow that would be tremendous with that quilt...

 

[Sunshine]

Got to catch up on this thread. Knowing full well, every day won't be a 'walk on the beach day' I brought the tablecloth with me. But Wally World doesn't have the right thread. I may have to order it. I have a little, but not much.

 

[koshergrl]

I've been looking at crochet patterns for the last hours. so much to do..so little time.

 

[freedombecki]

Got to catch up on this thread. Knowing full well, every day won't be a 'walk on the beach day' I brought the tablecloth with me. But Wally World doesn't have the right thread. I may have to order it. I have a little, but not much.

Try Hobby Lobby. Here, they have all 450 colors except for the new color variations, of which I'd like a bunch to experiment around with. I did order some in kits, but Ouch! No bargains there. I guess the process of putting half a dozen different colors onto a six-strand embroidery cotton must be a very expensive task and takes pinpoint accuracy to get it right. Knowing DMC company, they will be right when done.

Today, I wound four dozen bobbins in pumpkin pie shades from light to dark before taking sweetie to the doctor's office to retake a blood sugar test. He's not connecting sneaking the rest of the Christmas candy with the necessity of fasting before he gets his finger pricked, this time twice in one week. /stifling a giggle so as not to be thought of as a meanie.

Isn't it funny how when you try to stop laughing you wind up laughing harder?

 

[koshergrl]

Now that Christmas is past, I've been thinking about dusting off the two sewing machines. Pray for me, I still want to make quilts and I'm determined to make them before I die!

 

[freedombecki]

You know there are embroidery transfers for pillow cases that are antebellum ladies with skirts that expand to the wides of the entire pillow that would be tremendous with that quilt...

My mother made a bunch of those for the adult women in the family for Christmas one year and kept one pair for the master bedroom. I used to love to walk past and see the variegated dresses puffed out with ruffles she had crocheted and then starched. They were beautiful. She embroidered the hands and faces, and flowers on the hats. Waking up every day in our home was to hear the sewing machine running by the time everyone else got up. She worked all day and got up at 4 in the morning to sew whatever was needed in the house or wardrobe of whoever needed it. What a power house of good deeds for family was my mother.

The only way you could get me to do one of those ladies (after doing only one hand and a couple of leaves and flowers on that square) is to back fabric with cutaway and use my Pfaff machine-stitched stem stitch. Well, I did have software at one time, but that was about 4 computers ago, and the last one crashed and when it was repaired, the crazy guy who "fixed" it erased every single file I had--all my pictures, all my counted work for a dozen tapestries, and all my drawings for about two years.

 

[freedombecki]

Now that Christmas is past, I've been thinking about dusting off the two sewing machines. Pray for me, I still want to make quilts and I'm determined to make them before I die!

Done!

 

[koshergrl]

Thank you! I really want to do this...

 

[koshergrl]

 

[koshergrl]

 

[koshergrl]

 

[koshergrl]

 

[koshergrl]

Here's the hat/scarf I made the girl over the Christmas break:

 

[koshergrl]

This is one of many hats/scarves I made (all out of this highly visible red color hahaha) a year or so ago...I must have made a half dozen of them....never mind the pills if they show up, these were in my son's closet...

 

[freedombecki]

Beautiful, koshergrl! Positively out of this world work you shared. Thanks!

Today, I'm in a hustle to go to the TX Quilt Museum in Lagrange, which is four hours of driving, so I'm going to have to just leave what I planned instead of spreading rep so I can rep koshergrl again! Too much travel this wk and too little time to spend sewing and giving great people reputation! <hugs>

Before I got here to this unexpected show of beautiful handwork, I collected some fun owls from around the blogs that people have worked so hard on to show and share.