Sunday, March 31, 2013

Diane's tea Time!


blog3I've been having such a wonderful time working on my quilt.  It's still on my design wall and I really like the direction it's taken.
I flipped the first border of HSTs so that the solid black fabric edges the towel. I no longer need the polka-dot trim to separate the towel from the border.
I also decided to add more colors to the border of made fabric.  I went digging into my stash and I had a rainbow of mottled solids leftover from a baby quilt  - perfect!  I chopped off random sizes of triangles from the fabric and used them as the centers of the floating triangle blocks.  It makes the quilt so playful, just what I want on my sewing room wall!
Next came the embroidery on the towel pennants.  It took longer than I expected it would. I haven’t embroidered since I was in grammar school (which was many years ago). I thought it would be like riding a bike, something that would come back to me naturally. But it wasn’t!  I was all thumbs trying to make french knots. I finally figured them out along with some easier stitches.
I was going to applique "my studioQ" (what I call my sewing room) on the base of the sewing machine with made multi-colored fabrics.  So I printed out some possible letters and auditioned them:
font choices
  • left pic - Yikes, those applique letters sure over power the quilt!  Try something else
  • center pic - I tried other fonts on my computer, papyrus looked the closest to the lettering on the towel.  I moved the paper letters further to the right, to cover the printed name of the towel's designer, and traced the letters onto the towel.
  • right pic - I embroidered the words but "my studio" was too dark or prominant for me. I clipped them off (much easier than ripping a seam out).  I was going to re-embroider them with only one strand of floss but I like it with just the large Q.  It's like an abbreviated nickname for my sewing room.
I wanted to make the quilt bigger.  Adding more floating triangle blocks didn't wow me. So I tried out some tumbler blocks:tumblers
They just reminded me of a jester's harlequin costume!  Another reason I didn't like them was that they were too perfect for the "feel" of this quilt. I wanted something less precise.  It dawned on me that I could use the remaining colored triangles I had cut to make wonky HSTs.  I'll share how I make them on my next and hopefully final blog!hsts
I'm off to play and make more blocks!

9 comments:

Willa said...

Very fun! Thanks for sharing the process!!

Glen QuiltSwissy said...

Wonderful! I love the way it is going!

Maybe I can actually START mine this week.

Maree said...

Love those wonky HST's.

Unknown said...

Brilliant! I love watching the progress. And the floating triangles look great - I also like how you have sewn into the teatowel - its all looking great!

sophie said...

I like how the floating triangles echo the shape of the pennants in the tea towel. It's looking great!

Venus de Hilo said...

Love how this is shaping up! The combo of B/W and little brights makes wonderful "made-fabric" blocks for the border.

Paulette said...

This is such a playful and fun project! Love the pops of color in both the made fabric and the embroidery.

Char said...

I love this!

roccagal said...

I just adore this! the process was fun to follow! cannot wait to see the next border!