Embroidery Quilt

I had a small stack of under loved embroidered things. Garments, tablecloths, napkins, doilys, tea cloths, pillow cases, handkerchiefs etc. Some have already been turned into new garments but I kept any embroidered offcuts. I had been musing on the idea of making a patchwork quilt to use them up. We were in lockdown here due to Covid, not a bad time to embark on this.

I started in early July by settling on a block size driven by some of the larger motifs that I didn’t want to have to cut into. Anything smaller or awkwardly placed was built up to the right size using the plainer offcuts. I think that first round gave me about 50 pieces.

I have to share this cute puppy with you. The embroidery is not good but it was done by primary school me so it had to be included. There are so many memories in these embroidered bits. Quite a few were done by my grandmother, many by friend’s family. There are also pieces from childhood garments and my cot pillowcases sent over by Mama.

Eventually I came up with an overall design, which said I needed not just 50 pieces, but 144! So I put the call out to family and friends to make up the balance. This is partway through the collection. I think I still needed about 30 pieces.

Then in early September, the last donations came in, much of which was embroidery done by my friend’s family members. Lovely stuff to receive.

My plan was to checkerboard the embroidered bits with nine patches in nice strong colours, a pretty classic design. So I raided my hoarded cotton and linen offcuts, some of which are themselves embroidered.

Then shades of pale for the other “colour” of the ninepatches to blend with the background of most of the embroidered bits. I was in this stage developing a cunning plan for the arrangement of the dark pieces particularly. Way too much thought went into this and many, many rearrangements of the stacks.

Quite some intense time on “the zen of little bits of fabric” as I tend to dub this kind of repetetive construction and I had the needed ninepatches assembled.

A few more days of fun arranging and sewing got the patchwork done. Here it is all layered up ready to pin baste and showing nicely my cunning plan with the nine patches. The colours are arranged to give shades of red/purple on one diagonal and blue/green on the other. I had worried that it would be too hard to manage the orientation of the blocks to make this work but I did it with only a modest amount of unpickery. I’m really pleased with how this worked.

After it was basted, I was a bit over it so it rested for a couple of weeks until I could face the quilting. I was hoping that I could get that done before the weather got too warm to be sitting at least partly under a quilt for extended periods. To my pleased astonishment, it only took me 20 days! Ta dah!

Then another couple of days to do the binding, and now it’s a done thing, less than 4 months since I started. To clarify, it’s machine pieced, safety pin basted, and hand quilted. The binding is attached by machine and finished by hand. All rather quicker than the hand pieced Liberty Lattice quilt that took me a year for just the piecing.

Of course it has to have a label

and proving it fits on the bed.

All the materials were from some kind of stash, both mine and others, except a little of the sewing thread. The backing was from my mother who had been planning a quilt for many years but eventually decided she wasn’t going there. More power to her for releasing herself from that looming non-project. The batting was an opshop find, which I think might be bamboo, it’s a little too shiny to be cotton.

I’m so pleased with this. It’s light and bright and summery with so much interest and many memories to enjoy. The embroidery features so many things: flowers galore, butterflies, birds, deer, fleur-de-lis, cauldrons, shrimp, swordfish, people; a donkey, giraffe and a teacup. Also, all those under loved bits of embroidery have a new and useful life.

Timely Memory

I’m going to an anniversary party where we have been asked to dress to the theme of “weddings”. After much thought and rejecting a few tempting ideas, I settled on making a new dress to go with my “wedding hat”. I didn’t get married in it, but I have worn it to a lot of weddings. It’s such a happy little confection of a hat.

After the first wedding or two (but many years ago), I made a bag to go with it. The hat is straw with straw and cotton embroidery. The bag is coarse raw silk, embroidered in cotton and lined with coral pink dupion silk. I was pretty pleased with the approximate match. My embroidery is really a bit too neat to match the hat properly!

Packing for the trip, I suddenly remembered the bag. It had fallen out of my head. Very glad I remembered it’s existence in time to use it.

Pictures of the new dress are being withheld until after it’s debut.

Cornflower Hot Water Bottle Cover

Now this has been given as the birthday present it was intended to be, I can show you why I made that embroidered cornflower. Today’s birthday princess is fond of cornflowers and I prefer to make bed warming things from cotton velvet or similar, so nice to the touch. I had promised to make her a hot water bottle cover, and was thinking on what to do, when a lovely piece of blue velvet arrived in my life- yet again from a friend’s rejected stash. “Aha” thought I, perfect!

I made a simple drawstring bag of the right dimensions. The striped ribbon is vintage rayon. The velvet put up a fight as usual but we managed to get a neat rectangle even if some of the seam allowances ended up a bit random.

Of course I had to fit a label in there somewhere

Here it is all drawn up and ready to go. After sitting wrapped for 2 months it has finally been given.

Why do I blog?

To celebrate making a thing.
To pat myself on the back. To convince my subconscious that something has been achieved. I’ve always made things. A few years ago, I found that I was not getting any satisfaction from the making. I’m usually thinking about the next projects before the one underway is done, and when I finished something, I just brushed it aside in my mind and moved on. So I felt like I wasn’t achieving anything and it all felt pointless. If I write a blog post about each project though, it’s a little celebration of having made a thing. It does good stuff for my head.

Analysis and review
That may sound silly, but I’m never totally pleased with my makings. There are often good things to note, but usually also some things I wish I’d done differently. Choice of materials, construction errors, quantity changes. I find it really useful to spell out some of these to help myself make better decisions next time.

Journal and record
This is especially useful for recipe type posts. I rarely follow a recipe to the letter. I’ve learned that my future self appreciates it when I record what I’ve done.

I like to share
Actually, I was brought up to share. When I was a child, everyone in the family made things, and when something was done, or well started, we would all show each other. “Look, I made a thing”, or “what do you think of this?”, whether the thing was an item made or some task like achieving a neat garden bed. Now I do it online, especially when people are not available to witness in person. I’ll admit it, I love receiving “likes”, but intelligent comments, questions and discussion are even better.

Edit- Hmm, there is more:
To please and inspireI like to think I’m doing my little bit to put things of beauty or inspiration out there for people to enjoy. I hope my readers get pleasure from the posts, or the pictures, and maybe think “hey, good idea, I could do that”.

To rest
Sometimes I blog to make myself sit down and take a break. This is linked to the aspect of drawing a line under a project before moving on to the next thing.

 

The pictures are from a blanket I made 7 years ago and still love, dubbed “Queen of Hearts”. It’s on my bed right now even. One day I’ll make another thing involving embroidered pieces.

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Artistry from under the lurgy

I’m still sick. Sometimes my brain is online, sometimes it’s not. I just made yet another mistake in the second ally sock, pulled it back by about a pattern repeat and proceeded to make yet another mistake, thankfully a more tolerable one because I don’t think the wool will stand up to a third knitting. However, I’ve been musing for about a month on how to best get a cornflower design onto velvet. I suddenly figured out a good way to do it, and lo, it worked and was fun and fairly quick to do. At least I hope it looks like a cornflower? albeit a stylised one. It’s heavy perle cotton couched down by machine over a freehand drawn design.

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