Sari Ribbon now complete

I finished stitching in the ditch, got the facings on, label on and the sleeve is on, whew, it's done.

The Weekly Leaf

I used a leaf that I had photocopied onto a cotton printer sheet, the hard time consuming part was cutting the leaf out of the white background.

Really had to cut close to guttered of all the little white bits. I had fused misty fuse to the back before cutting so the leaf was ready to use.

A little bigger than the six and half in square, but that's not a problem. In fact I rather like it.

Week #13

Daily Stitching updates

Gelli prints #82-88

Shades of orange #9-#15

Linked to "Off the Wall Friday"

A new daily stitching project

I've got eight days done of my new daily stitching and as usual it felt uncomfortable at the start, part of that was because I wasn't at home and I wasn't happy with the threads I had brought with. I was sure that there would be an order for more thread made as soon as we got home. Then when I got home I looked through my rather extensive collection of thread and found plenty that will work just fine. I'm using the last group of 35 inch silk squares that were hand dyed stitched shibori. There were six of them altogether, four were the same pattern with slight variations in color.

The one on the left is the one that I had multiples of. They were backed with flannel and cut into four inch squares and are ready to use.

In the lower right corner you can see the seven balls of thread I found to use.

#1-#8,It hasn't gotten a name yet, any ideas?

Gelli prints #75-#81

The Weekly Leaf

I tried a different way of printing for this week. I read about spreading paint onto a plexi glass plate, lightly laying the fabric over it and then putting a drawing on paper over that and tracing the drawing.
I almost did that, I spread the paint out on a gelli plate instead because my plexi glass plate is hiding. I found that the amount of paint makes a big difference, also the amount of pressure I applied while tracing.

This is the leaf I traced. 

On the top is the one I used, bottom left is the one with too much paint and pressure.

Week #12

I've now got the first twelve weeks stitched together, also the gelli prints.

Linked to "Off the Wall Friday"

Sari Ribbon Daily project finished

Today is my birthday, which means that  I finished the Sari ribbon daily stitching project. At least it's all sewn together, the backing is not on yet but will be soon.The finished title is Sari Ribbon and French knots because I decided on day #2 that each piece should have at least one french knot in the hand stitching. The sari ribbon is from Darn Good Yarn and is made from worn sari that are ripped or cut into strips, then twisted. I untwisted the strips and ironed them flat before cutting them into four inch pieces and stitched them onto a basketweave silk noil.

The Weekly Leaf

This week I used a stitched shibori piece of fabric. It's hard to see the stitching lines in the photo but they were perfect for my embroidery stitching. This is one of the pieces that I did after taking Ana Lisa Hedstrom's class at last years SAQA conference. I wrote about them here.

Week #11

Daily Stitching updates

Gelli prints #68- #74

Today I start on a new daily stitching project which I will show you next week.

Linked to "Off the Wall Friday"

Answering Questions and More

The painted quilt has been hung on the porch!

Several questions were asked in last weeks comments, I did quick answers for them but today will write a bit more.

The first question was on backing and batting for my leaf pieces. I back all my hand stitched pieces with flannel, both the weekly and the dailies. I buy flannel in the home dec department in JoAnn's, it is wider than regular flannel and has a very nice drape. I get it on sale or with a coupon and buy several yards at once. I put misty fuse on the flannel before I cut it up. For the weekly leaves I cut the flannel into 6.5 inch squares and fuse it to the square after I've printed it. For the daily pieces 

I fuse the flannel to a large piece of the background fabric and then cut out the 4inch squares. I find that the flannel gives the fabric just enough body to do the hand embroidery with nice definition but no puckers. I never use a hoop to keep the fabric taunt, it's not needed with the flannel back.

The other question was what do I do with them.

The daily pieces get sewn together in rows of 19 squares. After I take a picture of the weeks squares I sew them together. When I'm done with all 365(or 366) I put on a backing and stitch in the ditch, then put a facing on.

This year the Weekly pieces are being fused to felt squares which are being sewn together.

 I finish each years project, whether weekly or daily, put on hanging sleeves and label them. Unfortunately then they get either folded or rolled and put in a big pile. There are now seven finished daily projects(it will be eight next week), you can see them all here and three finished weekly projects which can be seen here, here and here.

Sometime towards the end of the first year of doing these I had the idea that by the time I turned seventy I would have ten daily pieces and four weekly ones done and I thought it would be a great idea to be able to hang them all together. This would require me to write up a proposal and send it out to likely venues. This is not something that I am comfortable doing, so it's going to require me to step out of my comfort zone. The way off age of seventy is just a bit over a year away, so I'd better get busy!

The Weekly Leaf

This week I used some of the leftover paper from a couple of weeks ago.

Week #10

Daily Stitching updates

Gelli Prints #61-#67

Sari Ribbon #354-#360 , only six more to go!

Linked to "Off the Wall Friday"