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"

Painting a Quilt for the porch

I've been thinking about painting a quilt to hang on my front porch, I figure if they can hang them on barns, I can hang one on my porch. On my last visit to the craft store I picked up a 24" square canvas. This week I decided that it had been sitting in the corner long enough and got to work. I will probably never make a double wedding ring quilt, but since I like circles that's what I painted. I made a twelve inch circle template and traced my pattern onto the canvas and got right to painting. My background color is red.

Then one set of circles is a deep turquoise.

Next set is gold(I forgot to take a picture) and the overlapping parts are green.

My color selection was based on the limited selection of acrylic paints that I own. The green was made by mixing the gold and turquoise, it was quite dark so I thinned it with water, which was not the right way to do it and it didn't cover well. After the paint had dried I covered the green areas with  transparent fabric paint which worked quite well. The green actually looks textured, more like a tone on tone print fabric. To finish I outlined everything with a black paint pen and then a coat of matte gel medium.

All thats left to do is to get it hung! I promise a picture when it happens.

The Weekly Leaf

This weeks leaf is just stitches. I drew a group of leaves, light traced the drawing onto my fabric and started stitching.

The tracing is so light that it doesn't show up in the picture.

Week #9

Daily Stitching updates

Gelli prints #54-#60

Sari Ribbon #347-#353

Linked to "Off the Wall Friday"

SAQA Benefit Auction and sewing leaves together

SAQA is starting to collect 12" x12" donation quilts for the fall benefit auction and I have one ready to send in. A few years ago I made a composition out of some of my indigo dyed fabrics and a piece of rusted milk filter, I was unhappy with where I had placed the rusted piece and never finished it.

The rust circle ended up right smack in the middle. I got it out and cut it apart, finished the stitching on it, faced it and now it is ready to go.

Indigo and Rust

The auction is not until September, but it feels good to have something done and ready to go.

The Weekly Leaf

There was a brown paper envelope in our  recycling pile that I rescued and turned into a leaf. This leaf was my inspiration.

 First I cut out the back of the envelope, got it wet and massaged it into a ball.

Next, it was sprayed with walnut ink.

Ironed flat and put misty fuse on the back.

Then the leaf was cut out and fused to the fabric.

Week #8

I've also started sewing the finished leaves together. First I cut strips of fusible light weight interfacing and fuse it to the back of two leaves butted together.

Then did a cross stitch from the front.

At the end of the year I will back the whole thing with one large piece of felt.

Here's how the first 8 look.

Daily Stitching updates

Gelli Prints #47- #53

Sri Ribbon #340-#346

Linked to "Off the Wall Friday"