WIP Wednesday #4 @ TN&TN

I'm honing in on my seam ripping skills.  Jesica is in town and I am not happy with the border of her quilt.  So, I made the decision to take out all my stitches.  Before you cringe, know that I do not regret this one bit.  It's absolutely the right thing to do.

I'm not happy with the motifs, or the thread choice.  Except for the ditch-quilting, everything else is coming out.  First things first: PLAN the border motif.  I thought I could just start stitching our the wildflowers she wanted.  I worked on them a while back: drawing and drawing until I transformed the image into a continuous line.  They all looked fabulous, and free motion quilting them was a breeze.  However, they didn't work together.  There was no flow at all to the border.  So after getting the threads out, I am literally back to the drawing board.

These are loose sketches, uncharted doodles I make until I come to a satisfying design.  I folded all my papers in half because I noticed it was then the same width as my border, and I drew and I drew and I drew.  AND I'm happy.  I think I'll really enjoy stitching out this border now.  It's going to look MUCH better.  Then I noticed something funny in the photo!  Check out the pencil I used to draw these border designs.

Now THAT is some serious coincidence.  lol

Linking up to:

The Needle & Thread Network

and Freshly Pieced

See you soon!  I can't wait to show this off.
~Monika

It's Good to Be Sketchy.

What better way to spend a hot summer than to lie around outside and draw flowers?  Yesterday I laid on the deck after supper and worked on these drawings while sipping ice cold pear cider.  (mmmm!!!)  I now offically have a good selections of wildflowers ready for Jesica's quilt.  Nailing that Lady Slipper made it all easy after that.  Here's snapshots of the pages if you want to see.  They are all worked from photo to sketch to continuous line drawing.  When I got to one I liked, I drew directional sequence arrows to remind me where to start when I free motion stitch them.

Prairie Lilies

Crocus

Blue Bells / Hare Bell

Blue Bell / Hare Bell with #s  (and dandelions I won't use)

Shooting Star

the Lady Slippers from last week's post.

So there they are.  You can click on any of them to see them bigger.  All of the plants are native to the prairies.  There's a few more, but I won't bore you (Rudbeckia and Lady's Mantle).  Now to work on an arrangement.  I'm not sure if I will link them all.  I suppose I could work each one from the edge of the quilt, so the start points will be eventually under the binding.  hmmm.  One thing for sure - I feel really great after each hurdle.  I was pretty nervous about all this.  Want to see how I manage my anxiety?

Flax at Jackfish (WIP)

I put together this background on Friday.  It's based on that photo my mom got me.  The lower 2/3 of the piece will be periwinkle-colored French Knots. 

after 2 days of stitching...

So far I have half of that blue covered with hundreds and hundred of knots.  lol  It's something small I can take along to the waterparks and work on when my kids play.  As I work my way down the piece, the green will show and the knots will be bigger as well as less dense.  So far so good!  I love the sky and the hills on the other side of the lake.  I couched a lot of colored strings onto there.  : )

See you tomorrow!
~Monika

LadySlippers... getting to know you.

LadySlippers are one of the most important symbols amidst the wildflowers that Jesica wants on her quilt border.  Here's what they look like.

this is copyright free, from wikipedia (not my photo)

She picked these for her grandmother when she was a child.  Finding a good way to represent these has been challenging for me.  I've done several unsuccessful attempts.  It's true what they way about knowing your subject.  I've been looking at these flowers a lot lately, and finally, I can say it's coming together!  I started by sketching them from several stock photos on the net.

After many failed attempts at embroidering those, I tried a continuous line drawing like I would do if I were to free motion stitch this.  One line... I repeated it several times until it felt easy.

And then out came the machine & thread to draw them all over again.  IT WORKED.  I love it!  Eureeka!

FINALLY - free motion lady slippers!

So my next move is to draw out a sample border section with an assortment of flowers that I will later transfer in segments onto the quilt top's border.  Commissions are always easier when your materials & ideas cooperate.  ; )

see you Sunday!
~Monika

All the Colors of the Rainbow!

Yesterday, I went to Periwinkle (our LQS) to find thread for Jesica's border.  It's always so nice to go in there.  They are so smiley and friendly.  Michelle even scooted to meet me at the front door to say hi.  ; )  My daughter and i sat for a while to just enjoy the place.  It's quite a different experience from the national chain store that sells fabric (you know the place).  I feel bad walking in there.  I feel like I get looks as if to say, "oh great.  here' she comes AGAIN," and they all close the cutting tables.  Everyone at Periwinkle seems to enjoy their job.  So Michelle helped me find this thread.

Valdani Hand Dyed Variegated Thread (Jewel 540 yrds)

Oooh I'm happy with this choice!  It's hand dyed, and a very heavy thread.  It will show nicely I think.  She said that not all machines like it, so use a big needle.  I'm assuming I will need the same thread on bottom to balance the tension.  I'll play around with this a bit and let you know how it goes.

every color of the rainbow

Last week I took out my cheap-o watercolors that I bought myself in May.  My plan it to hand stitch the entire previous photo onto canvas.  I love that photo so much.  I took it on Canada Day this year.  I'm thinking that I can use my painted rendition as a guide when stitching. 

Here is a loose color placement that will keep me on track when I stitch.  Bear with me, I am not a painter.

painted on an old piece of aida cloth

I haven't started stitching it yet,  It's quite large and will probably take all summer, fall, and winter.  I figure once I have it on that scroll frame, I can work on it anywhere, including the spray park this afternoon and the lake tomorrow.  : )  It's been a pretty fun summer so far. 

My last rainbow item is this:  I got all the solid color fabrics cut for the Snips n Snails kit!  If you have the Summer ANPT magazine already and you are interested in buying the right color strips, let me know! ; )  You can e-mail me at mysweetprairie@gmail.com.

Now to get Jesica's quilt backing done.  It will be flannellette with some more fabric-memory pieces.  See you all tomorrow!

~Monika

Works in Progress Wednesday

Yay for me!  I finished Mandy's Tree!!  That feels like such a major accomplishment, though my sewing room looks quite bland with it gone.  You can read about it HERE.  The very moment I finished putting on the hanging sleeve, I was brought another bag of fabric for a very special memory quilt.  You can read about it HERE.  Right now, I'm dedicating my time to completing Jesica's quilt. Jesica had a bag of her late & much loved grandmother's fabric stash sent my way a long time ago.  She wanted lots of triangles with white.  Here's what has been done so far.

After hours of sorting and pressing, I spent hours of cutting and stitching and cutting some more until I had a variety of half-square triangles to make a quilt top.  They were all pressed open and then sewn in a graduated color pattern across the quilt.

aren't those vintage fabrics sweet!??

After this point, Jesica began missing her other grandmother too.  The top has a wide white border, and Jesica suggested hand embroidered flowers.  !!!  I am SO in the mood to do embroidery!  Even better, Jesica wants flowers native to this area, because those are the ones that she picked with her grandmother when she was a little girl.  As for me, I have had it in the back of my mind for some time to study native prairie plants, and so this is a very welcomed project!  I started my research immediately.  I want to study the flowers, then sketch them out, and then simplify them for embroidery.  I could find existing embroidery patterns for each on the internet I'm sure, but this would be much for interesting for me to come up with them myself.  I've never been much of a pattern person anyhow.  Here is a peek at my sketchbook so far.  The photos were pretty faded, so I upped the contrast to help you see it better.

My plan is to draw them each with an air soluble pen just prior to stitching them.  I'll pick thread colors that are appropriate to the actual flowers, but also a good shade so it looks right with all the fabrics in the quilt.  I have hoops and embroidery needles.  All is good!  The plan for the outer binding is to use the remaining scraps form the vintage fabrics.  Won't that be pretty!?  Great plan Jesica! Here's some practice pieces I did.

Aster and Purple Vetch

In the mean time, I am putting the backing & hanging sleeve onto Kate's wall hanging.  It's a commission I got through my etsy store to remake my Poles Along the Highway.  Here's the border.  It's for Kate's new home, far far away from the prairies.  Isn't that sweet?

I can't wait to mail this off to her.  I hope our national postal system gets back on its feet soon!  It's been a long, looong time since anything was dropped into my mailbox!

See you all tomorrow,
~Monika

head on over to Lee's at Freshly Pieced for more WIPs, or Esther's eclectic WIP wednesday for more projects from other quilting bloggers.  : )

Works in Progress Wednesday

Okay... I said I was taking a week off, and I took a day off.  Can you blame me?  I'm addicted.  So here's what's up this week.  With Mother's day coming up quick, I'm working to complete that tree.  I had Mandy come over this morning and she and I planned an arrangement of beading and chunky french knots.  I want her getting this soon.  So I have a lot of hand stitching to do know which I will thoroughly enjoy!!  I am so in the mood for that.

I haven't worked on Kate's highway poles, but that will come soon enough.  Their possession date for a new home away from the prairies has not yet arrived, so I'm not feeling panic.

Jesica's stitching will be planned out, but not complete to until after the end of the month.  I have an art exhibit to produce by the end of this month, and (yikes) who am I kidding!?  Deadlines press.

I took off to a sewing retreat on Sunday.  I spent the whole day in a vaulted cedar room overlooking a lake with the windows open.  (See last post for details.)  It was awesome!  I specifically took no existing projects with me.  I figured the art was too messy with all the yards & beads & threads.  I didn't have a plan for a quilt, so I just took along all the solid precuts I had in my stash and made a big quilt top.  I even did all the piecing with Fiona (my Kenmore ogre who is really a princess).  She did a marvelous job!

I also put together some single log cabin blocks for a baby quilt top.  It has five shades of pink if you look really close.

But wait!  There's more.  Remember the wonky owl quilt?  It looked like an earthquake.  I wasn't happy with the quilting and i didn't show you because it was too much.  Well I decided ripping out the stitches would take about 5 days... so I jsut kept going.  It looks like a dozen tornadoes.  It's a natural disaster quilt.  lol  I kept thinking, 'it's okay.  Anno is very unconventional.  She'll like it!  She'll laugh.  Laughing is good.'  She saw it last night and loved it.  So all I have left to do it hand stitch the binding before our six children go on a playdate tomorrow.  : )  Then she heads home which is out of province.

spirals upon intersecting circles...  tornadoes!

Finally - I'm threadpainting and handstitching some postcards for the spring swap at PostCard Cottage.  Join if you like!  The link is on the sidebar.  I can't show you a lot, but I'll give you this, which is turning out pretty and quite enjoyable to do.

All righty then!  Head over to Lee's at Freshly Pieced to see what other quilters are up to!  : )

~Monika

Works in Progress!

I'm not sure why, but I've had SO much time to sew lately.  My kids are just getting older I guess.  My youngest is almost 5.  They three of them are all busy playing together, and ... well, they are just busy.  I finished the two Serendipity quilts' bindings.  I finished the commission that's I've been calling, 'Mother's Homestead'.  I've been asked to frame it and matt it with an oval matting like this.  I will go out to get that frame as soon as I get my van back from the shop!

I am waiting for some fabric to arrive from Sandie in Alberta (the accu-quilt die-cutter lady).  Some of the samples she sent me had two teeny scraps that will be PERFECT for Mandy's tree, so I'm not touching that project until that arrives.  It's really going to be perfect.  Sorry Mandy to make you wait longer - and thank you Sandie for helping me out!!

I made this progress on Jesica's quilt from her grandmother's scraps.

You might think it looks the same as before, but if you look closer, you'll see that each square has now been sewn to another.  I'll keep going until I have larger blocks of graduated color.  Then I'll arrange them on the design wall before putting together the top.  My dear 4 yr old sat and helped.  She clipped each connecting thread from the chained squares and put all of them into nice little piles.

Then I sat and stared at all my landscape colors spilled out onto the cutting table.  Can you hear them?  Listen closely...

I hear, "lake.  water & sky.  laaaaake".  I really am NOT a fan of batiks except when someone else makes a quilt out of them.  I gave it a shot and now I've nearly finished a scene that is a view from my mother's cabin.  I have more embellishments to add.  You can click on it to view it larger.  There's some pretty teeny detail in it.

And I need to decide how to finish it / mount it / hang it / frame it?  I struggle with this. I like my small work under glass because of the teeny french knots and glass beads.  People always want to touch it.  Putting them into little shadow boxes is like looking into a treasure box!  : )  This lake piece is 8x10 inches.  I suppose it should be a wall hanging.  Otherwise, I'm very happy with it.  It is exactly the scene you get when you're out there.  At night, you can see the light blink.  Funny to think of a lighthouse in the middle of Saskatchewan isn't it!?  lol.  

That one was made with quilt batting.  That's another thing I don't do when I make my small art.  I use a canvas-like material.  It makes an excellent stabilizer for all the thread painting that would warp a quilt quite badly.  So, here I start with another!  I've been waiting to do this!!  : )  Here's the inspiration.

Actually, this one has inspired several of my pieces.  But I have not done the canola as of yet.  I usually do the pale yellow oat fields.  Here's my canvas with guide lines so it will be level, cut with 1 cm of excess all around. 

Then I pick my fabrics, embellishments, and thread.  The large pieces are fused first.  And I start stitching!

If you have ever been around North Battleford, SK, you'll recognize that blue line in the distance.  As a girl growing up on an acreage, I would always look out to those 'blue hills' and wonder how far away they really were.   (It's a small rocky range where people go to ski at Table Mountain.)  In fact, my son will be going there on a school trip next month.  Me?  I have NEVER tried downhill skiing.  Not on your life!  : )

tree line added by couching decorative yarns

I am so happy with this sky!  It's many layers of many things.  You'd be surprised!  : )  And the little section at the bottom is a replacement for the green blob on the yellow batik.  No matter, it will be covered with another layer still.

As for that canola (drumroll please) I will make a bazillion french knots beginning with the thinnest rayon thread possible.  You thought the 3" dresden plate made me a sucker for punishment?  Think again!

The rayon is for the back couple of rows.  I'll make the french knots slightly larger as the rows come forward and closer.  This is exciting!  It will be 5"x7" in an 8x10 frame and for sale soon.  I think my mom will get the Cochin Lighthouse for her home at the lake.

So whew!  I'm happy.  I'm busy.  Things are progressing.

~Monika

What 800 Triangles Look Like, and Other Stories

Hi!  If you are just joining in (welcome!!)  I have been working on a quilt commissioned by Jesica.  After the passing of her beloved Grandmother, she sent me bags and bags of her grandmother's well kept fabric stash and asked me to make a big white quilt full of triangles.  Well, I've been pressing and cutting and pressing and cutting.  I finally did sew all the fabrics together and re-cut them to form little half-square triangles.

I spent several hours pressing them open today.  And here they are!

I figure I will arrange them with the strongest & darkest colors in the centre, and lighter toward the edges.  The corners will be solid white where she has asked me to applique some special images to further symbolize her grandma.  I began arranging a small position of the quilt to see how I feel about the layout.  Like this?

or like this?

Here's the same two arrangements in a different perspective.

ps- Jesica, if you are looking, please let me know.  If you cannot decide, click on each photo to enlarge them and take a step back.  : )  Each photo is about a tenth of the quilt...  Each square is about 3 inches, and will be a little smaller than that once it gets pieced together.

In other news (oh I have so much news!), I am unhappy with the way the tree is on Mandy's quilt.  Mandy is having the fabrics from her baby carriers & slings made into a wallhanging.  I've come very far on this one and I feel stuck.  I phoned her to discuss it and she agrees.  I asked about changing the tree color and she would like the style to be different.  I feel much better about finishing it now.  I was really not satisfied for some time.  Perhaps I shouldn't have made the ground so realistic.  Now the tree needs to be upscaled a lot.  It's nothing some embellishing cannot fix though.

I have officially finished the pink / white / brown owl quilt!  The hanging sleeve is attached, the buttons eyes are sewn on, and the whole quilt top has been cleaned up of thread tails and such.  I'll add a label to the back and bring it to the next guild meeting for show and tell.

the top of the owls are raw edge applique so the will ruffle when washed : )

the flannelette backing : )

pretty binding fabric from Periwinkle Quilting and Beyond

From there it will be hung for sale at McNally Robinson's Booksellers from the upper railings around the children's reading section.  (Isnt' that fantastic of them to offer that exhibit space to our guild!?).  This will be the 4th and 5th quilts I've hung there.  My country courthouse steps will go up there too, both until the end of May.

AND my final news is that me and Christie from Describe Happy are on a fitness challenge for eight weeks.  We'll be reporting our progress to each other and sending each gifts of support.  The idea is that if one of us can't keep up, they will owe the other some serious fabric.  If we both keep up though, then we both win and prize each other.  I challenge you to find a partner and do the same.  Quilting is not good for the butt and it's been a long long winter.  ; )

~Monika K.