Try again

 Well, the quilt top wasn't what was wanted! It is a bit too strong for a baby. 

I did try laying it out differently, in diagonal lines and it looks quite good. I forgot to take a picture though. I may make it bigger, once I have the baby quilt out of the way, and keep it for myself or a family member who might like to take it to the football, if we ever get to go again. We go to the MCC, which regularly has large crowds, not sure that will happen in the near future. Not that the football season will go there this year. Hopefully, by March, we will be able to have some matches here in Victoria. But some of our matches have 80,000 people, which suggests that social distancing will be a problem. Wait and see. 

But for now, back to the drawing board. I got out some of my fabrics that have motifs that might do for a baby and started working on another idea. I found some free baby quilt patterns here. 

Unfortunately, I don't have much suitable fabric left from my quilting days. I found some bright dinosaur fabric and tried that but cut it the wrong size and used up too much of the fabric - aargh! 

I tried it with several different iterations but none work. And it is still rather strong colour-wise. 

So I'll have another go at a much more muted one later. Seeing it is a boy and seeing I have quite a lot of blues, I will go down the boring colour theme. Probably. 

I am really only posting because of the date: 20/08/20. 

Using leftover squares for another baby quilt.

 I made a small quilt for a baby about 18months ago and, because he was born 5 weeks early, got carried away in the rush of things and cut way too much fabric. 

Now I have another baby quilt to make. Easy decision to use those leftover pieces (with still some left!). I have been told that the baby is being born into a Hawthorn supporting family (AFL club) so I only used the yellow squares and cut up some brown fabric I had. 

Because there were some already cut, I didn't have to find the pattern or work out the size, I just copied what I had. They were 5" square (seeing most of my quilting equipment is in imperial measurement, I usually use inches rather than metric). 

I sprayed the fabrics with starch as that makes them sit better for cutting and sewing, especially on the bias. 

I cut them all out and drew a line diagonally across the middle, then sewed them, using the quarter inch foot, on both sides of the line. I cut them along the line afterwards, giving me lovely triangles. Using the board that has sandpaper as one surface ensures that the fabric doesn't move. 

I trimmed the corners off all the squares.

I have laid them out but will leave them till tomorrow and look at it with fresh eyes, to see if there are any glaring areas that I will want to change around. It may look different in daylight too. 

I am writing the process down in a bit more detail this time as I needed to look at my previous post and photos to see exactly what I had done. This being my visual diary, I think I need to put in more information so that I can easily find it in the future. 

So far, so good. 

It has been a good change from working on my blackwork course, I find I move around much more when doing a quilt. The sitting still for the embroidery is much harder on the neck and back. 

Still going

 I noticed the date today and thought: I should have blogged yesterday - 12/8/20. But I have just looked up the world clock and it is still the 12th somewhere in the world. 

We have moved on to working with coloured threads for our blackwork. 

I am feeling ambitious with this as we can use a solid colour or variegated and we have also been asked to do some with deliberate colour changes (as opposed to random variegated). But I will try to get the minimum done before I launch off into trialling lots of permutations. 

As you can see, the different textures of the various threads cause different effects. The pink is a soft Anchor thread, maybe a bit thicker than I would like. 

The grey is DMC Perle 12 and worked the best so far. It has a lovely sheen. 

The purple is Wonderfill Spaghetti yarn, Egyptian cotton. I bought it to use in the bobbin of my sewing machine. It is too thick for the needle at the top. It is an ok thickness for the blackwork but tends to get fuzzy, especially when you have to pull it out, as I frequently do. 

The sitting still is continuing to cause me some back and neck problems but I am being more aware of it now and trying to only do a little bit at a time.

I have even enrolled for an online Zoom dance class for 55+ people. It started with people from all over the east coast but now seems to only have Melbourne people in it at the moment (I wonder why??). It is a way to get moving without using up your hour of outdoor activity. I can still go for a walk later, weather permitting (it has been lovely so far but some rain is forecast and I can't complain, we don't want another drought and/or huge bushfire season). 

Band samplers

 Our next block of work in Blackwork is to do some coloured embroidery, in band samplers. 

I have found it hard to find much about what these are, most of my embroidery books, of which I do not have a lot, do not mention band samplers. 

It doesn't help that when I went onto the computer, I was initially looking up bandwork embroidery in blackwork. Autocorrect and other such things kept giving me handwork! 

Then I found something that mentioned band samplers. Now I have found some information! I probably didn't really have to look it up, we were given some images to inspire us. But I was interested to know what made these 'band samplers' rather than the other samplers we have been doing. 

One article I read says that band samplers were made as a way of recording and passing on designs, before printing became common. Also, young girls were usually the embroiderers and it was a way of educating them as they sometimes had letters and they would have had some discussion about the meanings of the patterns (I assume). 

I am still not certain I really know but I think I just have to work my designs in bands. 

We have done a sample of motifs, of our own design or copied; border and corner patterns; shading ideas using either different thicknesses of thread or density of pattern changing. So I assume I will be ok with border patterns as they will work well in bands. 

I will have to go through my cottons now, see what colours I have. 

I have mostly stranded cottons, in a large variety of colours but we have been advised that stranded cotton is difficult because the needle can separate the strands and make the blackwork not sit properly. So I'll have to go through all my other yarns and see what I have. 

In this strange time of lockdown I can't go to a shop to browse. I have done an online order but had to rely on the images which, as a tactile textile person, isn't as satisfactory. And I have to wait for it to arrive. Still, it could be fun to go through stuff, as long as I don't make too big a mess before having to pack it away again.