Blackwork Quilt 2 - Finished

I thought I had finished this and then remembered that I still had to outline it. Grumble grumble. I also found a big mistake which was SO annoying.

Anyway, it's done at least, and the pattern is now for sale on Etsy.

I'm feeling a little blocked in designing patterns that are sale-able. I do want to finish that robot sampler which I hit a block on, and there's an idea with foxes that I'd love to make work. It's one where I know EXACTLY how I want it to look but I'm having trouble getting there.

After that, I'm planning to transfer a bunch of entries from my second grade journal to one big piece of cloth and embroider them along with some drawings from the same period. Is that silly? I think it will be sort of neat, though now I wonder what on earth I'll do with it.

Blackwork Quilt - nearly there!

Well, I got almost half the background done and ran out of floss. It's my favorite purple (154), so it seems stupid that I didn't have an extra skein around. Oh well. I'm hoping to get to the store tomorrow, but I really like the way the purple is making it pop.

Wish I'd chosen a different color for the flowers, or done them in half-stitches, but oh well. This one had a lot of mistakes and things I had to work around. Maybe someday I'll make another and it will be perfect (ha, like that will happen).

In the meantime I've been working on my first kitschy transfer piece! I have a big thing for mermaids, and strong feelings that they wouldn't have pink skin or red hair.  Here she is so far.

Meanwhile my mom is is Italy, taking pictures of things she feels would make excellent cross-stitch patterns (and cats lounging on statues).

Blackwork Quilt

I could have sworn I'd posted update pictures of this piece already! Apparently my brain has gone hooey.

Soo, this is the piece. There have been some issues. Didn't have enough of the one hand-dyed thread for the squares, went to get more, but I'd written down the wrong number. Realized that the sun had faded the other pieces anything, so waiting to use more of that would still leave problems. 

So I used one green-blue kind and one yellow-green kind, then decided to do have the piece is more greenish colors and half in more yellowish colors. It's not really noticeable enough though. I now have many things I wish I'd done with the the corner pieces, but oh well.

I'm doing the remaining white parts in dark purple (154) half stitches. I don't dislike the piece, but I can't help thinking about what I *would* have done if I'd sat and given myself time to think about the choices. I wish I could make myself go through all the options ahead of time, but I don't seem to have the knack. I'm slower with my color choices now, at least, but that's as far as I've come.

Blackwork Quilt - finished!

Well, I had a few days in a row last week when I wasn't able to get any stitching done, so this did take longer than expected.

Here it is though, finally all finished and the pattern is for sale in my Etsy shop. I plan to do two or three more patterns with different quilt designs.

It is quite a lot of stitching, especially the background which took one and a half skeins of floss. I wish you could see it all in person, where the colors are more vibrant and the whole thing looks neater. Blackwork is just hard to photograph, I find.

Blackwork Quilt Motif - WIP 04

Well, hello! Look at this piece with half the background stitched. That's a whole skein of green 935 on there. Now of course I'm out, so it will be at least tomorrow before I can start again. I will eventually outline the entire outside edge as well, just to neaten it up a bit.

At 4:30 the sky got so dark I couldn't use only natural light to stitch! We just had a massive storm, and it's still raining, so it might pick back up again. We're all excited about tomorrow, as the high temperature is *only* 87. 

This is me dying of heat exhaustion. This is me realizing that even my cold water felt a little warm at 9:30 am! This is me praying that some nice person in Scotland would like to adopt me.

I've got a few new patterns to start and I'm feeling rushed and overwhelmed, like I never accomplish anything. I've certainly been ignoring the housework in favor of embroidery. 26 craft projects completed and 90 books read isn't so bad for six months work, I guess, but it's hard to keep that in mind.

Speaking of books, how much do I recommend A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel? A million times! A billion times! It's about her life as a kid in a very small town (pop. 300) in Indiana, and she writes it from the perspective, and in the voice of, her kid self (up to about age nine, I think). It's SO good and I especially recommend the audio edition, which is read by the author.

Blackwork Quilt Motif - WIP 03

Well, the main part is done now!

I ended up using one less color than I'd planned, because it blended into the fabric too much when stitched. I think using the blue-purple shade again was a good idea anyway, as it further reduces busyness.

Typically, I've completely changed the way I'm doing the background. Instead of doing another fill pattern, I'm just using straight lines. I *think* what I'll do is have all the lines pointing to the center of the star (it will end up being a perfect square)

So the corner pieces will have diagonal lines slanting inward, the triangles on the top and bottom will have vertical lines, and the triangles on the side will have horizontal ones. Is that clear? Does it sound like a horrible idea? Have I gone mad with power?!

I sketched it out and it looked good, but haven't changed the proper pattern yet.

Blackwork Quilt Motif WIP 02

Here's some more progress on this. I love how quickly blackwork goes, compared to cross-stitch. Obviously it depends on the pattern and the level of detail, but I think it will always go more quickly anyway.

Once I have all the diamonds filled I'll go back to the DMC color project for a bit. Actually I tend to get a bit antsy when I'm not working on anything snarky or generally humorous, as though I'm betraying the name of my store and blog.

I'll be back to that soon enough, I'm sure.

Quilt project - WIP 01

Here's a look at my blackwork quilt motif project. I've actually gotten some more of the diamonds filled in and it's looking good. One of my original color choices had to be changed, but I think my plan now is even better.

When I get sick of it in the evenings I do a little work on the DMC color project and it's all working out well. 

Okay, that's ignoring the fact that I've felt especially unproductive lately, and I'm on a bit of a downer since the Euro Cup ended (and totally shattered all my hopes), but I'll get better soon.

I am quite excited for a book I pre-ordered to arrive. Normally, I am the stingiest, most miserable person on earth, and I buy all my books used or as remainders (I also rarely buy anything I haven't read). However, there is an exception, which are older comic books. Fantagraphics is publishing a Carl Barks library, and alternating between Scrooge and Donald comics, for some stupid reason. 

Anyway, the first of the Scrooge books comes out on the 4th and I can't wait! I pre-order because I want the publishers to know there's a demand and to keep up with the project. Fantagraphics is also the force behind the new complete Pogo project, which I'm equally excited about. Thanks, Fantagraphics, for making me so happy!

Color project update and quilt colors

I am already a quarter of the way through the color project, which seems rather insane.

It goes quickly but it's so tedious to constantly be starting a new color and then immediately ending it. I've been sort of queueing up ten or so at a time, and of course now I'll have loose thread on EVERY bobbin. I do have a number of other ideas for similar projects using different shapes and arrangements though, so I suppose I'll just continue those until I've used up the loose bits.

Also, here are the colors I've chosen for my quilt project! The dark green is possibly the background. The quilt block design I'm using is a Lemoyne Star, and the dark green is for the background (not sure which I'll use), which has a much larger fill pattern than the diamonds. That might be too dark a green, but I'll just have to see once I get there. I think my pricey hand-dyed variegated thread will work out though. It's no SO variegated that it will be overwhelming, just enough to provide some extra interest.

It was difficult to get a really accurate picture of the hand-dyed yarn, so I doctored that one on the computer. It's still not QUITE right, but you get the idea. Also, my star looks distorted because of the odd angle, but I promise it's not really. 

I am switching over to work on the quilt motif for a while, though it should go relative quickly.

pretend quilting

I finally present to you the completely finished (and framed) color-fade blackwork piece. It's not exactly what I wanted, because I didn't start with a large enough piece of fabric but it does look pretty. 

Plus it gave me a lot of ideas for color fade pieces which I could then do properly. Before that I need to bulk up my thread collection. I have a ton of embroidery floss, but not enough oranges and not enough blues and missing some important reds. It feels like I never have the colors I want.

I got a new computer, as mine was getting run down (especially in the touchpad department) and I'd like to have a backup that still works normally. The new machine is running Linux because holy crap I hate Windows 7. I thought I just disliked it, but having to use it for more than two minutes at a time amped the dislike right up to despise. 

We used Linux on all the computers at my high school (a tiny boarding school) so I'm not completely unfamiliar with it (though even if I was Ubuntu is SO intuitive that it should be easy for anyone to use). The best part for me is downloading all the free applications. I got a geography lesson program and can now identify all the countries on all the continents and a number of island nations. When something big happens in Moldova or Togo I'll know just where they are! I'm beyond psyched about this.

So thank you, Microsoft, for completely screwing up the operating system I grew up with and liked using. You even managed to make networking my two computers a pain and not workable. Now that's talent. Change for change's sake is always a bad idea.

more color fade action

Well, I'm sadly growing more and more annoyed with this piece. I didn't plan it all that carefully, so I didn't use a large enough piece of fabric to do a real rainbow fade piece.

For that you need to go red, red-orange, orange, yellow-orange, yellow, yellow green, green, green-blue, blue, blue-purple, etc.... My blues which look bluer on their own just look teal in this piece and the whole thing is making the OCD cringe. I'm almost done though and then I can give it to someone as a gift or try to sell it.

I'm working on a smaller even more gradual color fade piece that's just green going into blue in a four inch hoop. 

I suppose I'll have to start on the Celtic style G for my niece at some point. It would be nice to have it ready for my sister's birthday or Christmas, which won't be a problem even if I don't start for another month.

Today I saw my nephew Benjamin with a mandolin pretending to be Chuck Berry. Which I'm sure you'll agree is adorable. Though I'm slowly trying to ween him from Chuck Berry as there's only so many times I can listen to the same four songs. Plus there's lots of other good early rock and it enforces the idea of taking turns.

progress on the color fade

I've made some more progress on the color fade project. I need to go on another thread run to find the right colors in the right shade group. It doesn't help that the light in the embroidery thread aisle is the worst in the store. It's coming along well though and I like the effect.

The Quilt National show at the Dairy Barn was absolutely amazing. I've to a number of the Quilt National shows and this has been the best. There's a lot less hand quilting in it, which is a shame. A few shows back there were a couple huuuge amazing, completely hand quilted pieces but there were also a few quilts that just left me a bit blah. This show everything was amazing.

This is my favorite piece, Rook Road by Elizabeth Brimelow. The minute I saw I told my mom it looked like a map and it turns out that's exactly what Ms. Brimelow was quilting! My vision rarely lines up with the artist's vision, and it doesn't need to, but it is exciting when it does. The presentation of this quilt is also incredible and really allows some of the wrong side quilting to show through beautifully.

It's everything I love about quilting. Creativity in design, creativity in display, and a clear but uncommon vision.

color fades for the win...

Oh how neglectful I've been! I had a house guest and then I left my camera at my sister's house. That's the pain of having an adorable nephew (and niece), you leave your camera a lot of places.

Anyway, here's my new piece. I had yellow on it but the fade from green to blue was so perfect that I wanted to redo the yellow to get a nicer fade into the green. This all means a trip to the needlework shop (there's a lovely little local place) and it's just so annoying having to leave the apartment.

On the plus side, how gorgeous is this?! Oh I'm so happy with how it's turning out. It is my first art piece. Well, I did that cross stitch of Obelix so we'll just say this is my first abstract art piece. Hopefully I can eventually frame it and give it to la madre. It just looks so quilty to me and quilts make me think of her.

Was there ever some tiny piece of information you would do anything to get? Any tiny bit of someone's thoughts you would die to know? I have something like that, and I dream about it and that person so often. Once a week, sometimes more. The dreams alternate between good and awful. Sometimes the truth is wonderful and perfect and sometimes it's so soul crushing and hurtful. I would rather know though, no matter how painful it might be. I'm not good with matters requiring that sort of courage, but I'm working on it.