Progress is Here – Finally

Here I am on 19 October and life is really getting back to normal!  A daily routine that I love, coffee, walking, breakfast, and the rest of the day quilting!!! Pure Heaven!  We have AGAIN changed travel plans and will be going to Galveston Beach for a week in November!  YEA!  After 17 years of wintering in Arizona to me this is going to be so much fun!  Next year a trip to Michigan to visit with Doug and Jean!  In the meantime though, I am quilting and have made progress with my projects although I did lose 3 days last week when we upgraded our iPhones with Verizon.  Now that was not fun but we persevered and I got over it!

I have started working on Mountmellick, a Di Ford Mystery Quilt in Quiltmania magazine in 2014.  It took me 2 days to prepare the medallion for appliqué, but I now ready to start the appliqué work.

The process involves Broderie Perse  a technique that I wanted to work with for a long while.  I purchased a lot of Dutch Chintz fabric for use in making the Australian reproduction quilts, but had to put this on hold for a few years. Now I am ready to embark on my goals of 2014 and beyond!

I first began by auditioning different fabrics to use in the Medallion and came up with this selection.

Next step was to prepare the back ground for placement.  Then preparing the separate appliqué pieces.  For the broderie press flowers I played “let’s play cut out flowers” and here is what happens to beautiful expensive fabrics to achieve the goal required in this quilt for the medallion.

Alas – the final result of 2 days of work.  The stems took longer to appliqué and one can barely see them but after needle turning the flowers I believe more of the stems will show.  The leaves in the upper right hand corner are possible “changes” to a couple of the leaves in the middle right side where the two leaves are the same.

I have made progress (faster than I thought) on Sweet Stitches. I have completed Block 4 and will prep Block 5 tomorrow.

The embroidery goes faster than my needle turn appliqué. My hands are working but, but it does make them “act up” a bit when I overdo the hand work, so today I am going to go back to the month of May when I loaded a quilt in the longarm and try to get it finished in the next day or so.  This quilt was my first appliqué quilt called Hearts which was made in 2003.  Hum a lifetime ago!  Since I am not a real scrappy person, I was surprised at the outcome for my first try with colors.   I retired in 1999 and learned how to quilt by watching Alex Anderson on PBS – really miss her from those years.  Elly Sienkiewicz’s books and Anita Shackleford were my main teachers.

An update on my CutterPillar Glow.  This tool is so neat and so worth the $110.00.  It functions as a cutting mat (the grid just lies on the glow mat) AND is so great to trace patterns for appliqué or embroidery patterns!!! BUT BEWARE – The mat below is a regular cutting self-healing mat and works great.  They also sell a glass self-healing mat that I ordered and received last week, but decided to call Cutter Pillar and ask about using the glass mat with my rotary cutter.  They said it would, of course, dull the blade on the rotary cutter (obvious) BUT that to be careful because it could slippery to work with.  Well with the recent surgeries I did not want to have an accident.  I was going to send it back to the Quilt Store – but the mat cost $22.00 and I had already paid $9.00 for shipping to me and then it would cost $10.50 to mail it back, I quickly decided to keep it and purchased a book of stamps!  I will try it and then post my opinion as to whether or not it is smart to purchase the glass mat!  Hope this information is useful for all.  I still strongly recommend this cutting mat – especially if you only have a small space for cutting.  I have a full size cutting table so that is not an issue for me, but when cutting small pieces this is great to have the backlight!

I DO NOT RECEIVE ANY COMPENSATION FOR RECOMMENDING THE ABOVE PRODUCT. I am just sharing information about a tool that is great!

Well, that is what I have been up to and hoping to be even more productive as time progresses.  Hoping that you have a great week-end and enjoy sewing today!