Fiber Babble: February 2012

A Gift Or A Curse?

February 24, 2012

Abandoned book "The Strain" by Guillermo del Toro ♦♦♦◊◊

I've got the petals for the Poinsettia Starburst fused to the background now!

I'm kinda detail oriented in some things. Like fusible applique.

I don't like my applique to be thick with fusible and layers, so I don't just cut a whole petal and layer it over another petal, usually.

This is the tip of a petal.

Here it is, so far. I need to put the flower centers in and choose two colors for the stems that swirl in the middle.

Any suggestions? For some reason I'm leaning toward something and purple (every other stem). The border will be a greeny-blue batik. Maybe the batik and a purple?

Why do I want purple? Do I need an intervention?

Labels: quilting

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No Pressure

February 21, 2012

Perfect, in fact. "Garden Spells" by Sarah Addison Allen ♦♦♦♦◊

Over a month ago a friend of mine sent me an email and evah-so-gently suggested that I enter a quilt into a show that's coming up.

I shopped for fabric, decided that I wanted to do something artsy-fartsy and bright, and came up with a killer idea for an abstract of a common sewing/quilting themed item. I drew out the pattern and put it up on the design wall at the shop. While standing back and wondering if anyone would be able to identify the item or if it was too abstract, I thought about turning the pattern in quarter turns to see what it did.

What it did was turn into a fish (this is the actual picture, not my drawing!)(because I had to tell you that, right?).

What has been seen cannot be unseen. I don't want to make a fish.

Let's go to Plan B, shall we? Denise Russart has a pattern called Poinsettia Starburst that's been in my 'wanna-do' pile for a while, so here I go. I've re-designed the borders a bit, but that's in the future (because I have sooooo much time to do that between now and the March 5 deadline).

MoonPie helped me put the pattern together and mark it up. (I made my first SMILEBOX photo compilation with more pictures of MoonPie helping me. It might be HERE.)

The 4½ hour train trip to Mom's last week was enough to trace all of the petals onto fusible web. A little bit of down time while at Mom's allowed me to windowpane (cut out the centers) the petals.

This afternoon I pressed the fusible onto the fabrics (9 flowers/fabrics, each with 10-14 pieces). The fabrics are red-orange to orange to yellow-orange; the background will be a light aqua, the border a blue-green batik.

This evening I'll watch something on TV while cutting out the individual petals and putting them in 9 envelopes to keep each flower together.

Because I have two whole weeks to get this fused and quilted and bound.

Piece of cake.

Labels: quilting

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Fiberly Challenged

February 03, 2012

Abandoned book "The Lincoln Lawyer" by Michael Connelly ♦◊◊◊◊

Okay, I'm still in the drive-by posting mode. I'm doing some fibery stuff, but I'm also working a lot. It's easy to tell myself that I'm 'recovering and recharging' - sounds so much better than 'being a lump in front of the computer or television'.

Last month's book for the

was The Trouble With Spells (Of Witches and Warlocks, #1) by Lacey Weatherford. The book didn't hold my attention and I abandoned it at about the 60% mark. I wrote a review here. The short version of an already short review is that the book seemed a bit too young for me.

This month's (paperback) book is Magic Bleeds by Ilona Andrews. This is the fourth book in the Kate Daniels series (I've read the previous 3).

Just to fill out the rest of the story, I'm also reading The Soulkeepers by GP Ching (on my Kindle Fire) and The Rock Orchard by Paula Wahl (on CD).

In the pitiful fibery news, I got fired up about making some blocks for a sample at the shop. I brought the fabrics and patterns home, sat down to sew and found that one of the blocks' cutting instructions were painfully inaccurate (after, of course, I'd cut the fabrics) and the second, while the instructions were fine, I hadn't brought enough background fabric. Screech, erch, full stop.

Then I worked on my Bashful Butterflies Shawl. I've been doing a couple of rows at a time (there's lots of stitches on each row!). I got 4 rows from the end of the 3rd chart and found a dropped stitch. Over a column of left- and right-leaning decreases, so it wasn't just a matter of fixing it on the fly. I had to pull out 5 of those loooonnng rows to get to where I can salvage it.

So, yeah. First that was lack o'mojo, then a few errors. I keep plugging along, though. Someday I will have some show-and-tell!

Labels: books