Sewing Room Forensics...

The summer is flying by for all of us!

We have had gorgeous weather-- not too hot, and nice and dry-- in short, this has been one of our best summers evah, as they say here in Massachusetts!

It is with some pride that we now have a complete collection of eight cross stitch of the month designs, all out ON TIME, and even completed with binding all hand stitched to the back!

We have been trying to use a different color of grunge for each month and so far we have succeeded. It gets harder as the months roll on. That is-- until we found WEBFABRICS.NET. We first discovered them at a booth at Houston Quilt Festival... they had a HUGE selection of fabrics that are in the category of "Background Textures,"-- it's the stuff we love for embroidery-- not a solid, but not too busy to show off gorgeous embroidery. Of course they have a huge selection of grunge--and what do you know? You can buy 1/4 yd. (most sites have 1/2 yd. minimum) for $3.10. So we'll be doing some picking for the four remaining months of the year.

In other studio news, if a detective came into the office right now, he'd note...

"There appears to have been signs of a struggle..."

And "fiber evidence is in abundance..."

Yes, they'd be right on both counts, getting "My Christmas Album" ready for show!

Quilting took about three days... not the ONE I anticipated!

First, I stitched in the ditch around all the blocks, then tightly stitched around each embroidery. I added a 1/8" outline around each.

Next, I quilted tight swirls around each block. It was amazing how this gave a little POOF to the little bodies of the birds and other motifs.... I tried to capture it on camera, but you really need to see it in person. 

The sashings were a little too POOFY after all of that, so I nailed them down with x's in each wreath.

Finally, in the plaid, I decided to stitch a grid in invisible thread. Going around each bow was a real time killer. Everything went really well though-- just took TIME!

 This is a moment that causes extreme anxiety for any quilter-- I don't prewash my fabrics and there was a lot of RED. But soaking and blocking is really essential to getting a pristine finish. I pinned a color catcher sheet  over each embroidery, because I would just be totally disappointed if my dove turned even a little bit pink.

Of course, a piped, scalloped border was the perfect finish. 

(Read: binding took THREE more days.)

So there it is!

I volunteered as much as I could for the show-- most of it was behind the scenes. One of my jobs was to embroider the names of the sponsors on the VIP ribbons...

Now I know you were all rooting for me, 

but neither of my pieces won anything!

It's all good--- it's a tribute to the bench strength of this very talented guild. I'll be sharing some of the quilts later this week and you'll see why I do not feel left out at all!

I have had my mom staying with me this summer-- here we are, enjoying the "Fisherman's Feast for Two" at a local restaurant. 

When I was finishing my quilt, I said to her, 

"You taught me to sew..."

and she said, "Not like THAT, I didn't!"

Wasn't that the sweetest comment? 

But yes, she certainly lit a spark.

xox

Carol