Cotton Picker

 The Cotton Picker is a favorite tool of mine.  Mostly I use it to remove errant threads from my sewing and quilting projects.  Today I am using it to rescue my wool.  I purchased some wool to use in an upcoming project.  I am a novice at wool work.  I separated my wools to prepare to felt it- lights, darks, mediums and brights.  The lights, darks and mediums went as anticipated.  The brights were a disaster.  The colors bled onto one another.  Here you see how the orange settled on the green.  All of my brights looked muddied and no longer bright.  Here comes Cotton Picker to my rescue.  I drug the Cotton Picker across the surface of the wool and the muddied fibers came off.

Above is the before and below is the after.  I think it is a marked improvement and makes this piece of wool usable.  Hooray for the Cotton Picker.   

The piece is not so bright anymore but I am happy with it.  I learned a lesson about separating colors.  Each bright needs to be felted by its lone.  

New Blog

I decided to make a new blog to focus just on stitchin'.  I intend to start doing more wool applique and I thought this might be helpful as I begin embellishing my work.

Join me at:  http://stitchinmyway.blogspot.com/

Slow Stitching Sunday September OMG

Today I am under the weather so it will be a slow stitching Sunday.  My goal is to add veins to the leaves on Blooms for Julie.  I did not intend to do this but the bright lime green fabric needs some toning down so as to not overpower the focus on the border.  I went to an embroidery book that I got from Goodwill (It is a great reference book.); and selected the Spanish Knotted feather stitch which is great for outlining, straight lines and gentle curves.  I will get a lot of practice with this stitch on this quilt.

Here is a before and after picture.  I think it tones it down.  I like the result.

September OMG

My OMG for this month is the embroidery on the Blooms for Julie quilt plus another mission TBD.  I am at my daughter's for the moment and I do not know when I will be where at the moment.

August OMG

 

I added some more Bricks, Pebbles and Cobblestones to make the quilt rectangular.  I added hearts because the Orlando Modern Quilt Guild suggestion was for rainbow heart quilts.

I added some big hearts on the back.  I quilted it with the back facing up and started at the edge of the hearts, then echo quilted the heart shape multiple times.  I used lime green thread on top and bottom.  I expected it to show up more than it did.  It was mailed off to the Orlando Modern Quilt guild for the Orlando Pulse victims and families.  It is sent out into the world.  My OMG is complete.

First Heart

I get so excited when I can use my scraps to make something.  I just finished 1 of 6 hearts necessary to piece the back of my quilt.  When the scraps are die cut, they go together so quickly.  My sister suggested a book some years ago about mastering scraps.  I followed the directions in the book so I have a stack of 5 inch blocks to look through.  Recently I sort of organized them loosely by color.  It has helped to find what you want easily.  Glad I spent the time doing that.  If I don't have enough to make six blocks, I will just add some big solid block to fill in.  Back to work.

Bricks Pebbles Cobblestones Backing

My plan was to use this red fabric to make a gigantic heart on the back of the quilt.  When I unfolded it I determined that it has so much sun damage that it is to be sent to the rag bin.  So now what do I do???  I headed to my scrap bin and pulled out my 5 inch blocks.  I decided to make some scrappy hearts out of them.  Here is the first one in process.  I hope my sewing machine holds up.  Today the bobbin case got stuck in the race.  After a call to my Bernina dealer I followed their directions to free it.  The case is quite scraped up by the little screw driver that came with my machine.  I will have to order another.  For the moment the machine is working.  It took quite a bit of doing with extreme angst.  Back to work.