Hello my friends! Yes, I took the handmade pledge: this year I will give only handmade things as gifts - except for books, cds, and dvds, all of which play a major part in my gift-giving. And speaking of which, I finished the top for my daughter's quilt!! I'm excited. It turned out nicely and I discovered that when I used Eleanor Burns' method of NOT ironing each patch as I go but instead just using my fingers, nails and body heat to flatten the seams, the blocks and top went together much faster and with fewer problems!! What do you all do?
Do you iron every seam before proceeding or not? I'm curious.
So, here is the top:
I used four different yellows: one dark new one, and three older, paler ones. Two of them I bought at a yard sale almost twenty years ago and the other was in my mother's stash.
The dark fabric in this block is black, purple and white and was also in my mum's stash.
I bought this brown fabric 15-20 years ago and I LOVE it! It looks like velvet. I waited and waited for the perfect places to use it.
This fabric is dark blue with beige, bright red and bright purple, and my dearest daughter brought it back from Pakistan for me. I love this fabric and look forward to using it in other projects.
This is the fabric I have for the backing which I'll have to piece. I haven't yet decided how to piece it as I don't want to have just stripes of fabric on the back. I'm thinking of doing something with applique. I'll give you peeks as I decide and work on it.
I want to hand quilt this and was thinking of adding some embellishments, but my daughter has a huge dog whose fur may end up on this quilt from time to time, so it would need to be washable. Does this rule out embellishments?
I wonder.
Keep your foot on the dogs!
4 comments:
it's so pretty..i love the effect of all the different yellows. i press each seam...never heard that you could do otherwise.
Embellishments don't wash well if they are something like buttons & beads. Machine embroidery would work well. I would say with a dog to just go simple and skip the embellishments.
Hi Jacquie, I had never heard of not pressing either,in fact regular pressing was one of those rules that seemingly could never be broken if one wanted the best results. Until I saw Eleanor Burns using her fingers, fingernails, and a "wooden" iron instead of pressing. I've tried to find a sample of her doing so on Quilters' TV but haven't been able to find it. I'll keep looking.
Hi Debra, great advice. As you'll see from my next post, I did keep it fairly simple. Could resist a little hand embroidery, though, so I'll have to stress to my daughter to not let the dog get on it.
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