Thursday 8 April 2010

Wonky and proud

Well, you didn't think I would stay on the straight and narrow path did you?

Here's a couple of new house blocks I made.  The orange house I deliberately went for a wonky look (made by tipsy builders as Lazy Gal Tonya might have it!).  In fact, they were so tipsy that the roof doesn't even fit, but hey, who needs to worry about an ill-fitting roof when it's raining glitter?





Buoyed by the liberation of making wonky houses, I decided to have another go at dropping the feed dogs and experimenting with a bit of free motion embroidery.  My lovely sister-in-law got me this book for Christmas and I dug it out and had a go at a bit of stitching.  Here are the two fabric postcards I made as a result:



It wasn't as terrifying as I had thought, but actually pretty enjoyable!  And the fabrics were all from my scrap bag, so low risk.  D

I did learn that I need to cut my fabric background a bit bigger cos they have ended up at less than postcard size.  Who knew a bit of embroidery would make them shrink so much?

Hand Quilting vs Machine Quilting

As I mentioned previously, having machine quilted my Army Star quilt, I don't think I will physically be able to manage machine quilting the Jacob's Ladder quilt, so have been looking at advice on hand quilting.  I bought some "between" needles as suggested in the advice I found everywhere but they are very, very tiny and I don't really fancy my chances with them!  So I was intrigued by this post on Anna Maria Horner's website, where she talks about quilting with embroidery floss.  I think this might be much more up my street.  Mentioning this on the Liberated Quilters yahoo group, Dordogne Quilter Clare helpfully pointed me in the direction of this thread guide written by Lazy Gal Tonya.  Now my mind is surely made up!

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for stopping by my blog and leaving a comment. I love comments!

    I love your wonky houses, especially the roof on the orange one! Good thing it's only raining glitter, eh?

    One thing to remember when you're hand-quilting with the heavier threads....don't use too thick or heavy a batting. It makes it really tough to get that needle and thread through.

    By the way, you came up as "no reply" when you commented on my blog. You might want to check your settings and change that. I know nothing of wordpress, so can't tell you how...sorry!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh wow.....your second house there is w-a-y crazy wonky cool!!!!

    ReplyDelete

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