Emotional ups and downs

Bit of an emotion roller coaster ride the last couple of days.  Excited about getting my machine back, and pleased at getting exactly enough green fabric to bind my leaf piece.  One of the joys at getting the machine back was that it would allow me to work on FMQ'g quilting the hand embroidered antique table cloth that I found at the thrift store.  This is to be a practice piece, prior to working on a very lovely  antique linen, hand embroidered (beautiful combination of cut work and pulled thread work) tablecloth that was given to me by a very special relative, as a wedding gift over 50 years ago. This tablecloth was the reason behind me taking Cindy Needham's Craftsy class not once but twice.  I was also looking for a simple crafty activity that I could demonstrate and display at an upcoming craft show.  Well, I've been working on the practice piece, and have found that it is just too heavy for me to manipulate through the machine.  There are all sorts of ways that a problem like this can be worked with.  I've used most of them, at some point or another, over the years. 

This is a personal physical issue.  I hurt my shoulder in a nasty fall, last June.  It is still causing me a lot of pain, especially with any sort of movement against resistance.  My doctor is not optimistic, as this shoulder was previously broken, again in a fall, and is quite arthritic. ( Don't carry heavy shoulder bags, over long periods.  Just sayin")  So again I'm facing the down side of the aging process.  Another lost function/skill. 

Now, how do I turn this into an opportunity?  I'm not yet sure.  I have to think about it.  I spent yesterday wallowing my frustration, which is just a form of going through the grieving process, but today I have to get on with life.

Thanks for listening.

There are some days when everything goes wrong

The most recent dye bath is an example.  I don't know what went wrong.  My suspicion that the tablecloth fabric was a poor choice.  It was much softer and far more used/worn than the almost pristine napkins.  I used the same dyes, and in just about the same concentration.  The results were nothing like I had expected.

This piece has some promise.  I quite like the colour it turned out, but there is no way I would call this either "Grass Green" or "Spring Green", what I had hoped for.  I'm going to keep it, and, already I have the vision of a project, developing in my mind.

This is somewhat similar, but the edges of the colours much sharper.  ( I think the picture is a little out of focus) I'm not as excited about this one.

There had been a bit of navy and purple in the original dye bath, so I added a little to this one.  At least, I thought I had added a little. Guess I screwed up there.

There was no way any of the above could be used with the beaded leaves.  I only had one of the original napkins left and a small scrap, about 12" square.  I tried again.  The last of the original fabric and the last of my ice.  I didn't put any navy or purple in the dyes.  Success!  I think I might have just enough to add the narrow border to the piece.  The first is the napkin, and, if necessary, I can get a little extra out of the scrap.

Arg-g-g-h!

I had thought that this leaf piece could be bound in the same white cotton as I have between the lines, but looking it against the white  of the flannel on the design wall ( well, it was white a few years ago), I think the binding needs to make a bolder statement.  I'm not a fan of high contrast binding, but this just might be a place for it.  As well, I think that it needs to be just about the same colour as the predominant green in the leaves.  So, for the 4th time, I have a parfait dye bath set up, and I'm dyeing more cotton damask.  I don't have a lot of control over what the result will be, so here's hoping.

The cotton damask  I've used came originally from a two sets of napkins that I acquired, but they're gone. So I'm now into the table cloth.  That was bought a the local thrift store, and it looks like I'll have to go back there, if I ever want to dye the fabric again.  I love the way the weave of the fabric seems to glow, after dyeing.

For those who have wondered....

I had several responses to my query about the best layout for the leaves on the piece I'm currently making. The suggestions were about evenly distributed, among a few friends who e-mailed me privately, and those who commented on the blog.  One person, who knows my work well, said that she had trouble choosing, knowing that I would be adding other embellishment. Well, gosh, hadn't planned on that, but now that you mention it......   Giving the suggestion some thought, I realized that in all of the options, the leaves needed to be grounded, in some way.  I prepared a wrapped cord, using #8 perle cotton in the four colours that were used in the dyeing process,  and added them in simple straight lines.  The leaves were then sewn on, but the binding not yet done.  I'm happy.  There are also extra leaves that will be saved for another project.

I plan to link this with The Needle and Thread Network,  and Nina-Marie Sayre's Off the Wall Friday.

A "good Thing"

I called the shop to find out they might expect the parts to come in to fix the stop/start button on my big machine.  It has to come from Japan, and is expected around the end of November.  But, there would be no danger if I brought the machine home in the mean time, and used it.  Just imagine how quickly I got in the car and drove across the city to pick it up.

One of those weeks.....

Yep, that's right.  My large machine has been in for servicing, and I had hoped to get it back this week, as I was enrolled in a workshop yesterday.  Didn't get it back.  We're "waiting for parts".  This meant taking the old machine,  the one I keep for piecing, as it's more accurate than the newer one.  I spent a lot of hours FMQ'g on this older machine, with its small harp, before buying the newer on with the 11" one.  So I was optimistic, and prepared my supplies,  winding a couple of bobbins with Superior Bottomline.  I could only find the colour I need for the top in Bottomline, as well, so that went along.  The most critical part of the workshop involved FMQ'g, on a piece  that would have both sides showing, when finished.  Well, the darn machine didn't like Bottomline, and I was faced with constant thread breakage, and snarls.  I tried every strategy I knew, but that didn't help.  There was even a former machine salesperson, another student, who helped a bit, finally lending me a spool of Wonderfil that I used in the bobbin, with some decent results---for awhile.  I did manage to get enough FMQ'g done to continue on the workshop project, despite the upper tension started going out more and more often, finally proving un-fixable.  So now I have another machine to go in for servicing, once the newer one come home again.

But that doesn't help with the line of projects, each one with a looming deadline, that are scattered all over the studio.  While driving out into the country today, to take  down a show in a town about 1 1/2 hour away, I remembered giving my daughter a small, inexpensive machine, for Chritsmas, a few years ago.  I gave her a call, and then dropped in to pick it up on my way home.  Not as easy as it sounds, as she also lives in the country, but in the opposite direction.

So the evening was spent using every trick I know to figure out how to get a machine to do FMQ'g, when that machine was never intended to do it.  I ended up with quite the jury-rigged system, but one that will let me do the basics, although I would never attempt to do any exhibition  work on it.  I'll have to see how much progress I make on the deadlines, given the limitations of what I have.  But it will keep me from giving up the game in frustration, at least until the "big" machine comes home.

Decision time

Some time ago I posted about having cut many strips from a hand dyed piece of cotton damask, and my difficulty envisioning the next step. My progress has been mainly trial and error, and slow.

First, I pieced the strips together, adding a tiny bit of white between them.  Looked okay.

Then I dyed more cotton Damask with the same colour dyes, but in a more concentrated solution.  This was then sandwiched, and machine quilted within an inch of its life.  Leaf shapes were cut out, and hand beaded around the edges.

I'm now at the stage of figuring out how to use those shapes.  I've come up with three options, from fairly regimented to more "free fall".  Not sure which way to go.  Any opinions?

Option #1

Option #2

Option #3

Any help would be appreciated.

I plan to link this with The Needle and Thread Network, and Nina-Marie Syre's, Off the Wall Friday".

Surprise find

Doing a little more purging, I looked in a drawer, that I haven't opened in years.  I was surprised to find that it was full of tassels, mainly hand-made, but with a couple of luscious purchased ones as well.  I remembered taking a workshop in making them, taught by a girlhood friend, who is now deceased.  I also remembered the work that went into them.  Some were not quite finished, and some of them were not very well designed, but these five sure brought back memories.  The red and ecru ones are made with Rya rug yarn--a really gorgeous thing to work with, and no longer available around here.  The pine cone is velvet yarn  I have no idea where I found that!

Tonight  my Small fibre art group meets, and I plan to take them for "show'n'tell", and hopefully, get some ideas about using them, in an art piece.

I plan to link this with The Needle and Thread Network.

keeping busy

My big sewing machine is in for servicing, and I'm wanting to keep busy until it comes home.

Having taken Cindy Needham's  Craftsy course on reclaiming old linens not once but twice, I figured I better get to it.  I bought a hand embroidered tablecloth at the thrift store, for $1.00, to use for practice and experimentation.  It's proven to be a challenge, as the embroidered bits are not evenly distributed around the tablecloth, so the whole thing had to be completely laid out--no short cuts.  It's taken a week, but the whole cloth is now marked, ready for machine quilting.

First I pieced together tracing paper a little larger than the full tablecloth.  Then I centered the cloth itself under it, and traced exactly around each and every hand sewn motif.  Then I marked an echo around that tracing, so as to make sure that there was enough space left for that portion of the quilting..  There was not enough hand embroidery to make any sort of blatant statement, so I drafted some special motifs to accent the smaller portions of the design, and then repeated them in four spots around the outer rim of the piece.  Taking the tracing paper off the tablecloth, I next drew three concentric circles at intervals from the center of the paper to the edge of the overall design.  Given the sparse-ness  of the embroidered bits, I felt the overall design would need something like that to anchor it.  Then I filled in the rest of the empty space with various feather design and marked a grid between two of the concentric circles for a change of pace from the feathers.

Putting the tracing paper and the actual cloth together was a bit of a challenge as well. I lay the cloth wrong side up on my work table and covered it with the tracing paper, carefully matching the embroidered bits with the appropriate spot on the tracing.  Then, I made simple tailor tacks in critical spots to hold them together.

Next was preparing a light box.  With the empty machine table, I placed two aquarium bulbs, that my clever husband had connected to one plug in cord, in the space where the machine usually sits.  The I placed large piece of glass on top of the table to work on.  The ironing board is placed behind the table to support the weight of the tablecloth, as I worked on it.

The actual tracing took me three days.  The "sandwich" kept slipping around,so I ended up having too use a couple of heavy weights to hold it in place as I worked.

The cloth itself is now hanging on my design wall, waiting for the machine to return from its travels.  Here is a close up of the traced design, and a few of the embroidered motifs.

I plan to link this with Nina Marie Sayre's Off the Wall Friday, and The Needle and Thread Network.

Frustration

I'me very busy trying to draft a pattern for quilting a hand  embroidered tablecloth I bought at the thrift store for $1.00.  This is meant to be a practice piece, as I have a beautifully hand embroidered, fine linen tablecloth that I received as a wedding gift many, many years ago, that I would like to preserve in some way.  So far, I've found that the embroidered motifs, with the thrift store piece, are not well spaced to over the surface, making any sort of cohesive design difficult.  I had anticipated running into issues with this project, which explains the need for a practice piece.  I've also found that the fabric used in these pieces can make of break them. I had thought this might have been a coarse linen, but it behaves more like real cheap cotton, shifting and moving while I'm trying to work with it.  I had never considered stabilizing it, and probably wouldn't have, had I thought of it.  I'm now at the marking phase of the project, and have discovered that I'm still having to compensate, as I go along.  This wasn't entirely unexpected, and the design overall, took this into consideration. I just hadn't anticipated the degree to which it would become an issue.

I shall persevere.

Finally, some time to myself

The last month or so has been frantically busy, between organizing and hanging gallery shows, and a wonderful family reunion, mainly at my house.  Today, I delivered and set up an exhibit at the Gaynor Family Library in Selkirk.  I had no idea what to expect, and hadn't realized that the whole configuration/set up of the library had changed, since my one visit to it, two years ago.  What had been described to me as a display case, turned out to be a wall alcove, only to be viewed from one side.  I had checked out the display cases at our local library, wondering if the ones in Selkirk  would be the same thing. Big surprise!  However, the lady from the library was most helpful, in making suggestions, and even supplying equipment.  I managed to get 5 different reliquaries and boxes into the available space, and am very pleased with the appearance of the finished project.  This is the last current commitment I have to deal with.  Big sigh of relief!  I will have to dismantle the show in Pinawa, at some point in the future, and the new display will have to be brought home "sometime in January".  So I have almost three month of "free time" in which to do whatever I please.  The craft show in early December is coming together fairly well, and at this point, but I feel no urgency about it.

What a wonderful feeling, and what a load off my shoulders!