From there to here

Most of this weekend was spent on the second entry for this year’s quilt show.  It’s the thread and fabric sketch of our house.  Here’s a short review. 

Photo of house.

Tracing onto plastic.

Next, that piece of plastic was put on the overhead and projected to a larger size.  I’ve gone from 8x10 to 22x32.  I used an oval quilt hoop to draw the oval around it. 

Now, this is not what it looked like when I turned off the overhead.  And, that story is why there was no video of my process.  I had to be very adaptive.  There were three different times I didn’t think this was gong to work, so the little video we shot was me not in the mood to be video’ed and the what we didn’t video was me breathing hard and going to the sewing room and closing the door and solving a problem and then coming back and surging forward and then hitting the next problem and re-grouping. 

Fortunately for the family, there was lots of heavy breathing, but little swearing.  They just turned up TV.

So, the first larger sketch was done in pencil and then I traced over with a sharpie.  In that tracing, I used a ruler and straightened out lines that needed it.  And, other stuff and got some things back into scale and made it look the way I wanted the finished product to look.  Then, I erased all the pencil marks. 

Next, I pinned my piece of silk to the paper and using the lightbox, I traced the paper sketch onto the silk. 

The plan is to quilt in the major lines first.  If I need to, I can project the plastic image back onto the fabric for detail, like the brick.  But, last year, the white chalk stuck to the silk through all the background work and had to be washed out at the end.  Please cross your fingers that is the case this time, too.  I’ve abused it.  I folded it up and took it to lunch with LD yesterday so she could see it.  And, the lines look fine still. 

For those interested, the washout marker did come out of the silk perfectly, but I decided to go with my tried and true way instead of trying something new.  There’s lots of comfort in that.  This is sewline ceramic lead for a mechanical pencil.  I love it.  Evven when the excess brushes away, little bits of it stay between the threads.

We also stopped for a backing.  I picked this green ombre.  The darker shading at left of the photo runs through the center fold line and will run through the house in the finished quilt. 

And, I went online and bought a wool batting.  I want this to be as light weight as I can get and the wool bat seemed the way to go.  That will be here in a few days.  And, I had to buy a couple extra things so I could get the free shipping, right?  It was just a little extra. Just $11 more than it required for free shipping.  And, just $30 more than the batting would have been if I’d paid shipping.  Anybody can justify that, right?

Rationalization. It’s a wonderful thing and separate us from the animals.  That and our ability to accessorize.

It’s cold here.  I saw a sign.  The north pole called and wants it’s cold weather back.  

Wish I’d seen 12 Years a Slave already.  We will be seeing it soon, I think. 

Lane