Tag: Slow work

Posted in embellishing, hand embroidery

Friday Finish: Dragonfly panel stitching

Posted on by Laura Kate

For this week, I made a promise to myself that I would complete the hand embroidery on one of the Here Be Dragons art quilt panels. By New Year’s Day, I had finished.

The goal was to emphasize the painted lines while quilting the fabric layers together. I used DMC stranded floss in colors compatible with the fabric paint.

Here is the panel before stitching the background. The dragonfly is already stitched.

Using primarily stem stitch I outlined the botanical shapes of leaf and flower. With rice stitch, I worked the blank areas of the panel to secure the batting and backing.

Here is the panel completed.

I feel pretty good about my work. To me, the piece has variety but also cohesion, achieved by using repetition and a limited color palette.

I now have only one panel of this quilt left to stitch. My goal is to have the work finished and framed in time for an exhibition sponsored by my local art association. It will open in early February.

There’s nothing like a deadline to keep an artist motivated.

Posted in hand embroidery, quilting

Re-entry

Posted on by Laura Kate

Last Wednesday, the husband and I returned from a very long journey. Over 13 days we drove over 3,000 miles, traveling through nine states. The climax of the trip was three days spent in Ohio, assisting my five siblings in sorting the parents’ household good in preparation for distribution and sale. It’s hard to describe the physical and emotional energy exhausted during that effort, so I won’t try. I wish I could show you a lot of great photographs from the trip, but I didn’t manage to get any worth sharing.

Back here in Oklahoma, it took me a few days to settle back into my normal life. The last few were spent working on hand embroidery of the Shell Lake quilt blocks. It was a good choice for my re-entry, because I could do it slowly while listening to podcasts and drinking lots of coffee. I think that I am done, but not sure. To give me some perspective on my work, I have photographed and posted each block. Let me know if you think the woven sections have enough stitches.

CENTER BLOCK

FOREST BLOCK

FIRE BLOCK

LAKE BLOCK

SKY BLOCK

On another topic, I have brought home a few UFO projects from my mother’s stash that I promised various people that I would finish. My plan is to post about each one as I work through them. If you’re not a fan of sewing and quilting, don’t jump ship yet. I will be continuing to explore watercolor painting, drawing and knitting in the coming months.

Posted in hand embroidery, quilting

WIP Wednesday: Hand Embroidery

Posted on by Laura Kate

It’s been a while since I shared progress on the Howard Wabi-Sabi quilt. For this Work In Progress post, I’m showing how I hand-quilted a few of the vintage weaves that were used in this object.

After much consideration, I decided that it was OK to sew on (aka deface) someone else’s work. This change of heart came after I was in Madison recently, where I asked my daughter to show me more samples of Margaret Howard’s work.

Oh my. There was so much of it. Huge plastic bins filled to overflowing. Several samples were woven with the same motifs found in the pieces I was using in my quilt. Perhaps each piece was not that precious to the maker. They were woven, perhaps for practice, perhaps for auditioning alternative color choices.

When I picked up my quilt blocks again, it was clear to me that my stitching could accomplish its task of quilting down the batting and backing while also reinforcing the existing weave patterns. To my mind, this is enough to honor the maker.

Today I am showing two blocks with embroidery finished.

Center Block before:

Center Block after

Fire Block before:

Fire Block after:

I’m aware that the differences appear subtle in the photographs. But in person, the embroidery stitches bring some color variation and texture that was lacking.

Thanks to Amanda for adding her embroidery to the work, which jump-started my own efforts.