Slow Sunday Stitching - April 8, 2018

First of all, I get to celebrate a page finish on Teresa Wentzler's "Millennium"!   Here it is at 7 hours and all the back stitching is done on Archangel Raphael down to the page break.  Other than beading and blending fiber that will all be added at the very end, the top half of this project is finished. 

There will be metallic gold beaded "berries" in the foliage and crystal beaded "stars" plus blending fiber cross shaped "stars" in the heavens.   And the broaches will get a bead in each one.  Even though the broaches are stitched from metallic fiber and should, therefore, have been left until the end, I went ahead and put them in because there was backstitching around those areas.  I will leave the sword blade and its backstitching until the end, though, because that is a huge area of metallic.

Since I still have three hours left of the ten for this project, I'm going to keep working along the right hand side.   You can see the gap by the purple/blue robe trim where I cut off right at the page break.  That's the first section to work on.   

 

When stitching on a project with multiple colors like this, I do one color at a time, marking off a working copy the chart with a pencil as I go.  But that means that I will occasionally have sections like over on the far lower left where there's a 'confetti' scattering of stitching in a partially worked area and I won't always have a clean 'stopping' spot at the end of the ten hour rotation.  

Quilting, as I mentioned last week, is taking a detour into a small bit of handwork for my sampler quilt that is not primarily a hand stitching project.  It is machine pieced and will be long arm quilted.   Here is the first of the two hand work areas on "It was the 80s".   This will be a section 6 x 18 inches in English Paper Piecing.  The original design for this area is a simple 2x2 inch finished checkerboard.  Where's the fun in THAT?

I'm going with traditional hexagons because there was a block in the old quilt that used hexis; I was able to salvage a good bit of that area.  I took it all apart and chose a smaller template so that I could re-use the fabric pieces.  I'm using a Fiskar's hex punch to make my templates.   They are 3/4 inch along one side and about one and a half inch across (point to point).   I'm punching all the advertising junk mail that is on cardstock, which is weirdly satisfying!  So the neutral hexis that look stained just have a dark paper shadowing through.

If I've measured correctly, three across should be just right.  The rosettes are all put together, but I have just barely started basting the background hexis.   I am using a variety of all of the neutrals that are in the quilt, including the ones that I just have scraps of.   The more places I can marry up the old and new fabrics the better.   This time instead of basting through the papers like I did for "Aunt Lottie's Garden", I am tacking the backside and will leave the basting in and just pop the papers out.  I pulled out the centers on the three rosettes and they did come out, but it was a bit of a struggle.   Good thing it's a fairly small section!


Finally, on the knitting front I cast on the cowl to match the Tanglewood Hat and Mitts.  I'm just using the stitch pattern from the hat and dropping it into a cowl pattern that I've used before.



Linking up with the folks over at Kathy's for some Slow Sunday Stitching.