First off, I finished quilting the yellow Chunky Churn Dash quilt and sewed the binding on so all it needs is the hand stitching of the binding on the back and attaching the label. Here's the unfinished top. I even made a label using the alphabet on my sewing machine!
I also gathered up the wool pieces I need to do this stitchery. It's a pattern from Primitive Gatherings and it's a table mat that I'll put on the coffee table in my sewing room. I like the quotation from Proverbs: "She seeks wool and flax and works willingly with her hands." Well, I certainly work willingly with my hands when it comes to any kind of needlework. Not so much housework! I hope to get a start on this project as well but will have to cut out all the fusible and iron everything before hand so all I have to do is the stitchery.
I spent 1 1/2 hours yesterday tracing the Farmhouse Windows embroidery designs using my new Frixion pen. This is the marking pen that disappears with heat. After I'd traced all four of the designs, I went back and read the directions a second time. I'd read everything when I bought the pattern in January but it doesn't hurt to re-read them again. Whoa! I realized that the second step is to use crayons to color in some of the areas and then to remove the wax with the iron. You're supposed to place the fabric on the ironing board and cover it with paper towels and then iron over the towels. The wax should melt into the towels and the color should soak into the fabric. Hold everything! If I iron the fabric to melt the crayon, will I not also make the Frixion lines disappear! Well, needless to say, I'm not a happy camper right now! After trying to figure out the easiest way to fix this, I've resigned myself to ironing the Frixion lines and starting all over again with a heat resistant marker. The pattern suggests using a Micron pen but I know I make too many mistakes to use a totally permanent marker! I think lead pencil will do the trick. Then I'll get to play with my new box of 64 Crayola Colors!
Last week I finished piecing and quilting 4 placemats for daughter Jo. She wanted something in red and I adapted a quilt block in the March/April issue of McCall's Quilting. This is the quilt called Scrappy Hexies, designed and quilted by Bea Lee.
And this is one of the placemats. I just made two blocks for each mat using the reds Jo wanted and adding a green leaf since the hexies look like flowers to me. I added a strip on top and bottom to make them the right size and called it good. Even though the blocks are scrappy, I used the same fabric for binding on all 4 mats. I'll do the hand stitching on them later as well.
The other thing I worked on while I was in the sewing room was making selvage fabric so I can cover the back rest of my sewing chair to match the seat. I got all the selvages sewn to the foundation but haven't gone any further than that. Maybe this week I'll get it on the chair. I plan on cutting it large enough to cover the back rest with an inch or two lapping over onto the back. I'll stitch a casing around the edge and I've got several Moda tying strips from Jelly Rolls that I'll insert into the casing. Then just snug it up and tie the strips. I'm really looking forward to not having to see that ugly green any more!
So, you can see that I have lots of hand work that I can work on while I recover from my knee surgery. I spent every day last week in the clinics and labs, getting all my pre-op testing done, and I'm happy to report that all systems are go, and it looks like it'll be a successful surgery. For one thing, I'm pretty sure that when they give me the pain meds afterwards, I'll be in orbit! To the moon!
Now, I'm going to tackle that embroidery project and see if I can get it un-traced, re-traced and colored before dinner.
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