The Birches, Days Two & Three

Day 3 (Monday) was a lot like Day 2 (Sunday): lots of ironing and poking myself with pins. I realized last night when I finished version 1.0 that my hands were stinging a lot from all the straight pins and the occasional iron burn.

Let the record show for those that do not believe that I do iron sometimes. Not my clothes, but I’ll iron for hours for applique, apparently. I would like to note that I believe this fabric is not entirely cotton. The fabric bundle I inherited dates to the days before manufacturers had refined their synthetic fabrics. Although this kind does not melt as some used to, it does give off a distinct odor of mothballs when heated. CHARMING. Now that I’m on about hour 5 of ironing it, I’m not noticing so much anymore, though.

Speaking of applique there are 2 types of hills, 2 types of flower patches, 2 types of trees of different length and branches so far. None is pieced, it’s all applique. You can see some of the pieces below, and the waviness of the brown/amber fabrics that made me think of hills in the first place. You can also see that the “branches” (top right) involved a very narrow piece of fabric to iron, which occasioned much quick finger snatching out of the way. The bottom right picture is where I actually was at the end of Sunday (Day 2), having pinned on all the “hills.”

On Day Three (today) I moved past hills into flowers and trees. The bottom left picture is some of the fields of flowers and snow that linger in the hills. Maybe you can start seeing that this is a very Nordic winter scene? Flowers do grow when it’s really cold up near the arctic circle, but sparsely. So here’s the end of Day Three, an ironed and pinned “rough draft” with hills and some plants on a cold day, with the choppy water below and the freezing sky above. So is it starting to look like something yet?

The Birches - Day One

I just finished a big project - turned out really nicely, better than I’d hoped, in fact.  But I just can’t do show-and-tell yet, so instead I decided to do something I haven’t done before.

One of the things I don’t think I see enough of on the interwebs is projects in pre-completion states.  Or mistakes, it seems mostly people don’t make mistakes.  Usually it’s - TADA, I shall present my beautiful finished object!  That’s pretty much what you get, except for tutorials.  Even then, there’s often a lack of info about what inspired it, how’d they choose the fabric or whatsit, what technique is used, etc.  Where’s the wherefore?  I enjoy the Craft magazine partially because of the nitty gritty they get into.

The Birches Project (a wall quilt)

So here’s me doing that.  Last Friday I decided I need something for this blank piece of wall I see (over there to the right –> it IS boring, is it not?)when I turn my head left.  My office has a startlingly depressing quantity of putty and gray in it, so I knew it would need color to relieve the drab.  Also, I wanted something “of mine” - something I made, which reminded me of the things I do at home, bring some of that with me here.

The next day, Saturday, I rummaged through my fabrics in search of inspiration.  This is always entertaining because the vast majority of my fabric is odd bolt-ends I found on sale or fabrics someone has given to me.  The latter frequently reflect the stylistic charms of the seventies and early eighties.  Still, I am not a person to throw away or turn my nose up for those reasons, no indeed.  Eventually I happened upon two things.  One was a blue shot with gold and blue threads - two pieces of fabric about the right size for the wall hanging I wanted to do.  It was once a couple of pieces from a sample upholstery fabric set.

The other was a bundle of fabric that Jeff’s grandmother purchased - precut fabrics to make into two quilts.  Looking at the combinations, I knew that to actually make these would be an entertaining, but not entirely enjoyable, jaunt into 1978.  Mustard and brownish.  However, the cut of some of the pieces was wavy, interestingly enough, and I started thinking of hills.  Another patterned piece made me think of the bark of a birch tree.  And then I saw the blue as sky and water.  And I drew it, and it looked good.

And I thought - yes! Once separated from their age-of-disco partnerships, the fabrics changed character. And I thought it would be pretty cool to use these right now, on that Saturday, because Jeff’s grandmother who I inherited these from passed away a year ago Saturday, and it would be a tribute I could pay her in my own way, a quilt of peace and beauty.

Tomorrow I will share some of my beginning process of this quilt.  On Saturday and Sunday I collected the thread and embroidery floss I would need.  I began cutting, and ironing and experimenting, and slowly, it began to look like what I was pictureing in my mind.  My collage shares some of that original gathering stage.  You can see some of the fabrics and colors that don’t look like they belong together yet.

And Callie, who spent all afternoon yesterday sleeping on the backing fabric, which was on my cutting mat, which was square in the middle of my desk, thereby depriving me of all three things.

1,000 Stitches

I thought it would be hard to make, but I’d settled on the idea and there was no turning back. As it turns out the small quilt I made for my Halloween swap was a very fun and rewarding project for me. I told my swap partner it felt almost like painting with fabric and thread. A bit hard to let go of, but I can make more.

This was almost my first experiment with applique. I’ve been reading up on technique. Seems like it worked. Sometimes the way I learn things is not by doing. I read up about something, I think about a lot, work it out in my mind, mull over the angles for weeks. Then I’m ready, and my fingers do what my brain spent all those hours thinking about.

My trademark swirls are in there, but I think they make sense, since they represent the sky. Each different element has different colors and patterns of stitchery down to different stitch lengths, to try to make each element represent the actual thing it’s depicting in more than one way.  It worked pretty well, and in fact I ended up enjoying the back almost as much as the front, so I left it uncovered.

The most interesting part of this for me, once it was done, was not the way it looks, though I tried to create an agreeable selection of fabrics and patterns. It was the way it feels. It has a lot of texture. Maybe it was just me doing all the sewing, arguing with and smoothing the fabric.  The leaves and pumpkin are lined with felt before appliqueing them on for added depth, and the stitching just adds to it. It was a dense, compact work, with silvery bits of thread running everywhere.

I chose this motif for a Halloween swap because Halloween is a harvest festival to me, in fact a major one. It’s not all ghosts and goblins at its root. And harvest reminds me of Iowa where my family is from, and the fields and cool air of this season. Did I mention next week’s vacation is to Iowa?

I do believe I’m going to make another one of these. Maybe November will be good inspiration?

The (ir)relevant details of the project:  linen, cotton quilting fabric, felt, silk and cotton embroidery thread, cotton quilting thread, fleece, cotton bias tape.  Machine applique, hand-quilting/embroidery.  Freehand drawing/piecing of my own design.