Sunday, August 16, 2009

Birthday Week

The birthday celebrations are over and our princess is officially three years old. Here is the bunny picture...
Opening presents - Grandma Mary bought the "Calico Critters" townhouse with 5 rooms of furniture. The bathroom includes an 1/8th inch bar of soap to sit on a 1/4-inch soapdish. Thanks, Mom!
So, the photographer didn't plan the shot well...but here is the cake and candle portion of the day.
Hectic week with parties and trying to get ready for school. Bentley starts his third week of class, and my students arrive for Day One tomorrow. Kendra will be with new teachers and mostly the same kids in her daycare center. Of course, Murphy's Law struck, and she has been running a fever for the last 12 hours. I really don't want to call a sub for the first day of school, ugh!

Monday, August 03, 2009

Prep Work

It's time to start on the vintage quilt. The scary one! Anytime I quilt for customers, I'm a bit nervous - what if they hate it? What if I screw up? Typical stage fright, usually solved by taking a deep breath and getting started. And, since I'm doing a new design, I decided to (gasp!) practice first!I gathered my tools...a stencil, two circle templates, and butcher paper. The smaller circle will be stitched as my reference, the larger circle and the inner section of the stencil are marked as guidelines for the edges of my feathers.
I started with the inside of the wreath.
Here you can see the whole thing. I drew about six wreaths on paper and then they started looking consistent. I switched to drawing the outer ring of feathers first, since it's easier and that got me into the flow. If you look closely, you'll see that there are twice as many feathers on the outside. Keeping track of how many loops I've done also helps keep me consistent.

Then I loaded some practice fabric on the machine, again tracing the two circles and the stencil guidelines. I only need the Gammill workstation to stitch the central, smaller circle.
And, viola! A nice looking feathered wreath.