Saturday, March 13, 2010

Tortoise or Hare?

Which one are you when it comes to your sewing and quilting projects?
Tortoise here.

Yesterday, I worked on the Climbing Lanterns project. It might seem like this has been in the works forever, but compared to the one other fused and machine appliqued wall hanging I've done, I am working at lightning speed. The other one took 18 months.

On Friday, I cut out the brown kraft paper stems my daughter had drawn for me last week and laid them over the background to check proportions. I had also made a sample of one of the red lanterns. It all seemed fine.

Then I traced the paper pieces onto fabric, which had been lined with Wonder-Under, and cut them out.

I repositioned the pieces onto the backing again, and tonight I will fuse them on. Ultimately, they will be machine appliqued in place.

Working on this reminded me of a project I finished in 2008 called "Three Water Lilies," from a pattern by Ann Fahl.

Check out her website and blog sometime. She does gorgeous work, and many of her designs are available as patterns. Her pattern says, "A Workshop in a Bag," and it is definitely a very well-written, step-by-step guide to making this kind of quilt.

By contrast is the current pattern I'm working from, which has only very basic instructions. But it was free, and what do you want for nothing?

So I found myself rereading Ann Fahl's instructions for the water lily quilt this morning, and I'm glad I did. I had forgotten her suggestion to use a tear-away stabilizer when doing the machine applique. Since I was going to the fabric store anyway for thread, I picked up a couple yards of stabilizer as well.

That is the status of the Climbing Lanterns project. Slow progress is being made, but progress nonetheless.

4 comments:

SueWis said...

Your project is coming alone so beautifully! I love it! Love that fabric line.

And your water lilies are gorgeous. Good thing you thought about looking at those instructions from your previous project.

GaAm said...

I love the way the Chinese lanterns are turning out. Much better than the tree.

Michelle said...

Definitely a tortoise here.

The Chinese Lantern project is coming along beautifully! The pattern your daughter is perfect.

And those water lillies.... Exquisite. I may have to look that pattern up. However, you did it my colors, so you could just give me yours. ;-)

Elizabeth said...

Wow, P., that Three Waterlilies wall hanging is really beautiful. You did a superb job. I'm loving having a look around. I'm going to check out your other posts on the climbing lanterns. That is really beautiful as well.

xo -E