My cousin Patty’s fault

Had some sewing time today and what I worked on is totally my cousin Patty’s fault…..not that fault is really the best word to use. Her comment on my pile of UFO’s simply got me thinking about how I wanted to use this flower one.

It was sitting on the raw edge woven strips and they seemed to want to merge. It took quite a few minutes of staring and thinking before I figured out what I wanted to do to make that happen.

It seemed as though an uneven shape on top of the woven strips would work, so I drew lines on the flowers and stitched a cutting line.

Snip, snip, snip…as close as I could get to line without cutting into it.

The plan then was to machine stitch a blanket stitch around the edges to fix it to the background. And the easiest way to keep it from moving around was to fuse the edges in place.

I did a line of stitching in a dark color but as I was looking for which thread to do the blanket stitch, the flower embroidery shouted out that I needed to do that blanket stitch by hand, with the same thread that I stitched onto the flowers.

Well, it was certainly the right way to get the effect I liked, but it was not the best idea I’ve ever had. You see, the woven fabric had been dyed, rusted, overdyed, bleached, and fused to an interfacing. And the flower piece had fabric, batting and fusible. It was soooooo hard to get a needle through all the layers.

My fingers were crying before I got to this first corner! But it was the right decision and I’m quite satisfied with the look so far.

So, Pat, what’s the next design decision? Yes, it is deliberately not centered…I like asymmetrical. Additional scraps and pieces and stitches for leaves and grasses along the bottom? More hand stitching over the whole piece? Just dense machine quilting to fill in some background interest? Probably going to do whatever I do by adding a layer of turquoise wool as a final backing…..raw edge for that, too, of course! I have had both of these UFO pieces for such a long time and it’s definitely time for finishing. Only need those final design decisions…………and now I’m waiting for Pat to spark an idea again!