I got this back from the framer last Tuesday and am thrilled with the way it turned out.DH and I decided where to hang it and hung it up on Christmas Eve so it would be nice looking on Christmas when my parental units were over.
Now I can add another finished project to my list! My quilting best for a year used to be 9 quilts. With this quilt, I have completed 10 this year. YAY! A new JayeWorld Record!
Back in the Quilting Arts Dark Ages, they showed some embroidery stitches over a series of pages. Somehow those embroidery stitches combined with a viewing of quilt artist Susan Carlson’s work on Simply Quilts inspired me to get started on Kissy Fish.
As an aside: I am not getting back to the bleary photos, this piece is really, no REALLY, hard to photograph with the equipment I have.
This piece is covered with shiny things that reflect the light: beads, french ribbon, thread with metallic bits. It is on the list to be professionally photographed. Anyway.
The stitches I used most frequently on this piece are called Feather Stitch. It was highlighted in Quilting Arts #1. It was really fun to see how the stitches added to the piece and helped it develop. It was fun to see how I could make each bit of kelp different with beads, varying widths of thread, etc.
One of the things I knew about this piece was that it wasn’t intended to be a masterpiece. It was intended to be a test. It has turned out much better than a test.
I also never intended it to be hung as a quilt is hung. I always intended that it would be framed and hung like a piece of traditional art. That is still my plan.
I think the hand embroidery is mostly done. As I do on many of my Pamela pieces, I went about the process backwards. I did the embroidery first and now am thinking I need to do more quilting. Machine quilting. I’ll have to seriously think about it, because I don’t want to break the beads or my careful stitching.
I am shocked that it has been a month since I have posted anything. No sewing has taken place except some beading that I did on Kissy Fish. I worked on it in the car as we drove, but the beading doesn’t show up very well in this photo. Here is a detail, but it is also difficult to see the beading and embroidery. I am off to a quilt show in Seattle this weekend and will hopefully have a cleaner (more sewing machine friendly!) house and lots of inspiration when I return.
Kissy Fish is a small piece that I created so I would have some handwork and be able to try a few things. I haven’t worked on it lately due to time, and didn’t for a long time, because of an injury. In a continuing effort to sew and make progress on my quiltmaking, I pulled out the project and brought it with me to DS’ appointment today.
Every Friday I have about an hour to do something portable and not computer related. I have been bringing blank paper and writing letters. Over Christmas, I brought Christmas cards and wrote those. It occurred to me today that I could bring a portable sewing/quiltmaking project and make some small progress.
In the detail above I have placed slash marks in the area I was able to accomplish in the hour I had to work on it.
One reason I started this project was because of the embroidery articles in Quilting Arts magazine. I thought I would like to try some of the stitches, but am not interested at all in Redwork or an entire project based on embroidery such as a crazy quilt. I also had a lot of beads and thought it would be good to try beading out. Around that time I saw the work of quilt artist, Susan Carlson, on Simply Quilts and was inspired to try both beading and embroidery in a free form sort of way on Kissy Fish.
It is not meant to be a great work of ART. It is meant to be a test piece for me. I hope that it comes out well, but I am giving myself permission to do what I can and screw up if I need to. It is quite liberating to think this way.