Skip to main content

Stitch Practice

I did quite a bit of hand stitching on the koi quilt, but I still need to practice my embroidery and work out some designs before I tackle the linen quilt I want to make next. So I decided to make a practice piece out of this old, lumpy cutter quilt piece.

Most of the hand quilting on this piece looked like basting, so I snipped through it and separated the plain front from the print backing, and found the cotton batting had migrated into a big ball and lots of bunches, rendering it unusable.

This is the little heap of old batting I removed from the piece.

I hand washed the remaining fabric after taking the pieces apart (picture here darkened to show the print pattern on the backing.) After it dried it looked much better, and the old cotton is fabulously soft (and very much like the linen I'll be working with on the next quilt), thus perfect for stitch practice.

For me practice pieces don't have to be perfect or functional; I just need a foundation to work on. That's why I recycle old cutters I can't make into anything else for this kind of fun.

Comments

nightsmusic said…
I wish I could get my circle to stay circles. Not a chance. And sorry I've been MIA. Jimmy got his knee replaced a week ago yesterday so I've been nursemaid all week. :/
March 22, 2022 at 1:44 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Downsizing

This was my fabric stash once I sorted everything -- 22 full bins. I spent a day taking out and boxing up what I could part with, with the goal of trying to reduce it by half, so I'd have 11 bins. I was very strict with myself, and removed everything that for one reason or another I was sure I wouldn't be able to use. This is what I ended up with -- 12 bins of fabric that I'm keeping. It's not quite half, but close enough. Half of what I took out went to a local quilter friend, a school and Goodwill. These four tightly-packed bins will be going to the local quilting guild once I make arrangements with them for a drop-off place. I am relieved and a little sad and now determined to control my impulses to thrift more fabric. I don't want to do this again, so until I use up six bins, I can't for any reason bring any new fabric into the house.
Post a Comment
Read more

In Progress

I promised myself I would show you the good, bad and ugly of my cleaning this year. This is what it looks like when you dump thirty years' worth of stashed fabric on the floor -- and oy, what a pain in the butt to pick up again! This is what it looks like after it's been sorted, folded and placed in containers, which took me about a week. Now the hard part is to downsize my stash by at least half, I think (that's my goal, anyway.) I've already e-mailed the president of the local quilting guild, a local friend who is a quilter, and a public school art teacher I know to see if I can donate some of the excess to them. The rest will go to Goodwill. Already I've reduced my vintage textiles from two bins to one, and my scraps from three bins to one. It's probably the hardest clean-out I've done, which is why I saved it until last. I know I have too much fabric, more than I can use in my lifetime -- but at the same time, I love it. So I have to
Post a Comment
Read more

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.
Post a Comment
Read more