Nov 04 13

Design Decisions and the Fall Machine Embroidery Blog Hop!

 
 I am finally returning this week to my giant “thistle blocks” that I had embroidered last month.  These blocks are pretty big, each measuring 23 1/2 inches square.  The shapes were all cut from Appli-K-Kutz dies on my Sizzix Big Shot machine and they were appliqued/embroidered on my Babylock Ellisimo embroidery machine.  Here is a 4-patch of them  pinned to my design wall (they are too heavy with embroidery to adhere to the flannel without help):
thistlea
To give you an idea of how heavy they are, here’s the backside of them.  You can see that between interfacing, stabilizer, and dense thread work, there’s a little extra weight on this center section alone:
 
thistlea.b
That border design I was working on last week was designed to go with these blocks.  The color of my “prototype” border preliminary stitch out is not correct for this center section, but I threw the border up to see if they’d go together:
 
thistleb
I really like that border, but I’m a little worried that the scale may actually be  a bit too small to coordinate well with these large blocks.  Trying to not feel discouraged,  I pressed onward by attaching my inner rust colored borders:
 
thistled
I’ve fallen into kind of a color-rut, so I’m venturing outside of my color comfort zone with this quilt.  I’ve thrown up a couple of color options for the “real border,” but this photo is a very poor likeness for each color.  The one on the left is a dark purple and the one on the right is a medium purple that has some blue in it (what I would call a “blurple,”) but it’s much more purpley than the photo shows.  Unfortunately, I don’t think I’m going to know which color will work or if this MEA border design will work at all unless I just make a few borders and throw them up, so I’m off to get started.  Stay tuned for future thistle quilt updates… And now on to other news:
Fall ME Blog HopThe Fall Machine Embroidery Blog Hop begins today!  Every day this week, the blogs listed below will feature  a post detailing an experience with stitching out one of the lovely designs of Zandra Shaw.  Zandra is the designer/owner behind Embroider Shoppe, an online store that is based in South Africa.  Zandra is actually in the US right now conducting a trunk show tour, and you may want to check to see if she might be coming to a shop near you!  You can check here for her trunk show schedule and the line up for the blog hop is below:
 
Monday, Nov 4th
Tuesday, November 5th
Wednesday, November 6th
Thursday, November 7th
Friday, November 8th
Stormy Days
SewCalGal 
 
Each of these blogs will be hosting a give-away of one of Zandra’s embroidery designs, so be sure to visit each blog each day to increase your chances of winning!  Not an embroiderer?  Not to worry as you will likely pick up some good info that will be transferable to some other aspect of your sewing life.  And please visit my blog again this Wednesday as I’ll be posting about the project that I made!  Now find your way over to SewCalGal’s blog for the first installment!
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One Comment

  1. SewCalGal Says:

    Your Thistle project is going to be over the top spectacular. Love the overall design, the colors, the threads. Inspirational project that I’d love to make and display in my home. Looking forward to seeing it when it is finished.

    Thanks for the great shout out about the Fall Machine Embroidery blog hop.

    SewCalGal
    http://www.sewcalgal.blogspot.com