Coming Up for Air

January 8th, 2012

I have been in heaven for the last 8 days, tucked away in my sewing room, working on all kinds of projects.  I felt starved for some uninterrupted sewing time when this began 8 days ago and after averaging about 9 hours a day sewing, I’m realizing that I have an insatiable need to sew!  I only have 2 more days of this before I have to go back to a “normal life,” and the thought of walking away from my sewing room is killing me!

I’ve been working on all kinds of different projects, so tonight’s post will update work on a quilt top I started months ago.  I needed to do something to “save” this large fantasy flower:

The small green petals that outline that center circle just seemed to meld into one unit, and this was bugging me terribly.  They needed better definition, so I stitched a narrow satin stitch in gold rayon thread (24 karat gold by Robison-Anton) around each one, then free motioned some swirls inside the center circle:

Here’s what a longer shot of the whole flower looked at that point:

Those inner petals still looked kind of boring, so I added some decorative free motion stitching inside them, as well as finished the perimeter of that center circle using a free motion zigzag stitch:

Next up, I stitched the EKG edge finishing design inside the blue petals:

If you look at the backside at this point, you’ll see that many layers of stitching don’t show up on the trapunto layer:

The “missing” areas were free motion embroidered before the trapunto layer was added, so those areas of stitching will be more prominent once this is all quilted in the final quilt sandwich. Here’s a shot of the finished flower:

Be sure to check back on the blog on Monday because I’m participating in a blog hop and you may win a really great prize!

And one more thing…Nikki uploaded 50 new bolts of batik fabrics onto the web site last week and all fabric/thread/notions/etc are now priced 20% off MSRP!