Quilted Symphony continued

Wow! 
February is going crazy!   We've had nothing but storms and we are in day 2 of a real whopper of a storm, one that has crippled most of the U.S..  In our case, we didn't get as much snow as the U.S. did, but the winds are horrible and we are in day 2 of the winds, so about 35 hours worth now, at about 70 to 80 + kmph or 45 to 55 mph.  The snow is starting to drift bad.  Pretty much everyone has been confined to their homes as the roads are too bad to drive on.

The weather has left me lots of time to work on Quilted Symphony.  And time was certainly spent on it.  I'm sure I've said before that I learn easier and faster when I can learn by seeing rather than just by reading and doing.  Though I admit I also learn by making lots of mistakes  doing it the slow way.

In any case, I showed what I had done in my last post but here it is again as a refresher.

The green is added to the blue using a light weight fusible web.  After attaching the green, you had to stitch close to the edge to make sure it didn't fray or detach.  Here is a close up of my stitching. 

I always get a little nervous when posting about something I am doing from a pattern or book.  When are you stepping on toes and giving too much information?

The book isn't just an instructional book on how to make 4 different wall hangings.  It basically teaches you various methods of piecing together fabric, but most importantly, it teaches you how you can very easily make your own patterns and designs.  It offers 4 project, each one requiring a bit more detail  than the previous pattern and I love them all!   I admit I did ALOT of page flipping in reading what I had to do, how to do it and then how to continue.  The patterns are exciting though and I just love the pattern for the wall hanging with leaves shown in her book.  You can go here to see the book "Quilted Symphony" and also the leaf wall hanging I mentioned previously.


After making the main blue piece, I had to make a small piece on one side.  This is what it looks like with the smaller piece made and attached, completed.

I just grabbed up a batch of fat quarters and kept auditioning them next to the blue piece until I found something I liked.  I had to stitch around the blue circles ironed onto the orange fabric using free motion stitching!  HAHAHAHAHA...  you've seen my free motion stitching...   This is what I ended up with.

Yes, it's a mess!   So I carefully took the stitching out to see if the piece could be salvaged and thought I would try to do regular stitching around the circles and if worse came to worse, I was prepared to make another orange/yellow piece.  And it came out looking great!

And yes, all thread ends were pulled to the back and tied off before snipping them off.  

OMG!!   Then I had to make these side panels with a whole slew of fabrics that blended from dark to light.   If you only knew how many HOURS I spent on this part.  HOURS and DAYS I might add. 

 My big dilemma was that I was trying to use fabric that I had and hopefully just buy a few more fabrics ONLY if I needed them.  I was seriously lacking in the gradations needed to make this project work properly.  I want to make one of the more complex exercises in the book when I complete this project but will definitely buy ALL the fabrics I need for it.  Anyways, back to the drawing board.

I did this first, using the paper piecing method using parchment paper and guess what?

 I forgot to reverse my paper and didn't fit.  I'm not sure why, but when I realized that I did it wrong and I had t redo it, I decided to change the colours. 

And so I ended up with this.

I totally hated the way the colours transitioned so out it went and thought I would try again.  Since there were two curves to be done, one on each side of the center blue piece, I decided I would carefully make them both at the same time.  I slowly marked them out on the stabilizer, and clearly marked them and then started.  I got them both done, and yup, realized I did one the correct way, and the other one, I should have reversed it and didn't.  So I had to redo one side again.  WOW.  Learned alot of lessons on this one!

I have never worked with tear away stabilizer before and wasn't too crazy about the idea at all.  My big fear was that when I went to tear it away, it would drastically distort the fabric.  As you can see, it isn't the easiest of processes to remove the stabilizer but it wasn't at all a negative thing and it did not distort the fabric.

I figured out if you very carefully make a small hole in the stabilizer so you can grasp a small piece, and then while firmly grasping the fabric, gently pull the stabilizer so that it is tearing away at the stitching lines.  Once it tears at the stitching, it is easy to find a little opening at the stitching line to grasp another piece and just keep tearing off the little squares within the stitching lines.  It became easier to do once I started doing it.

This is what the wallhanging looks like at this point.

 

In addition to working on this piece, I have pulled out my TAST stitching from last year and was surprised to see I got only about 7 stitches done so started working on that.  I also worked on The Hedgerow Sampler and I confess I am also doing the pulled thread sampler/biscornu from Gitta's, on Kathrin's blog and have a good portion of the border done.  I've given you the link to Kathrin's blog that takes you to the beginning of the sampler/biscornu as the pattern is given over a number of weeks.

Well, it's still blowing and snowing but I checked the Island highway webcams and it is clearing up west so maybe the snow will finally stop here.  It appears from the forecasts that we will have to wait till tomorrow morning for the winds to die down.

I leave you with a few photos from a recent walk in Cavendish National Park earlier this past week along one of the trails.

May your days bring you much joy.