Now that I have a hand-sewing project, I feel so much more at ease. Having something in my hands at night is great! It keeps me from spinning out into negativity. Having the sew lines printed on the fabric makes this project pretty quick and easy! The hardest part is sewing in the diamond shapes in the right direction. Notice the gold diamonds below… they are sewn in the wrong direction here and I didn’t catch it till adding the next row.
Stitching on the lines is pretty easy – I just pin the end points to make sure they line up. Finally got all the diamonds sewn in the correct direction.
Then I finished the center rosette. It is the same rosette used in the La Passacaglia quilt by Willyne Hammerstein. This is the back before pressing:
There are 4 different yellows, and 4 different light greys – so I had to make the pattern bigger to see what was what. I also have this to follow as I add pieces on – so they are stitched in the right place
This reminds me of those crepe paper things we did in elementary school. Remember where you had little paper squares that you smooshed around a pencil end, dipped in glue and placed on a poster board? Almost didn’t want to iron it. But I did, and I love it!!
The back is a bit messy, but because of the sew lines, my shapes and points are pretty sweet! I’m doing the rest in bits or chunks to make the piecing easier. The next ring will consist of 10 matching chunks. I picked a size that would take 3-7 days to piece, so I can get through them at a timely pace. So this is my ‘chunk’ pattern:
Now I only have 9 left of these guys to make, then I’ll sew them onto the center and start another round of chunks!
Actually, now I only have 8 more to stitch – just finished another chunk last night. Looking back over my notes, I have approximately 35 hours in sewing time already. Sounds like a lot of time, but it’s going much faster than EPP using a running stitch!
I would have to say this is a successful try at printing the stitch and sew lines on the back of these Kona solids! We are going to be printing more pieces and plan on opening an online store in February if all goes according to plan!
Gail this looks so amazing! The centre rosette reminds me of a sunflower and a stained glass window. I hope you can keep up the good work.
Thanks Nicole! I’m so excited I found you on Instagram 🙂