Project Progress

Day two of the "project" began with pressing the rounded spikey elements (I'm thinking maybe I'll call it larkspur, what do you think?) in place on the fabrics. When working with multiple values, this is how I arrange them on the ironing board, moving from light to dark. It makes it easy to deal out the pieces, which have already been marked with the desired value. It's fun then to play around on the fabric to the best advantage. I'm using batiks in this project. They are hard to beat when it comes to value variations in one hunk of fabric.

The palette has changed slightly. I've become certain that the project needs a little spark of yellow. This is what I have in my stash, but I'm not sure it's quite right. I think it means I'll need to go shopping. Oh, darn.

I've also pulled a couple of prints to use as the background. The main background is sky blue, and the accent is a slightly darker shade. I'm so glad, though, that I can wait until the end to decide on the background. I probably won't use these fabrics, but I think the colors are in the right direction. Of course I'm always open to suggestions!



My shopping day, yesterday, was only partly successful. I didn't find the clothes that I was looking for, but I did get my hair trimmed and my eyebrows done. Discouraged by what I found at the mall, I came home early and used the time to prepare the leaves.

All of the elements are now pressed to the fabrics. The greens fall into two families, warm and cold. I'm thinking that I might dub the yellow flowers as coreopsis zagreb, and embroider in the wispy leaves. I'll spend the afternoon trimming away the excess fabric, listening to The Concrete Blonde by Michael Connelly. I do love listening to books on my ipod.

A new project

After weeks of working on a super secret spy club project (that I will be able to tell you about next week), I'm treating myself to a special project. An applique project that I can work on with no deadlines, one where I can incorporate all the embellishing techniques I've been learning.

(For those of you who are wondering, I haven't yet decided on doing a block of the month this year. I know it was missed last year, and I missed the contact for sure. Just give me some time to catch my breath, and then we shall see.)

I rarely start with a "cartoon", preferring instead to create the motifs and then play with the layout. For this project I wanted to be a little more exacting with size and placement. Still, I anticipate that the final design will change. I'm already thinking about adding another small flower, maybe a pale yellow, to the design.

I am also predetermining the value placement, carefully marking each motif with the desired value. L = light; M- = light medium; M = Medium; M+ = dark medium; D = dark. I'm only using one fabric per value, but that might change.

Up until lately, my applique process has been all about mass production of perfectly copied motifs. Now I am tending towards cutting the shapes one at a time, adding a little individuality to each one as I cut, which I consider one step forward on the road to becoming a truly recovered perfectionist.

This is part of my palette. The purples are for the spikey yet rounded flowers. (I'll surely need to come up with a better name if I ever decide to publish the pattern. Any suggestions?) The basket will be three shades of brown, not quite settled upon. And I haven't decided on a background color. I'm tending towards a pale blue, like a summer sky.

Here are the parts for all of the roses, pinky peach to red, pressed to the fabrics (on the wrong side). This is how far I got on Monday. My plan had been to post each day's work, but Blogger has been a pill. I couldn't upload pictures. I finally solved it today by using a different browser. Geesh. Now that I know how to work around the problem, I can get on with my posts. I'm aiming for a catch up post tomorrow morning. I don't anticipate much work being done today, it's my day to shop for the new wardrobe that I'll need for next week. (I'm such a tease!)