Another Hand Work Finish?

This little embroidery piece has been sitting around since I finished it in February of last year.

I came up with the idea to do it back in 2012 when President Obama was running for re-election.  At that time there was much talk about the historical precedence of his presidency and how he was inspired by Lincoln.  It was also interesting to reflect on the significance of his presidency in tandem with the commemorations of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War that were going on at the time.

I got Bonnie Browning's "Designs on Freedom" book when AQS was offering it as a gift with purchase.  The book has patriotic line drawings perfect for rendering in embroidery or applique.  The prior year I had downloaded a free Obama drawing they had offered that is not in the original book (and they offered it again on President's Day this year which you can get here).

I combined the Obama drawing with two others from the book:  one of Lincoln (on page 15 ) and the elements from "Give Me Liberty" (on page 25 but also available for free on the AQS website).  My plan was to add it to a quilt that I made back in 2002 called "Spontaneity" that was displayed in my downstairs bathroom which is decorated in a Red/White & Blue theme.

Testing, testing.....

 At this point, I thought two things:  wash the quilt since when it was originally made that first border was much whiter!  Second was that the embroidery needed a border -- maybe some trim?  Something that reminded me of turn of the century political banners.  I did eventually find a trim I liked:

  



I also did wash the quilt.  Yeah, about that....

 Yes, the reds ran and it didn't help that they were all next to the white border!  The little squares on this quilt were fabric swatches that I had received back when I belonged to a subscription fabric service.  I never expected to wash this wall hanging so never gave any thought to the color fastness of the swatches. Even after that, I thought I might be able to fix it by hitting those spots with a bleach pen.  So I went ahead and trimmed and turned the edges of the embroidery so I could add the trim and put it on the quilt.

Edited to Add:  Always love an opportunity to use another gadget!  I actually trimmed the edges of the embroidery with the Creative Grids Corner Cutter using the edge with the 3" radius. 

Surprisingly this is the same tool and edge I used to trim the corners of my (much larger) "Re-piecing the Past" sampler lap quilt.     

I whipstitched the trimmed out piece to the little quilt and hung it up.  I was pretty happy to finally have it done and in place. 

However, my DH was not!  While he liked the embroidery and the original little quilt he was not as jazzed about them together.  He also thought that hanging it in the same room as my "Sweet Land of Liberty" quilt took away from the larger quilt.

Sorry, hard to get a shot of both in this small room!

I do respect his opinion as he has offered good visual insight on my quilt projects before -- not to mention he has to also use this bathroom!!  So I'm probably going to take the embroidery off and try to figure out another way/place to display it.  Still counting it as a finish though!!

Slow Sunday Stitching 2/22/15

I spent the weekend at a friend's house in New Jersey.  Her husband threw her a surprise birthday party and we had a great time celebrating with family, neighbors and friends.   Even better, since I stayed over, we were able to sit and chat for most of Sunday before I had to make the return trip home and during that time I got to finish this:

The stitching for my little Redwork piece depicting Presidents Lincoln and Obama is now done!  The next phase for this project is to add it to this old quilt of mine that is currently on display:

I made this all the way back in 2002 in my first year of quilting.  It was the third quilt I had made and an attempt to make a quilt using the "paper bag method" of scrappy color choice following the "Spontaneity" exercise in Gai Perry's book "Color From the Heart".  I want to place the Redwork in the center of the quilt and maybe embellish around it with trims or something.  We'll see what develops over the course of the week. 

Updated To Add:  To see how it was finished, check out this post!
 
For Slow Sunday Stitching, a finish means I can now turn (back) to working on a Quilt-As-You-Go project started many years ago:

I'm linking up with Kathy over at Kathy's Quilts and going to take some time to check out what everyone else was up to yesterday.  Hope to see your project there!

Slow Stitching Sunday 1/4/15

I plan to try something new this year.  I had viewed a recent post over at Sharon's Vrooman's Quilts blog where she showed a cross stitch project she worked on and mentioned Kathy's "Slow Sunday Stitching" link up.  I thought this sounded interesting and promptly headed over to Kathy's blog to check it out.

When I started quilting, I intended to only be a machine quilter.  However, over the years I have become more and more interested and involved with the idea of doing handwork.  I've taken online classes in hand applique and quilting and have done a few projects using both.  In the last couple of years, I've become enamored of embroidery on quilts in general and with Redwork in particular.  So one of the things I'd like to focus on for the "Slow Sunday Stitching" is that.

I have a little project that I came up with two years ago to add to a quilt I made early on that is displayed in my home.  I won't reveal the details of it just yet, but I will say that the theme of the piece works with the theme of the room.  I had traced out the designs a while ago but had never made the time to work on it until now.  Participating in the link up will give me just the push I need to schedule some time to make it happen.  It's been years, no DECADES, since I've done hand embroidery so it will take some doing to get back into the swing of things.  I didn't start on this until the evening so as you can see I didn't get too far but I'm looking forward to doing more work on it. 

There are a few hurdles to over come right now:  When I traced out the design, I used a pink quilt marking pencil which was the only thing I had close to red at the time.  However, I'm finding the marking to be a little light, particularly since I'm working on small designs.  Fortunately, I recently got two good tips for doing Redwork.  This year, I signed up for a paid membership to "The Quilt Show" website (I've had the more limited free membership for a few years now) and saw a great episode with Rosie de Leon-McCrady (#1509). 

She traces her designs with a red #01 Pigma Micron pen.  This is one of the finest points of those pens so the stitches will hide the markings.  I do have a fine point Sharpie that I might also try using to retrace the markings until I can pick up a Pigma pen.  I think the Pigma will be less likely to bleed through the backing fabric but I will test the Sharpie and see what happens.  I was also dreading pulling strands for the embroidery until I learned from her that Perle cotton can substitute for embroidery floss.  On her "Scarlet Today" website, she lists the equivalent weight of Perle that can substitute for various strands of embroidery floss (scroll down to the bottom of this page).  I like the idea of being able to work with Perle cotton because it comes on spools that I can also use in the sewing machine for machine applique, quilting or embellishment and for "big stitch" hand quilting.   

 I do have another handwork project that I hope to get to do in these sessions although I didn't get to work on it last night so hopefully that will be another post for another week!  So if you've got some hand work and would like to show what you've been up to, head on over to  Kathy's and link up your latest work!

Updated To Add:  To see where this all ended up, see this post!