Testing the formatting; a new fidget

Hello, everyone. The last post I made from the phone app came out looking really crazy. The desktop post after that was fine. I'm trying again in the phone app.

I found a piece of hand embroidery in the stash the other day and realized that the stitching is very textural. Added a faux-suede heart with decorative stitching and couched down some lace bits by hand. Then it sat for a few days.

Today, after trying out in-the-hoop quilting with an end to end pattern for the first time, I had a chunk of quilted satin. I sewed the embellished embroidery onto the satin and sewed the unit onto some poly "flannel" )the kind used for baby sleepers) and attached the circle to some pre-quilted black cotton.

At sewing club our president demonstrated a new way to cut bias binding. (She found a video on the internet and was impressed. ) 

And I'm ready to seam and press the new binding for the fidget.

The gussied-up guest book

Hello, everyone.

A few posts back I had mentioned putting up photos of the guest book as it was used.

We have many swatches of lace that were gotten for another reason. This one was chosen to decorate the front cover of the book. It is glued in place.

Inside the cover, a piece of navy blue satin to cover the raw edges. (Also glued.)

Design experiment: lace, ribbon

Hello, everyone.

This was almost the final choice for a decorated guest book:

The idea was to place the lace over most, but not all, of the front cover. Then add the ribbon for an edging, to give it a finished look. (Also, of course, creating a finished surface on the inside with a bit of navy blue satin.

In the end, we went with a different piece of lace (more textured) and no ribbon. But I still like this one a lot!

The lace pieces were all samples we had gotten from Fabric.com (now in stash) and the ribbon was in stash as well. Probably it came from a gift-wrapped Amazon package, back when they were using boxes and ribbon instead of the pretty, glitzy drawstring bags they use now. (We got a lot of lace and fabric samples when the idea of sewing the wedding dress was being considered. I fully intend to use those samples! Even if it's for embroidery test pieces and fiddling around.)

The actual guest book was from Amazon as well.

After The Big Day, I will try and post a picture of the guest book as it was finally decorated. (The bride has off-site storage for things that are completed.) The lace chosen was an embroidered net lace, very textural, in champagne. It had a pretty edge that we let lie across the cover without a ribbon. I did use glue on the inside of the cover to hold it, and then added a rectangle of navy satin--with the edges folded back--to the inside to give it a finished appearance.

Block Play, and Layout Play

Hello, everyone.

I was looking at Pinterest and saw an interesting block, one that is new to me. It was called Greek Key. The link led to Marcia Hohn’sQuilters’ Cache. In following it, I learned some new things about an old standard block: Log Cabin.

 I knew that Ms. Hohn had a Log Cabin pattern on her site, but I'd never looked at it in any detail. That was a mistake.

I have in the past used Log Cabin blocks to form larger patterns, treating the squares as a form of half-square triangle optically speaking. It gives the look of many triangles, but all the seams are either straight of grain or straight cross-grain, and while the pressing can become a mass of little things, everything does eventually. Also, and for my personality this is key, you can freely get scrappy! All you need to do is to sort your scraps by the key value that you are varying: Blues-dark, blues, medium, Blues-light, whites was one set of groupings I used.

There were the diagonal lines marching down the quilt face. There was the Christmas tree wall hanging. 

Wall hanging for Christmas season.
Center of the tree was plain blocks. Shape was created by Log Cabin blocks.
Also an applique of a pieced star for the top!

Bead auditions

Hello, everyone.

This is one of the long series of R's dress posts, specifically some "audition" pictures of the redone lace yoke.

The new yoke has a new underlining fabric: Sewin' Sheer. It's a beige sheer knit with lots of stability and very little weight. Not stiff, but doesn't have the urge to stretch, nor the urge to let the fabric dissolve on narrow bias bits like the poly organza did.

Here it is assembled at the shoulder seams, with half of the needed hidden dart included there, and with the organza bias half-sewn in place, then pinned into its final placement. I'm tryng out ideas for a sprinkle or a row of subtle beads that will bring a bit of sparkle to the dress and also distract the eye from the stitching that will seal down the bias strip on the underside of the bodice. (Just letting it be there and hoping nobody notices the little line is still in the running here. But with the darker shade of the Sewin' Sheer compared to the former ivory organza, I'm not nuts with letting the row of stitiching just be there. The match is great with the lace, but will show wherever there is an opening in the pattern. And it's lace! The very definition of the fabric is "lots of little holes.")

Overview of the bodice with spaced-out clear iridescent beads on the proposed stitching line.
(Not proposed, really, the line of stitches has to be there.)
They're almost invisible, but light will catch and sparkle from them.

Close-up: The center of the front, with a the same size 11 beads along where the line of stitching would be.

The beads here--towards the right--are more of a line than a sprinkle.

Trying out some size 8 pearly-white beads in between the transparent size 11's.
Also a closer look at the line in the previous picture.

 The size 8 beads are very close (in size, but not really in shape) to 3mm perles, which there are still a couple hundred on hand from DD1's wedding dress a couple of years back. And a line of perles on this edge--the color is a good match--is very much in consideration.

With some clear 4mm bicone beads here-n-there. A line of the size 11 with interspaced bicones maybe?

The bicones would add some discreet sparkle, and they don't stick out noticeably from the dress fabric.

I am not auditioning sequins--impossible to dry clean--nor the rhinestones that were used in the belt tulip ornament. (That was solidly embroidered tulips in mostly the clear beads and some two-cut beads, with accents of perles and the rhinestones and a sequin or three. But the belt is removable before the dress goes to the cleaners. And the belt could, if absolutely necessary, take a bath in a pan of warm water and maybe a drop of soap to clean if contingencies should happen to it. Followed of course by two or three rinse dips.) And I don't think R is a loads-of-sequins kind of girl.

One of the changes with the new, more stable underlining is the loss of the discreet sparkle that the ivory organza had. The lace now will seem much more like it's on its own at the top of the dress. Of course, the lace is still a perfect match for the rest of the dress.

Maybe I'm just overthinking the whole thing. We're down to the wire now on this project, so possibly the only answer that is true is to lay off the "analysis paralysis" and finish already.