Late

Every night when I finally put my quilt aside, it's too late to write a proper blog post, so here's a quick overview of what I've been doing. I'm working on my DQS10 quilt.

I foundation-pieced the circles, trimmed them to a neat seam allowance, and folded them back and hand basted with small stitches. Then I starched them within a fratcion of an inch of their lives, so I could remove the basting and the heavy foundation papers.

I used my lightbox and my drafted pattern to position the circles on the white background fabric, then spent a day or so snatching odd moments to enjoy appliqueing them by hand. I used white Bottomline thread, and the stitching is practically invisible, and I'm really pleased with it.

Then I used scraps of batting to start the trapunto, placing small pieces behind a few circles at a time, and sewing very closely around them with Vanish (water soluble thread).

I missed taking photos of the next few steps. After they were sewn, I cut closely around each circle, so that there was only a circle of batting left, directly under the applique shapes and the three marked wholecloth circles. I quilted the wholecloth circles to match the pieced ones, using similar coloured threads to the fabrics, and different quilting designs in eahc section - all very fine. I decided after that, that the quilting had made them too flat, and cut extra circles just a little smaller than the originals, and pinned these in place underneath the original trapunto while I sandwiched the whole quilt.

I've been McTavishing the background in white Bottomline, and quilting closely around each circle. I've also quilted the seams, including the pretend ones in the wholecloth circles.

Just as I was finishing the quilting, I rememebred I wanted to do some black silhouette applique on some of the circles, but realised it wouldn't work on such heavily textured circles. I still really wanted to do it, so started rawing some birds, and while I was doing that, realised I could just unpick the 'seam' quilting on the circles I'll add the black applique to. Next is neatening up my bird drawings (they mightn't look much, but I'm simply shocking at drawing, and am proud of these so far!) and preparing them for applique, and a little unpicking - once I've laid the shapes in place and checked they will look ok.

'Night.