How to Quilt a Cornstalk, Part II

At the end of the first posting of "How to Quilt a Cornstalk" (which can be reviewed here), I promised detail shots of the leaves and ears when I finished. Here is the whole thing:

Here are some leaves and the top of one of the ears on the Rust-Tex cotton.

And here is the other ear. I used six different colors (three variegated) and three different kinds of threads -- all cotton.

I had a little trouble with the needle (not enough to warrant any bad words or gnashing of teeth, fortunately) on the Rust-Tex cotton. The needle made a popping sound -- like it does when you need to change it -- but I tried three different Topstitch 90/14 needles (the ones recommended by Superior Threads for this type of thread -- King Tut) and when they didn't work so well, I switched to a Schmetz Gold Titanium 90/14 embroidery needle. That still made the popping noise, so I switched to a Microtex sharp 80/12. That worked for a while, but when I switched from a thinner thread back to the King Tut thread, it made the King Tut fray and break. So I tried yet another Topstitch 90/14 and that one worked well enough to finish.

All the needles and threads worked just fine on the hand-dyed cotton, so the problem must be something to do with that particular piece of Rust-Tex cotton. The other piece of Rust-Tex cotton, which will be the snow portion of the picture, is soft and easy to quilt.

Next up: summer fields of green.

Why Get Up?

"To have reason to get up in the morning, it is necessary to possess a guiding principle. A belief of some kind. A bumper sticker, if you will." -Judith Guest, American author

Yesterday, in the parking lot at Trader Joes, I saw a bumper sticker that said, "Less barking, more wagging."

This is my bumper sticker for today.

Happy New Year!

We're celebrating today with watching football, eating Hoppin' John, working on my BJP project, and making cards for my daughter to hand out on Valentine's day.

I love watercolor pencils and crayons, so I thought-- what if I used them on fabric before I layered it with glue and tissue to make paper-cloth? The glue would simultaneously wet the colors and make them run together and also seal the color on the cloth. Hmmm...
Here is cotton that was ironed to freezer paper, then marked up using water color crayons and pencils.
Next, I used my Derwent Inktense pencils to write LOVE all over the cloth. Then I added scraps of different colors of tissue paper and glued the whole mess down with diluted fabric glue.
After the glue was dry, I dry-brushed the whole thing with Setacolor Shimmer paint and set it with a hot iron.

Here are the Valentines. We cut out paper-cloth hearts, punched holes in them and tied them with fuzzy yarn.

How to Quilt a Cornstalk

My father is a Cornhusker and in honor of Nebraska's rout of Arizona last night and also the Wisconsin Badgers' win over Miami in Orlando the night before, today's post is for them.First, you find a copyright free picture of a cornstalk. Print it out and take it to the copyshop and enlarge it to the desired size -- bigger is easier to quilt.
Cover your copy with a piece of Golden Threads Quilting Paper and trace, using a fine point permanent marker. Use a permanent marker because you don't want any ink bleeding onto your quilt. Pin the quilting paper in the desired position on your quilt. I used my fine, strong silk pins which have glass heads (that don't melt when you bump them with an iron). I use these pins for precision piecing. Using straight pins makes it easy to remove them before you sew over them.
After making a practice quilt sandwich to test your thread, needle, and tension, then with feed dogs dropped, free-motion quilt following the lines. You don't have to be exactly accurate because you're going to remove the paper and with it, all the lines. Just quilt the outline so you have a guide for more dense quilting.

Gnash teeth and say some bad words, because you have gotten "into" your quilting and forgotten that you are just outlining here. Dense quilting makes it difficult to remove the paper.

After quilting the outline, tug the quilt on the bias to rip the paper for removal. Say some more bad words and get out the fine point tweezers because of the dense quilting on top of the paper. After removing all the paper (sometimes gently scratching a fingernail over the stitching will help remove the remaining bits), continue to quilt in the detail, changing thread as desired.
The corn tassel (sorry, the picture is sideways) after paper removal (more gnashing of teeth) and some more quilting.
And the root end -- the paper removed easily from this part. I was pleasantly surprised.

I'll post pictures of the leaves and the cobs after I do the detail quilting.

Fortune Today

-You work best when meticulous attention to detail is called for.

My fortune today. My daughter and I had lunch at a favorite Chinese restaurant today and this was my fortune. I don't know about working best, but I am good at minute detail -- annoyingly so, some would say.

Today is my father's 84th birthday. Happy birthday, Dad!

I'm A Winner!

Part of the fun at SewCalGal's virtual Christmas quilt show was prizes! And I won one!

I won Sizzling Circles, a book by Lacey Hill and published by Nancy Dill at QuiltWoman.com. Lacey also donated the companion "Circles and More" ruler. I should be receiving these by the middle of next month!

Aaaaannndd, yesterday the Packers made the playoffs with thorough routing of the Seattle Seahawks! Goooooo Pack!

Can't Sleep? Draw!

Last night I woke up at o'dark hundred and couldn't go back to sleep.

I didn't feel like reading, so I got out this little book I checked out from the library. It has all kinds of suggestions for drawing with colored pencils and shows methods of shading starting from light to dark.

I started a butterfly drawing from it a couple of days ago, but I didn't want to trace it and found that my sketch was way too dark and the colored pencils didn't cover the line. So I abandoned it.

Last night (this morning?!), I drew the outline of the figure lightly using the colored pencil that would eventually be the color I used for the rest of the parrot's body. I liked this much better. There's no dark line around it and I was able to do a pretty good job without tracing.
And then I went back to sleep. This morning I still liked it! Now I have to decide if I'm going to color in the background, or leave it and do another one.