Four Seasons

Fall trees ready to stitch.

Spring trees ready to conjoin.

Pencil line in before stitching.

Summer trees conjoined.

Winter Trees

For the most part, I played all day Saturday with fabric and planing the four sides of the forest. I expected to stitch just a little while and then move on to something else. Instead, I stayed in the chair zone stitching Sunday and Monday.

The Dye Pot

I wanted to document some of the fabrics before throwing them into the Rit dye pot.  The discovery of over dying any fabrics in my collection to incorporate them with and into Tim's quilt is exciting. 

So much so that I jumped up one morning this week and ran this second batch through the dye before leaving for the desk in town.  Then, if you look closely at the above fabric on both sides you can see a floral with a bird of some sort.  I like the think I discovered a partridge in a pear tree and that excited me so much that I managed to rinse and dry this batch and select some of the pieces to take with me to the desk in town.  I composed the third forest component and have it ready for stitching.  

I'm leaving the moon unstitched on the Second Forest for now.  And of course there is a lot of stitching to add to all of these components.  But first I want to get four or maybe eight forest components ready before adding the embellishing stitches.  One reason for that is the stitching inspiration hasn't shown it's self yet.

I am gonna love this Forest with the birds in the tree.  It is all ready to stitch down and I'm sure to find myself in the chair zone this weekend.  It is cold and drizzling rain.  Perfect for siting and stitching.

My Winter Memories

Back to the cloth.  There is something inside me that just has to play with cloth and quilting during the cold months.  I think it might have something to do with growing up helping my grandmother make quilts.  My memories are "winter" memories because my job was to iron the quilt scraps with a real "iron".  It was not electrical and was heated by sitting on top of the cast iron wood burning stove in the living room.  Granny made the most beautiful quilts that all began from tiny scraps.  I spent hours pressing them flat so she could cut out the pieces.  I suppose she mostly quilted in the winter because during better weather, she would have been out chopping cotton, pulling corn, feeding chickens, hoeing the garden, or maybe frying chicken and making biscuits for supper. I suppose.

Feeling the cold and the urge to play with my cloth, Saturday, I started pulling out more fabric from the sewing studio stash to incorporate into Tim's quilt. 

The black and green gold checkerboard component has become problematic as I can't seem to incorporate it with the other components.  I decided to surround it with a forest of trees and make it the center of the quilt.  For now that is my plan.

When I started playing with the possible composition for the first forest component, I got so frustrated.  I am committed to only using what fabric I already have and yet nothing seemed to work in a cohesive way.  I doubt Granny ever purchased fabric for the sole purpose of a quilt other than maybe for the backing.  Furthermore, I'm pretty sure she never got frustrated with her scraps not being cohesive.  That, I know and have evidence of it.

So, I walked away from the pile until the next day when I had a thought to just throw all the pieces in a big pot of avocado Rit dye.  (You will remember green is the theme I started with)  It didn't matter what is was I put it in the pot.   I am so excited about the results.  I will be dumping more in the dye pot soon. 

My first forest component is not finished and I'm not sure these photos really show how lovely and cohesive it is but I'm so pleased and that makes me want to keep going.