Springtime Melody #1

I love making whole cloth miniature quilts from silk fabric.  The sheen on the silk when the design is quilted accentuates the designs and besides that the fabric is just so pretty.  Recently I found out that our local Joann fabric store had a few pieces of 100% silk so I purchased several 1/2 yard cuts and chose a spring green color for my next project but first needed to draft the design.  Since I knew that I wanted a central design surrounded by borders all stitched in a contrasting thread I started on the middle area.   I worked on designing 1/4 of the center and after drawing, erasing, and re-drawing I got something I liked.  I then scanned the design and used Photoshop Elements 11  on my computer to set the four quarters of the design to make it whole. I printed off the design and worked on drawing up border design ideas.  I know if I would have drawn this design on the computer in one of the computer aided drawing programs I could have had a more perfectly drawn design but I do love to work with pencil/pens and paper so opted to hand draw my design.  It doesn’t look like a design that can be embroidered with one of the fancy embroidery machines since it does have it’s irregularities and I certainly don't want viewers to think I just used an embroidery machine to stitch out my design after all the work I put into drawing and stitching it.

 

At this point I thought I was done with my design that measured about 8” square.The more I looked at it the more I thought it needed a bit more in the blank spaces so took half of the central design and snugged those designs up against the outside border.  Now I like it and there are still areas for background quilting to make the designs stand out.Next up – transferring the design and the most fun part, the machine quilting.

Until Later,
Lynn
Please remember these are my photos and my design so do not “borrow” them for your own use.