BLOG 490

Blog 490

 

As someone who is passionate about creativity and who needs to spend time creating, the present isolation as a result of the Government guidelines on Coronavirus suits me just fine. It is a dream scenario for people like me who can’t remember ever being bored. I am surrounded by everything I need; I know there are going to be no interruptions and I now have the time I have always craved! That said, I am still holding back from starting something significantly new. Instead I am still clearing the decks of scraps. It’s almost like I am on a mission to get these out of the way first before going forward into territories new and unexplored.

 

 

Also, I now have the time to do the things I have been putting off ….. like seeing if I could felt Ella’s hair!! She asked me if I could and then left some with me after having her hair cut. So here’s the sequence and the conclusion for Ella is ‘no, human hair doesn’t felt well’. (And no, I haven’t crafted with cat hair as the book is inviting me to do!)

 

 

             Inspiration

 

 

 

 

 

   Template

 

 

           Covered template

 

 

 

               Ella’s hair

 

 

 

             Felting

 

 

 

                  

              Felted cat

 

Once I had got that out of my system, I started to sew scraps together to make patches for a ‘Crumb Quilt’. This involves sewing together all those small bits of fabric to form a bigger piece of fabric. This can then be cut down to size to suit your project. I googled them on line and I found that the method is ideal for my bags of bits but that most of the images are too frenetic for my taste. So I have adapted the idea to sewing together bits of fabric in the same colour ranges. The picture below shows how I stared with a bag of scraps beside my sewing machine and a basket of scraps on the floor.

 

           Scraps!

 

 

 

              More scraps

 

 

This was a hopeless way of doing it! I had lots of dull and neutral fabrics in amongst the mess and I didn’t want to include these. So I decided to sort through ALL my scraps and just select those fabrics that I wanted. I just mounded them up on the side in piles but I couldn’t work them like that either.  So I ironed for over 2 hours and organised them into colour families and it was well worth the effort.

 

 

            Colour selection

 

 

            Sorted and pressed

 

 

Firstly, as an experiment, I tried to sew tiny bits onto a foundation, trapping them down with a machine scribbling motion. I liked the effect but this method is best used for tiny pieces of fabric. So then I tried just sewing together random shapes and pieces (crumbs) to see how they looked and I came to the conclusion that for a larger scale wall hanging, ‘Crumb’ sewing is going to be the best method. I have decided to just ‘sew and flip’ and then cut 4 ½” squares from the resulting fabric. These will then be cut in half to make lozenges. Who knows where this is going, because I don’t!!

 

 

 

              Experimental block

 

 

             Crumb blocks

 

 

               Design idea

 

 

              Get-rid-ofs