It feels like I've been sharing lots of little projects lately rather than big projects. Partly that's because I've taken a break from big stuff after pushing through my Dahlia quilt, my Eucharistic Prayer C quilt, and my Anonymous quilt in the spring/summer and it's partly because I'm holding off a little on sharing the new things I'm working on.
In any case, last week I got out my fall decorations and decided that they didn't go well with my regular blue placemats, so I snagged a bunch of this floral fall colored home-dec fabric at JoAnns and made up some new ones. I love the way they look with the warm wood and the copper candle holders. Our everyday cloth napkins are a light green, so I tried to pick a fabric they would continue to match. Unfortunately the ivory crochet doily that had been in the middle of the table was too big with the new placemats and all the other old doilies I had were stark white. I wound grabbing one of them and just tea-dyeing it. It took up just enough color to be a pale brown and now blends in fine with the rest of the decor. The table would probably look better with not-white candles, but I'm not willing to spend any more money on this endeavor....
Then while I was cleaning out my sewing room desperately looking for a lost very important something which I had put someplace "very secure so I wouldn't lose it" (who knows where), I found this silk screened bird panel. My mom made this silk screen a couple years ago, and at that time she and I both made several prints using it. She finished hers into several small quilts (which have since all been sold), but my prints were just crammed into a drawer. I decided to stitch one up into a little fall wall hanging which is now in my office.
One of the most fun things about this print is that I actually printed it twice, once in black on the navy fabric and then once, offset, in gold. As a result when you look up close, there's more depth to the print and the black almost looks like a shadow.
Mom's prints were mostly black on a grey background and their ominous look led her to title the pieces Something is Coming... I liked that, so to make mine a little more interesting I drew out words and then free motion embroidered them. On an aside, is anyone else addicted to calligraphy/lettering videos on instagram? They're mesmerizing and have been popping up in my feed a ton lately. Hand calligraphy/lettering is a field I've never really explored, but I tried a little here. The whole thing isn't really quilted, I just backed it with some stabilizer to give it a little more heft for the stitching on the letters, and then bound the whole thing.
It was just a quick fun project, but I love getting cool things out of drawers/UFO piles and onto the wall!
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