The other two quilts – the College Fjord quilt and the Hus Ved Havet quilt – are both coming along nicely, but I am getting to the end of my tolerance of the fiddliness of the bargello, so I am glad that I limited myself to these two in that style. By the time these two are completely sewn together, I will be DONE and ready to move on to new things.
Last time we spoke about the College Fjord quilt, I had discovered that the vertical strips had gone wonky and refused to make a decision right then and there what to do about it. I have since made the decision (rip it back to where it started going wonky and resew), and the resewn version was within an eighth of an inch or so and – more importantly – no longer looks obviously weird. I have continued to sew the strips on – I’m within 10 or 12 of the end, and I just need to devote a couple of hours to finishing that up. Easier said than done, but it’ll happen. After that, it’ll just be sewing the buttons on to form the clouds, plus a binding. I’m hoping to get this done by my guild’s annual quilt show in mid-March. I work well with deadlines, but I would not put it past me to be finishing the binding the day before it has to be delivered.
The Hus Ved Havet quilt is also coming along. Very happy with the fabric choices, and I think that in the end this will be a stunning quilt as well. Slowly but surely, I am cutting the verticals and sewing them together. You’ll see some change from the picture from early January, but let me explain the work I’ve done since then.
In the picture from early January, the blues and grays have been sewn together, and the greens have been sewn together, but the greens have not been sewn to the bottom of the blues. I wasn’t at all sure about the bluer greens (representing bushes), and those had not been sewn to anything except each other, either. Here’s what it looks like now:
Now, the greens have all been sewn to the blues. Everything that is not sky in that image has been sewn together horizontally. Nothing has been sewn together vertically yet, but that will come soon. The sky fabric is pretty much perfect for this image (and you can probably see why it would not have worked for the College Fjord quilt). I still have some clouds to insert in various places in the sky – that will come later – and there’s a ton more green, plus an applique house, yet to come. But I am pleased with how it’s shaping up so far.
I decided a while ago that I wanted to include some of the words from the song “Hus Ved Havet” somewhere in this image. Which words? Dunno yet. Still narrowing it down. Where? Dunno this either. I want to decide the final location when the top is done and put them somewhere that feels empty. I don’t feel like it’ll be on this side of the quilt – there’s no element here that feels like it needs something else. I suspect that when I see the whole quilt top put together, there will be one area of the quilt that just screams out for an added element, and that’s where the words will go.
I spent today fiddling with the lettering stitches on my machine. I used them in a quilt once before – the national parks quilt – and was happy with that result. But I was hoping that maybe one of the other lettering styles would be better for this quilt. Unfortunately, there are only three styles, and they only come in capital lettering, so…no. I need to decide on something else. I used to cross stitch and am not entirely opposed to finding some sort of cross stitch lettering style (I have a whole book of them) and using waste canvas to create the lettering. That may be the direction I go in. If I do go in that direction, that will influence how many words I want to use from the song. Lots to decide!