February Stitching

 I'm keeping up with k3n's weekly stitch journal very well so far. I've tried to do this sort of thing in the past but without this level of success. Let's hope I can keep it up for the rest of the year! 

You saw the first prompt for February in my last stitchery post. The second week included Valentine's Day so of course we made hearts. Kathryn included a photo compilation of her two grandmothers and mounted that underneath her heart. She was able to use scraps of fabric she'd kept from a grandmother too. Her tag line was "held together by scraps of love." I didn't have those kind of resources so I simply used shades of red and pinky-purple scraps to make a foundation for my heart. Kathryn enjoys kantha stitching, I prefer a bit of embroidery. So, this is how my heart turned out:

An Angela (I didn't get a last name) left a comment on the video for this prompt in which she said, "buttons are like love, they hold things together." That really spoke to me so I made sure to include some tiny heart buttons in my piece. The pink stripe I used behind my heart is a scrap of a maternity dress I wore when carrying our three children. 

The following week was an opportunity to learn how to make pojagi, pieced cloth that Koreans use to wrap gifts and other things. This was a bit intimidating at the outset, especially when Kathryn recommended we use thin fabrics that look good on both sides. She has a lot of vintage sheet fabric that she has eco dyed. The only cloth I could think of in my stash that would look good on both sides were batiks. They are pretty dense though, and would be harder to get a needle through. In the end I used white and unbleached muslin scraps for my sample.

I forgot to photograph it before I stitched it into my my journal, otherwise I would show you that both sides are presentable. The only raw edges are around the perimeter. I quite enjoyed making this piece but my hands were complaining by the time I finished. I found myself gripping the fabric tightly as I stitched. 

In honor of the ninth week of the project - the last week of February - Kathryn had us make 9 patch blocks. Not pieced, appliqued. She gave us the option of turning the edges of our squares under or leaving them raw. She cut her squares freehand. Some of them were more rectangular than square. I didn't mind that a bit and would have left some of mine less than square too. However, I used felted wool instead of cotton cloth and had a template of sorts to use to cut the wool. (K3n padded a few of her squares with a bit of batting. I figured the wool would give a similar effect with less stress on my part.)

I got a sort of wonky effect just in the process of stitching the squares to the foundation fabric. A couple of the squares got trimmed a bit too. I have to say, this was pure joy for me to stitch. I haven't worked with wool very much up to now. Might have to figure out ways to incorporate it more often! I also enjoy seed stitching, which gives so much texture to the background. 

I turned my piece over before I started the seed stitching and discovered I quite liked the look of the back at that point:

Just that sample of colors makes me happy. 😊 

For the record, I'm stitching these pieces onto the pages of a commercially available sketch book. The book measures 8" x 6," and I'm working on roughly 4.5' foundation squares. It's already obvious that the coil spine of the sketch book won't accommodate 52 pages of stitcheries. Eventually I will have to remove the wire binding and then sew the pages back together at the end of the year. Unless I find a decorative tin the right size... Kathryn is an old hand at making fat stitch journals. I'm not sure I'm ready for that particular challenge yet.