But I missed doing a post about it. I was in a funk, of sorts. I had become dismayed over how lopsided my block had become, and didn't relish taking a photo of it's ever-wonkier edges. It seemed to be twisting around in a circle from all the hooping it had gone through so far, not to mention the pulling out of stitches.
So I went searching the internet for more information about crazy quilt blocks. As mentioned in an earlier post, I tend to jump into things whether I know what I'm doing or not. But it's usually not a totally uninformed leap of faith. I've usually done at least some searches for basic information. I'd done that for crazy quilting. I'd apparently missed some fairly significant steps, however.
Like I hadn't attached my block to a muslin backing. I also hadn't "ironed the block within an inch of its life", as one place had put it. So I set aside my light-weight craft iron and got my heavy Rowenta and steamed the sucker flat. Then I squared it up, lopping off the wonky bits, and basted it to a muslin backing.
Oh, my, what a difference that made! Now the block fits in the hoop better, I can use a larger hoop, and the block is stable. Yayyyyy! I was so happy with how much easier it was to deal with it, that I added the two more spider roses that Boud had suggested. Now the rose doesn't look so lonely.
By then it was Monday and there was another stitch, so I added the Chevron stitch for week 6 of TAST, and have finally gotten a post up here.
I didn't have any more seams to add it to, so I just plunked it in the middle of one of the pieces. I used a template for marking the fabric, first, and still managed to get it a little cockeyed. The template was another suggestion by someone. So this is how the block is looking now:
I added an outline of fly stitches to the ones that were already on the piece in the upper left corner. And while I was pressing the block within an inch of its life, some water spit out of the iron and I managed to crush/melt the velvet in the lower right corner of the block. So I'll have to come up with something creative to cover up that
I learned quite a bit the past two weeks: Use of templates for the stitches to aid in their uniformity, using backing muslin for stability of the block and to increase its size for ease of using a hoop, being careful with steam and (probably synthetic) velvet, and that M&M's peanuts make embroidery even more enjoyable!
