Hello lovely lovelies♡ A lovely welcome to you♡ Another week of summer days has lazily drifted by. A week filled with many pleasurable pastimes. A week filled with enjoyable, slow hand stitching.
I've been stitching another quilt. A new quilt. A quilt which started with the desire to stitch together lots of EPP diamonds from pretty fabrics, then forming large triangles. Lots and lots and lots of diamonds dancing with vibrantly coloured and patterned, happy fabrics.
I bought a couple of packets of EPP diamond papers last August and started stitching the diamonds with nothing in mind as to how I would use them in a quilt. I was just happy to make diamonds. Just happy to pet my fabrics. Large triangles eventuated but as more EPP diamonds were stitched together and a number of large triangles happened I began to see how I could incorporate these into a quilt.
Of course, I ventured down the rabbit hole of Pinterest and discovered the Sweet Surrender quilts others had made. Though each quilt was beautiful, with gorgeous appliqued flowers dancing between the scrappy fabric diamonds/triangles, I wasn't in the mood to commit to another flower applique quilt which wood take forever and a day.
As I stitched the diamonds my thought was to perhaps use a patterned fabric between each triangle. An explosion of busyness....colour and pattern. After all more often than not, more is never enough, is the mantra I live by. =) I am that gal who loves an explosion of colour and pattern in a quilt. Gorgeous colour and pattern makes me happy. I auditioned numerous fabrics from my stash but each one was either not quite right or there wasn't enough fabric. So, I continued making pretty diamonds, forming triangles as I went along. Slow and meditative sewing, one could say, but at the time it helped to quell my troubled mind, to keep my mind from sliding down the slippery slope of anguish and panic during the time my sweet Riley was struggling to recover in the NICU ward, from the meningitis she had contracted in hospital at three weeks old.....(having been born 11 weeks premi).
Then, I remembered a single bed child's doona I had purchased several years ago from a vintage shop. I loved the whimsicality of the fabric. Now, I didn't particularly start stitching these diamonds with a child-like quilt in mind, but then why not?? I might just fashion a child's quilt to live here in my home. A fun quilt with a child's theme, for me. Of course, it will be waiting for Riley when she visits, to snuggle under with her Granny as we journey into the land of make believe when reading a storybook or two.
But, I'm jumping the gun just a wee bit. The fabric?? It's lovely. It's filled with utter delight. It's filled with wondrous whimsy. I admit it is not filled with an explosion of dancing colour and pattern, but that's what happens when you quilt, one changes one's mind all the time. =) If one is choosing from one's stash then one goes with what lays hidden within that stash. Though, I do love the colours. Watermelon pinks, raspberry reds, happy yellows, violets and mauves, lime greens, forest greens, jade greens.....all fit perfectly with my scrappy diamonds.
There are deer, porcupines, hedgehogs, wily foxes, wise old owls, squirrels, singing birds, rabbits and sweet mice resting beneath toadstools. When I look at the doona fabric stories from Aesop's Fables, The Wind in The Willows, Brambly Hedge and all those storybooks I read as a child of animal adventures and escapades in the woods come to mind. It brings to mind all those sweet creatures who live and sleep, and dance and play, in the woods. Hence the name of the quilt, Into the Woods.
Of course, flower-filled fabrics abound within the diamonds! In my mind's eye the floor of the woods would be blanketed with a carpet of floralicousness. =)
All the Sweet Surrender quilts I looked at seem to be machine pieced. As my diamonds are paper pieced I hand stitched the diamonds to the fabric triangles and then joined the rows, stitching by hand also. I found the doona fabric stretched a little, especially so as I cut the large triangles, so it was easier to piece together by hand. Besides I'm in no hurry to have this pretty finished. I'm just enjoying the slow stitching. I love that this whimsical piece of fabric has been loved by a child in a previous life. I love that it once covered a child as they drifted off to the land of dreams.
As it is Sunday and slow Sunday stitching is being celebrated over at Kathy's place, I'm going to enjoy a little more hand stitching of my woodsy friends. More diamonding along, me thinks. Have a lovely day, lovely ladies♡
Until the next time........
