Thursday, October 09, 2008

Dickory Dock

So, I was digging through my stuff the other day and came across my pile of nursery rhyme redwork blocks, done in sort of a tangram system, that I bought years ago on eBay.  Don't go racing to eBay for redwork, it's all stuff people do by their embroidery machines and call it redwork simply because it's done with red thread.  Bah.
I have a set of about 20 of them that I took to crit group so I could get help identifying which rhyme they were supposed to illustrate, but even with combined seven pretty good minds, we were at a loss for a couple of them.  I always meant to so something with them but never got to it.  

So, I went to my trusty old-stuff basket-  this thing is about 3' high and basically making compost out of the things in the bottom-  all scrips and scraps and snips of old fabrics, old embroidery, hunks of lace, etc.  

I turned the compost and came up with more usable stuff:

A really nice linen blazer that I had cut out the seams,

A pile of jacquard damask linen napkins and pieces of tablecloth I had printed with some of the red dumpster images,  a small hunk of very old Merimekko brown and black stripe, and some more redwork with a vine and leaf design.  Yahoo-  I had a quilt!

In progress here is the 4 and 20 blackbirds block (the cat came from another block I didn't use).  The image has been cut out and appliqued to the dumpster print, I don't know why, maybe because it's red?  It just seemed to work so don't ask!  The blazer was cut up in the same vine and leaf format as the other redwork and makes a great 'frame'-  it will be stitched down without tuyrning edges, witha  big old #5 floss stitch down the center.  The redwork vines will be fused and invisibly stitched.

The cow jumped over the moon.

Mary had a little lamb.

Found this little hunk of embroidery while looking for red flowers but the eyelets became more interesting to me as 'stars' for the cow block-  how else can you tell she is in the sky jumping?  Truthfully when I got the eyelets on, they disappeared into the busy dumpster print so I stuck little sequin stars in the centers.  And I had promised myself *no more glitter*.  So much for that.

And here it is.  I have a bunch more handwork to finish, but think I will have it ready for the photographer next week, a goal is to have it completely finished before I leave for Florida so it can go in my NEQM show in December. 

And that's what I have been up to.  Today I layer it, ugh, my most unfavorite job.










1 comment :

Anonymous said...

I loved hearing you talk about the process as you showed the photos of the work in progress. Great insight into how this developed. Amazing that you took all that 'stuff' and made it into this piece. I love the overall look of it- would love to see it finished in a larger photo. Thank you!

Meg