WIP June 5 - Footprints, Dragonflies, and Owls

It's been a good 7 weeks since I've had time to do a WIP post, and everything's rotated at my stations since then.

FMQ Station:

Putting in some great time on "Run, Kitty, Run!"  This one's going to be a real fun mix of classic and whimsy.  I finished all the feathers a few days ago and have been working on the shoe prints. One day I'll write a finish post and you'll understand how it all comes together.

I have 14 prints to stitch in, and they're pretty darned intricate. It takes way too long to trace out for marking them by pen. I considered making a stencil and chalking them on, but there's so much handling that I was sure the chalk would be rubbed off by the time I was halfway through the various treads. So I decided to go with the Golden Threads technique.

After printing out the scan of the shoe bottom, I traced the outlines with a sharpie. . . 

. . . so that I could flip it over and retrace them on the clean side. After cutting the shoe out, I sadly noted that it was just a bit too big at life size to fit aesthetically in my white bands. So I reduced it to 90%. 

I cut out 14 pieces of Golden Threads paper, layered them and stapled them carefully at the corners, and then lightly glue-sticked the prepped shoe print on top. 

I stitched through the entire layer with a threadless machine (no problem at all with that many in the stack - the paper is somewhere between the consistency of gift tissue and waxed paper). 

And then I had 14 stencils ready to be pinned onto the quilt. . . 

. . . and stitched over. 

Sometimes little details get very important to me - like not having tons of travel-lines from stitching these out continuously. The prints are already so busy, I didn't want travel lines messing with the clarity of the image. Sooooo. . . I stop and start with each element of the print. And I also have never been able to do any machine-knotting, back-stitching, or tiny-stitching that has been neat enough and durable enough for my satisfaction, which means. . . 

. . . with each shoe print, I have 58 pairs of thread tails to knot and tuck. Times 14. That's 812 pairs altogether.  Maybe I didn't want to know that~!

 I have 5 prints finished. 


Hand Stitching Station:

Wow! Now that we're back to our normal schedule and actually watching a show after dinner each evening, I'm really making good headway on the binding for the second Dragonfly Party quilt! This is the one quilted by Judi of Green Fairy, and I only have 1/8th left to go!!  Photo Op coming soon - woohoo~!!!


Piecing Station:

This station has like zero priority right now, but quilting in those shoe prints gets super intense, so every now and then I just need a break. I worked up a plan for the owl fabric Devon gave me after totally destroying my stash room (still haven't fixed it), and have been slowly making bits of headway on that flimsy. 

I wanted those rounded corners, but they're too small to fuss with by piecing, so I just do these by machine applique. I press under the edges, glue it down on the next layer with a washable school glue stick, and stitch it with a tiny button-hole stitch. Then I trim out the back to keep a nice drape. Now I'm gluing the blocks onto the center field. It's a fun project in a completely new colorway, and that's quite refreshing!

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Linking up at

Lee's WIP

Esther's WOW