Old Sames--

Hand embroidery

Our Thread Tales book club read the book, "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan" by Lisa See. The book is about the lives of two girls who are friends throughout their lifetime. In the book, they are "old sames" and that was how I selected the title of my project. 

One girl begins life with little affluence but ends up affluent at the end of the book. The other girl begins life with affluence but ends up without it.

Broiderie perse on the shoes

The girls learn the needle arts: Sewing, embroidery and weaving. They make their own shoes.  They had bound feet and one of the girls achieved the perfect size foot. . . .three inches! I made a "shoe" that was three inches to applique on my quilt.

Fan

The girls communicate with one another writing on the folds of a fan. I designed my own fan pattern and I made a sample which became my label. 

Label

All of my fabrics are leftover from other quilts that I made. This is a technique piece. This project contains a bit of trapunto, hand embroidery, paper piecing, broiderie perse, free motion quilting and more techniques than I can remember.

Back

Since the fan was a central feature of the book, I used a stencil to mark a quilting pattern as well as a batik fabric that was printed with fans.

I was fortunate to have visited China and was impressed with the massive gates that were in front of places of reverence. I made my own sort of gate with the medium blue fabric. This fabric also represented a fabric that the girls could have woven.

Front

I made this project in 2007. It was the second project and second book of our Thread Tales group. My London daughter has this quilt.

Door Block

My drawing of the block

The block challenge at the Clark County Quilters guild for 2019-2020 was to make a door of a place someone would live that finished to seven inches wide by 10 inches tall. One inch of fabric was needed on both sides of the block as well as the top. 

Those rules felt doable. I needed a design. I thought about wooden plank doors surrounded by rocks. I thought about the door of a tent. I thought about decorative doors surrounded with stucco. I looked at castle doors and ship doors when I was traveling in London during Christmas last year. I tried drawing a few thumbnail sketches. Nothing really excited me.

I decided I would pass on the contest. After all, I had quilting to do on my daughter's "Leaves" quilt to finish before the April show. I wanted to concentrate on that project. Then I received a request from the block chairperson. She asked if I would please make a block because with a couple weeks before the acceptance deadline, she had received eight blocks. She also said that four of the eight were made by the same person!

Selvage panel

Again, I thought about the challenge. I looked at my front door. I drew it and then I modified it. I still wasn't excited about making the block until, I thought about what I would put on each side of the door. I have siding around my front door.

In thinking about the siding, I thought about all the selvages that I had on hand and decided that those could represent "siding."

I sorted strips that were red because that is my favorite color and yellow because that is my friend JoJo's favorite color. I thought a yellow door with red accents might make a happy looking block.

Close up of incoming mail

A small scrap of a grey print fabric became the window. I tried to use this same print to act like a step; but, I didn't like the way it looked so I didn't use it.

I used red ribbon from my stash to divide the door into "panels." Some ribbon pieces I couched into place and some pieces I straight stitched into place. For dimension around the door, I decided to use two different blacks for the door moulding. I even mitered the corners of the inner moulding; but, the mitered corners aren't noticeable on the finished block.

After I had stitched the moulding to the door, I stitched the selvage section or "paneling" to the moulding. I added a wide section of paneling for the top of the door.

Close up of house number

Then I looked through my scraps searching for a fabric that would serve as the walkway. After I had stitched the walkway in place, I started adding some details to the block.

I appliquéd a mat to lie on the walkway. I used red embroidery thread to embroider "Welcome" to the mat. I also embroidered the house number in red and chose to mark it as the year, 2020. I cut small pieces of black ultrasuede to serve as the door handle, key hole and mail box. I appliquéd these in place with black thread.

I embroidered the word "Mail" to the mailbox. Then I cut three equal lengths of selvages that I appliquéd into place to serve as "letters." I used a fabric pen to ink a stamp and I drew a few lines on the "letters" for realism and then I said it was good enough!

Finished block

I mailed it to the block contest chair person the second Thursday of March. Because COVID-19 canceled our in person April 2019 show and the rescheduled in person November 2020 show, I get to wait for the November 12 virtual guild meeting to see what it looks like with other people's blocks! The block committee chair will stitch these blocks into the guild's next opportunity quilt. I will be sharing the link to the virtual show in an upcoming post. Stay tuned!

Challenge Block--revealed

Original pattern for the block

The Clark County Quilter's quilt show has been held so I'll share the block that I created back on a snow day last February. By the time that I drew this pattern, I had had quite a bit of practice with the compass as well as practice drafting the geese. This part of the process didn't take long at all!

Some of the fabrics auditioned for the block

I also took a little time to determine the Kaffe fabrics that I wanted to use. I was given two Kaffe fabrics as inspiration and I purchased the required square of the pink Moda Grunge fabric. I also had picked up a couple small pieces of Kaffe fabric from the guild free table. I had hoped that this combination would work into the block. Unfortunately, my color palette was too low volume for my eye. So I dug into my stash. I located a darkish purple print Kaffe fabric!

Finished block

I started paper piecing the geese. I was able to cut just enough geese from the stripe and pink Grunge fabrics. I had wanted just Grunge geese; but, I didn't have enough fabric. I like that the stripe adds some whimsey to the block. (Perhaps, I needed that stripe fabric all along!)

I also fussy cut the floral print chunk so that the flower would be easily recognizable.

I like how the purple wings for the geese made the geese appear to float in the block. A happy accident is that I didn't realize that I had a yin and yang design until I was finished! Another time, I might choose to make the curves more gentle so that it would have been easier to piece together. I also might graduate the geese so they were smaller at one end.

For this project, I wanted the geese to be able to "fly" horizontally or vertically in either direction so I kept the geese size similar. I definitely plan to use this technique again!

Entries

All of the block entries were amazing! First place was top row third from the left which was MINE!!!! I was shocked! In addition to a first place ribbon and a small cash award, this block will be made into the pin for members to purchase. A number of members collect the pins.

I look forward to seeing how these blocks end up in a quilt. The quilt will be stitched and quilted during the next year. The year after that or the third year, the quilt will be revealed and will become the opportunity quilt for the guild. Members will have selected a charity and will sell tickets for chances to win the quilt in a drawing. The drawing is held during the last day of the guild quilt show. All the monies raised will go to the selected charity. The quilt is awarded to the winner of the drawing.