Project 6

I played hookey yesterday. I went upstairs to the sewing room and played around the whole blessed day through, only taking time off to go grocery shopping. And what did I accomplish? Well, it's another "Work In Progress" but it was number 6 on my list that quickly got moved up to number 1.

This project has been mulling around in my brain for a week now. At the end of September my church is having its 6 year anniversary. I thought it would be nice to make a quilt of my church and I've decided I want to make a stained glass quilt.

"I want to make this... Can I make this? This is going to be a lot of wasted time and effort if I get stuck."

I called my friend Noriko to get some details of how to start this project. She specializes in stained glass quilts and has been written up in Japanese Quilt magazines! She's a pro!

"Noriko-san. I want to make a stained glass quilt of my church. Is this even possible? How long do you think this will take me? What's the process?"

Following Noriko-san's directions I've been doing the preliminary work.

First take a picture of the church. I took my camera with me on a walk to the church and snapped a lot of views.






Come home and download the picture into the computer and print it out full page.

Trace the outlines and scan.

With Excel (this was the tricky part. I'm not very computer literate) change the measurements of the picture and print out. I had 15 pages! I taped them all together and traced it all again on tracing paper.

That was last week's work. Yesterday I traced the pattern on backing and then spent a lot of time trying to figure out how I was going to put pieces together with continuous lines.

Next I traced the pieces onto applique paper and ironed them on to the backing. It got a little confusing and you should have seen the state of sewing room. Paper, pieces, fabric, garbage, scissors, tape etc. etc. I sort of felt like a pig wallowing (down on the floor for all of this since this is too big for the ironing board).

And in the late afternoon I started in putting black bias tape on the piece edges. More confusion and I didn't want to stop while I was on a roll. I must have spent 6 hours up in the sewing room yesterday! And then I ran out of bias tape... 10 meters. So that is where I stopped last night.

On the agenda today is tracking down some more bias tape which may be trickier than appears. Tetsu said he'll go on a bias tape treasure hunt with me today to see if we can locate some in the right width...

I still need to put a border on this and I'll be calling Noriko-san again. And the major problem is how to sew down the black bias... Noriko-san's sewing machine does a neat little straight stitch with a zig (no zag!) that holds pieces down nicely but mine, no-can-do. Maybe regular zig-zag? I'm not going to have time to hand applique over 10 meters (probably 20 by the time I'm finished!) in the next month.

Off to go treasure hunting!