Wednesday 22 May 2013

Disaster!!


As a few of you will know I have been having problems with my jaw and face for the last six weeks and have been sitting around not doing much.... but I did manage to read the above books (I am now just going on to read book six in the series) I do not like sitting doing nothing, so I decided to dig out a UFO. I knew it would have to be a very small project, as I could not concentrate for long. 



I don't think I could have found a smaller project!



This project was in a poly bag in the corner of my UFO drawer and had been there for AT LEAST seven years!!


I do not know where I saw the original design, but I do know the blocks were HUGE, at least 10 inches in height.


I like my blocks to be small....


... the smaller the better, so I redrew the block to 2.5 inches and the depth of the tulip head is 1 inch.



I must have been mad!! Look at the size of those corner triangles!! They are only 1/4inch long! And I must have been having a really bad cutting-out day, as all my seam allowances are dreadful!!


I only had three tulips to sew to finish, and all the material and templates were there, so I got going. I wanted the quilt to look like a garden, so once I had the tulips sewn togethar, I sashed them to make it look like paths between the flowers, and then sewed on green borders.






I then drew out the quilting design on a piece of paper. I wanted it to look like a snail was wandering round the garden - you can see him in the picture - sorry Blogger will not let me turn it the proper way. I was concentrating (or trying to) so hard to get the stitches even that I forgot to include the poor wee thing!


You can see a close up of the design above.



I don't usually use blue wash-out pens or purple fade-away pens for marking quilts, but this time I was going for the easy option. I used the blue wash-out pen, because I knew I would be washing the quilt immediately after I finished it. 


I washed it carefully and then soaked up the excess water from the quilt in a towel.





I decided to pin and block the small quilt just to see if it improved the look of the quilt, so I left it on the floor of the conservatory, where it gets nice and warm, when the sun is shining. When it was dry, I took out the pins and had a good look at it!

Disaster!!!!!!

EEEK!!


The red material leeched into the surrounding material!! I ALWAYS wash my material, when I bring them home, so I do not understand how this happened! the above photograph doesn't look too bad, but that is after I did this -


I put some stain removal on it and it did make a difference. I washed it again and reblocked and redried it, and this is the result -



I am a bit sad it is not perfect (and neither is my quilting), but it is one UFO off the list.
Till next time.
tich




































8 comments:

  1. Sweetie pie... if its any consolation.... Some people like the red leeched color.

    According to what I've read on the Net, it lends color, interest, a story to the quilt, a fascination that it wasn't perfect and the "looker on" can commiserate with you. Yeah, I know. Its crazy but humans aren't always sane! :-)

    I'm off to bed. LOVE your quiltlet, BTW!!!

    Rosa

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  2. I'm sorry this happened, especially after all the work you put into this little quilt! I have also had a prewashed red fabric bleed onto a neighbor fabric. Unfortunately, it was a quilt I wanted to enter into a judged show. I was able to get the bleed to fade and its not noticeable. I keep telling myself that my quilt has character!

    Very impressed with your tiny pieces!

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  3. I think it is a sweet little quilt! I have had the leech, but with green once upon a time. Glad you were able to fix it. Now it has a great story to tell.

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  4. Rosemary,

    I didn't know about your being unwell. Just making that wee quilt would have made me violently ill. Shall we Skype or Facetime tomorrow. Email me and let me know a good time to reach you.

    Be well Sweetie.

    Hugs,

    Frummie

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  5. I had that same problem once with a miniature quilt. Every time I washed it out it came back when it air dried. I finally squeezed a lot of the water out with towels and took the tip of a hot iron and dried the area that wanted to bleed as quickly as I could and that kept it from bleeding out as it dried. It will never get washed again as I am sure it will bleed but for now it looks pretty good.

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  6. I've had that happen with weavings I have done using hand dyed fiber. I learned that cotton needs extra care to really set the dye, otherwise, well, you know what happens. Glad you could fix it. It looks lovely!

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  7. Amazing little quilt - so glad it's finished. Hope you continue to recover well and have more good days than bad...

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  8. This litle tulip quilt is adorable! What great skill you have! Maybe if I ever started on a small enough quilting project I could actually learn how!

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