Mother's Favorite - September 2015 BOM

Here we go with the September block.

I like the nesting triangles. What I don't like is the background fabric. It is off-white, but it has a very faint watercolor pattern to it. The contrast color is a light orangey-brown. It's hard to see in the photo above, but it shows up more clearly on the fabric. On some of the pieces it is much more noticeable than on others.

To me, it looks like the fabric was scorched during ironing. The scale of the print is such that you can't see the contrast color on every piece. I also think that the scale is larger than the scale of the blue and pink fabrics. It is obvious that the blue and pink fabrics are watercolor batiks. It is not obvious with the background fabric.

I suspect it might look too busy if you used a "more obvious" watercolor print for your background. Maybe the answer is to use a solid, which is what it looks like anyway.

Lessons learned:

• Before photographing a block, remove stray threads. Otherwise you will have to choose between 1) repeating the process: taking the card out of the camera, putting it into the computer, importing the new photo, editing the photo, struggling with the photo app (the biggie), uploading it to the blog app, etc., or 2) letting people think you are lazy.

• When selecting fabric, ask yourself what it will look like when it has been cut into small pieces. Is the scale wrong? Will there be pieces without any pattern on them? Will it look stained, or appear to have been scorched?

Knitters and Natters

It's hard to quilt at home. You need a lot of space, a lot of equipment, and a lot of free time.

It's really hard to quilt on a cruise. There actually are "quilting cruises," but . . . no, I don't think so.

So I cast around for a portable project. (A knitting pun and a sailing pun!) Cross-stitch fits the bill exactly.

On cruises, whenever there is a day at sea there is usually an "event" called Knitters and Natters. It's not really an event. It's more like a flash mob - just show up with your project at a specific place and time. There is no instructor, no leader, nothing. Just show up.

Usually there will be from 10 to 25 women. Never any men. So far. Most of the women are knitters and most of them seem to be making socks. There are usually a few cross-stitchers and needle-pointers. Sometimes there will be someone hand-sewing some small patchwork piece. Every once in a while you will see someone doing something like tatting or some arcane form of embroidery.

Inevitably someone will ask, "What is a natter, anyway?" Some people think it is a special kind of knitting or needlework. But the definition of natter is:

to talk casually, especially about unimportant matters; chatter

There's a little bit of a value judgment in that definition, but quite often the topics ARE relatively unimportant. That's what makes it so pleasant - no politics, no religion, no competitiveness over needle skills.

Before the trip I gathered up all of my supplies and different colors of floss. I sewed some grid lines on the aida cloth. I got ready, but I didn't start stitching until the September cruise. 

I am a relative newcomer at this. I found out there's a lot more to counted cross-stitch than just making x's. For one thing, you need good eyes and really good light. I ripped out a lot of stitches and my work went very slowly.

Here is what it looks like after two cruises:

I won't say what it is, but I'll post photos from time to time.

I was fortunate to be on the same cruise as a woman who is a MASTER cross-stitcher. She was very generous about sharing her expertise with me. Of course, I thought of a lot more questions after the cruise was over.

Her work was absolutely amazing. Her stitching was so perfect that the front and the back of her work looked almost the same.

Lesson learned:

Find a mentor. You will learn things that you didn't know you didn't know.