Covid Quilt Challenge #13: Bluework

Another week, another quilt challenge. My friend is still away from her normal workspace, so we were still working from the quilt kits I put together for us - which meant blue!

The technique we picked was redwork, but since all we had to work with was blue, we did bluework instead :). The theme that was picked for us was birds. Originally I had made the stipulation that we should do something that wasn't just a recreation of something that already existed, but birds is a hard category to inject some new design/creativity into.

My friend chose to do a humming bird and flower.

She did a better job than me of following the rules and drawing out her own design.

We both ended up doing a stem stitch for our work. She also stuck with tradition and used a single colour for her design.

She hand quilted the background.

And wrapped the backing fabric around to the front for binding. 

Finished piece.

 

I cheated a little bit more with the criteria - I printed off my design and traced it. But that was because I really liked the look of origami cranes and decided that I couldn't really inject my own flair to that. I did add the stick to the top of the design :).

I used a hoop for my work, though there were times that I felt like it was more in the way than helpful.

I stitched through the white fabric and the batting at the same time. I did this because I didn't want the thread to show through. It mostly worked well, but there were a few times that the batting came through to the front. 

I also used 2 strands for the outline of each bird, and a single thread for each of the inner lines.

I also chose to go the less traditional route and use a different colour for each crane. I liked the idea of an ombre look.

I debated hand quilting vs. machine quilting, but I had a lot going on on the weekend, so I decided to do machine just to save time. I outlined the entire embroidery, and then added vertical lines.

I really like the crisp look it gave.

This project took me back to grade 6 when my class made 1000 paper cranes (I made a significant number of these).

My friend tried to cheat by using this fabric she found at her mom's :P

She was also so inspired that she started another one this week. So lovely :).

 

Embroidery work is nice to have to work on. Once you've done the planning, you can just work without having to think about things.