Spring is on it's way! Teri and I (Kara) saw evidence when we were down in Williamsburg, Virginia, at the Appliqué Academy a couple of weeks ago. The daffodils and forsythia were displaying their brilliant yellow for all to see, and the trees were just starting to have that faint, rosy cast as their buds start to swell. We even saw multiple bluebirds during our visit! With so many signs of spring, how appropriate is this month's In the Garden block, featuring two classic harbingers of spring; the robin and forsythia?
The robin and branch are wool and the forsythia flowers are made of lots of silk ribbon which is included in the pattern—soon available on our website!
The wool pieces went down first and the robin's breast was put down last. Before I stitched it down, I cut out a piece of polyester batting slightly smaller than the breast piece and put it underneath to give a little padding in that area. Then I stitched it down and began the embroidery.
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| All stitched down and ready for embroidery |
I wanted to transform the color of the brown wool used for the body and did so by adding multiple straight stitches in a dark, brown, wool on the head—giving the head a darker look than the rest of the body. The satin-stitched eye is surrounded by two bullion stitches done in white. The white is also used for the throat and a couple of stitches near the eye.
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| The feather stitches add a subtle shading to the breast. |
Once I finished the head, I moved on to the breast. I just wanted to add a little shading to highlight the padding, so I used a thread that is slightly darker than the wool and did about 3 rows of the feather stitch. It's subtle, but I think it works.
You can see the marks I made for the wing design. I used my white, roller ball pen to put those on the wing. A stem stitch was used for all the wing stitching, using a variegated, brown wool.
The tail is stitched with three rows of chain stitches done in the same dark brown wool as the head.
The last bit of embroidery needed was to add the legs. I used Press and Seal™ for the legs, tracing onto it with my white, pen. Pulling out the pieces of plastic can be a pain but it really works for transferring a design and a pair of tweezers helps to get the little bits out safely.
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| The traced legs |
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| The first set of chain stitches |
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| The finished legs |
With the robin embroidery finished, it was time to move on to the forsythia. I went through once putting the yellow, silk, ribbon blooms on with straight stitches.
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| Round one of the forsythia blooms looked a little sparse. |
After putting a few flowers on, I decided I needed to fill it in a bit more. I tried making a couple of forsythia with a lazy daisy stitch, but thought it didn't add to the look and just kept to the straight stitches.
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| The extra blooms did the trick. |
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| French knots in the center were the final touch. |
It was so fun to be back in the states and meet some of the ladies from our In the Garden classes. My extended time in the US, after going to the Academy, allowed me to attend and help teach this robin block. The ladies were awesome, and they did such a great job bringing their robins to life.
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| Getting ready to stitch some forsythia! |
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| Stitching friends. |
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| What a treat to be able to spend time with these ladies! |
The Robin and Forsythia pattern will be available on our website early next week, because Teri is vacationing and unable to mail your orders. She will have it on the website (
www.needleseyestories.com) on Monday!
If you have made any of our
In the Garden patterns, we would love to see pictures!
Past posts in the BOM series:
Last week, I (Teri) went on vacation to San Antonio, Texas. As always, when we travel, we stopped in several quilt shops and antique stores during our day trips to visit wineries or eat barbecue. My favorite day trip was definitely our drive to La Grange, where we went to the Texas Quilt Museum. It was everything I could have hoped for, and more! How lucky am I to have a husband who will drive two hours each way during vacation so that I can look at quilts?!
After examining each quilt in detail, we entered the next room, which displayed some of the quilts that were on exhibit in Houston last fall, at the International Quilt Festival. As you know, Kara and I love fairy tales and stories, so you can guess how excited I was to see two quite diverse quilts depicting stories. The museum manager, Julie Maffei, offered to take photos of me with the quilts for our blog. Try to zoom in to study the details. The work on both is magnificent!
