January 9, 2011

Work In Progress 2.

Well… I’ve taken a bit longer break then I originally thought so, but since then our son graduated (with excellent grades), we had Christmas of course, I sewed some presents and – as probably every other family in the world – we had guests or went to someone else’s place to be guests – during the whole holiday.

But now I’m back again and I’d like to start with the answer to the question I asked before (so none of you will start to worry that I forget it). Snowflake wrote me the solution (four seasons) in email during the holidays, as she couldn’t log in to leave a comment. I’d like to congratulate her hereby! And thank you.

Well, lets start:

I’ve been thinking about how beautiful a large wall hanging (with four trees representing the four seasons) would look in our finished bedroom for a long time. The four seasons theme has been always close to me: I already have (an unembroided) pattern with the four seasons and an almost finished wall hanging collection as well (it’s a shame but Spring is still not ready as I’m still looking for the right frame). I already wrote about them twice (My “Grandmother’s Flower Garden” Quilt, and Winter Officially Started).

Even though the house-building project has been going really well, our bedroom is still not ready. But. My relative – I wrote about before – has dreamed that they have a huge wall hanging above their bed: four trees and four seasons. Strange things happen in life, right?

So right now I am sewing trees, cutting and ironing leaves and berries. I am sewing them on a paper template in English paper piecework style (folding their edges), then I attach them on the base with the help of some glue. (The folded edged application is no mistake: I work a bit more now for the far future, but I’ll be writing a separate post about that later.)

I sew the fixed pieces on the base with my sewing machine. I was really nervous as this is a brand new technique for me: I programmed a series of stitches into my machine, resulting in the feel and look of sewing all that trees, leaves and berries with my hand.

The berries have to be rotated all the while, which is quite hard, but I am really good with the leaves now. There was a moment when I even felt like someone was leading the fabric in the machine, the leaves were almost sliding under the sewing needle on their own.

I’m already finished with Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, so I’m currently working on the four pictures into one large one, while framing it as well.

When I told my husband how strange it was that I was asked to make a huge wall hanging that I’ve been wanting to make above our own bed, I found out two things: 1. I’ve been fantasizing about this plan so deep inside, that I didn’t even tell him about it. 2. He is not sure that he wants to see the four seasons flow through our home. He liked the four seasons wall hanging collection (almost done) that I designed to the living room before, but he thinks that I should work another one of my many future plans for the other parts of our house. Well… this is where I am right now.

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