Thursday, July 26, 2007

And Now for Something Truly Tedious...

For the last three days I've been working on the medallion to go in the center of the prize ribbons at the guild show. (This does not count the hours I spent several weeks ago messing with Adobe Illustrator to get the spacing of the letters and basket correct.) I can't believe I'm doing this; do people really care what their prize ribbon looks like? The ribbon itself is the good thing, right? I could editorialize about guilds again, but I've done that, so here's just a short summary of the process.

Step 1: Glue a cardboard circle to batting. Then cut around the circle and batting.

Step 2. Glue fabric to batting. Clip edges and turn them to the cardboard side and glue in place. That's easy. Now the fun part.

Step 3. Cut out all these little basket pieces. You could use any block pattern, but I'm not dumb. I chose something that could be made in one piece.

Step 4. Glue basket to batting, and then cut around it, AGAIN.


Step 5. Glue fabric to batting/basket, cut around it (keeping track of all the cutting?) and then turn the edges under, gluing them in place. If you think mine look pretty messy, you're right. This project was not assigned to the person with the necessary skills. I think I failed gluing in kindergarten.

Step 6. Glue finished basket to backing.

Done, EXCEPT, that I thought these things looked dumb without words on them, so I now have to print name of show, etc., on a piece of fabric, cut that out, and carefully fuse it on so that the words will show in the space under the basket handle. Then I'll glue the basket on. (I don't THINK that glue spot shows in reality. Must have been the flash. :) )
Someone else will be making a ruffle to go around the medallion and the fabric/ribbon tails to hang down, and then we will meet to assemble them.

This is not really more tedious than making an equal number of quilt blocks; I guess I just don't like the results as well.

5 comments:

  1. Your title cracked me up!
    The ribbons ARE important; no doubt some of them will mean a very great deal to their winners, so your tedious work is not in vain. Thanks for the tutorial, too.

    Also, your pics of Vienna were to die for. Thank goodness one of our blog circle can go to Europe for the rest of us and post such great glimpses into the beauty there...

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  2. This is going to be a great quilt.

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  3. IMHO, the ribbons are a bit superfluous...

    I think my guild used purchased ribbons...

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  4. Oh dear, that does look tedious. But they are beautimous and the recipients will be overjoyed. Thanks for showing how you did it--ya never know, I might need to make a prize ribbon for someone some day.

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  5. Tedious, yes, but lovely just the same. And remember, they will bring smiles to all.

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