This and That

Dr. Jekyll...


and Mr. Hyde.


And in fiber content, the ribbon centers are finished. Hooray!

Prize Ribbons

I'm again making the center medallion for prize ribbons to be given at our guild show. This year I'm paper piecing a block to be formed around the cardboard circle, and then surrounded by a rosette of the fabric shown with fabric and ribbon streamers. There will be eighteen medallions in all, three for each of the five categories and three special ribbons. Given my feeling about paper piecing, this qualifies as chore sewing. My goal is to get this done early next week and turn to something else. I'm still tweaking the fabric choices and the best way to make a smooth edge. Neither one of these is quite ready for prime time.

I tried Dritz Wash Away foundation paper for this project. It washes away beautifully, but causes some puckering. That might be less of a problem in a larger block where the seams make up a smaller percentage of the total area. Puckering or not, it sure beats tearing away little bits of paper! I'd recommend it.

Happy Fourth, everybody. If I had a sample of the white ribbon done, wouldn't that be patriotic?

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.