Wednesday Works-in-Progress: Satin Pillow top and some Needle-Felting

First up for Work-in-Progress Wednesday: a quilted satin pillow top for a baby pillow. I started this a long time ago with some leftover satin from my White Wedding Quilt. I ran into a little bit of bad tension (railroad tracks) and put it aside to do some frogging (rip-it, rip-it!) That finally happened while I was sitting around and the Dish Network satellite guy was here...or was it one of the Time-Warner Internet guys...we have had lots of service workers here in the past month! Including the HVAC guys yesterday who finally fixed our upstairs air conditioning system. Oh, I slept so good last night!

For this little pillow, I stitched a border area...no measuring, that's just not me- LOL! I did some "piano key" borders with my magnetic lock on the Gammill, but forgot which way I was going when I rolled down. Anyway, that became a design element, so some of the stitching is vertical and some is horizontal. I promise I don't drink Margaritas before using the long-arm!

The center is just playing around with free-motion stitching.

Yesterday I finally got a call that my Bernina is ready to pick up at the shop, so maybe I can get some of my quilt backings and this pillow put together.

Since I am doing a demo with my Babylock Embellisher on Thursday night, I have been putting together some little pieces of fiber samples. Here are a few bookmarks, with ribbons and Angelina, beads and ribbons.

Some silk and Angelina on batting...

and on dark cotton (there is a piece of painted muslin in thecenter under the silk)

some silk fibers and Angelina on a piece of dyed Dupioni silk, which I found out bleeds terribly!

I did not know this fabric would bleed so bad. I bought a pack of mixed colors of the Dupioni silk at a quilt show in Illinois years ago, and have been hoarding it and using it sparingly in projects. When I did the one above, I wet the piece after needle-felting, and that's when my bathroom sink turned purple. This will probably be used for fabric postcards.

One last bit of WIP news about my Oriental wholecloth quilt: I decided I had done all I could with the piece as is, but it still needed something. I hit on the idea of making it the view out of a Japanese window. That would require some kind of borders. So I did a little research on Japanese architecture, and found out that the name Zen Garden would be incorrect for this quilt. Zen Gardens do not have water features, just stones, plants, and raked gravel. The gardens represent landscapes such as mountains. But Zen Gardens are not the ones with the bridges over ponds. So, that WIP will get a new, more accurate name.

I am off to weed some flower beds before it gets too hot, and then to drive to Raleigh again to pick up my beloved Bernina!