Month: December 2021

Christmas Reds

I love to work on textile projects with the colors of the season.  That means that I now need to stitch on red.

I have a couple of big projects in progress, but they aren’t red.  So to soothe my soul, I reached back for this piece and began hand quilting it.  During the Christmas season, this has been a glorious practice for me.  I’m revisiting a piece I made several years ago – improvisationally stitching some Japanese fabrics in freeform hexagons on a linen remnant.  It needed color, I thought, so I added the red wool flower. 

I’ve learned that a piece doesn’t have to be finished to be enjoyed. This piece has been no exception… it’s hung about on chairs and falling out of baskets for several years when I needed an accent of red. Here you see it in a basket on top of a clock in the breakfast room.
The block from 52 Tuesdays proves how long this has been in the works…and my plan for quilting around the hexagons. This piece, still untitled, was appliquéd in 2015.

A couple of weeks ago, I layered it on a bit of felted wool and began stitching.  Two layers of fabric, a needle and beautifully smooth thread, and I am content.  The top layer is thin linen (used and washed again and again in its past life); the bottom is a lovely gray wool.  There’s nothing like pulling a needle and thread through delicious buttery wool. (I’m using Aurifil #12 and loving it!)

Ahh… Stitching peace in this season.

Another example of display yet unfinished is this holly on wool. Here it is draped over another quilt on the ladder in the den (the backside of Tree Farm). This is one of Maggie Bonanomi’s designs.

And yet another wool appliqué posing atop something else. Just to add a splash of red to the dining room wall during Christmas. Again, the wool pattern is from Maggie Bonanomi.