Judy B. Dales ~ Quilt Maker

After a brief discussion on FB about the “How does she do that???” factor, I decided to post some photos of a work in progress. This is the second of the green hangings for my church. The green hangings are used during the “common time” of the church season. Common time is basically all the time between the dramatic seasons, such as Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, Pentacost, etc. It is a time of contemplation and nurturing, a time to focus on growing your spirituality and strengthening the church and community. Thus any imagery of nature and/or growing things is appropriate.

I decided on a simple vine/leaf design that I drew one Sunday during the sermon. I had been fiddling around with various leaf shapes, and curved lines, but had not made much progress until this design just popped off the end of my pencil in less than 10 minutes. That’s often how it happens. You spend a lot of time getting nowhere, just building up a lot of frustration. Then, suddenly a beautiful design materializes. It seems effortless, but that’s because you quickly forget all the frustration that came before.

green 1

Here you see a close-up of the leaf design. Note the tiny, narrow stems. Quite a challenge. They are doable, the trick is just not to freak out and get intimidated. Just sew them together the way you would any two pieces. Try to forget how tiny they are.

I’m making good progress on getting the piecing done However, as often happens with this technique, I am faced with a long, quite curvy seam.

There always seems to be a long seam like this at the end of the project. Again, don’t freak. Just sew it. You can pin the whole seam and then sew it section by section. Or you can pin just a small section, sew it, then pin another section. The trick is to tackle it section by section so it doesn’t overwhelm you.

Here is the entire seam pinned.

And here it is, sewn to first one side, then the other, joining the two sections. I have just one small section to go and then you can see the entire design. Tomorrow maybe………..