This blog should be called "The Adventures of a Fabric Junkie!". I am passionate about fabric, threads, colours and textures. I can record my crazy quilting, sane quilting, embroidery and everything else that I consider important in my life.

Photo shows my block for the Hurricane Katrina fund-raising quilt "All That Jazz".

Sunday, March 05, 2006

Complete Solvy DYB block


Complete Solvy DYB block
Originally uploaded by Crazydolldresser.
This photo is of the complete cream-on-cream block for Mary Lewis. Apart from the fan, linen circle with tatting and the sea-horse, there are some tiny flat copper rings covered in buttonhole stitch, embroidered lace, vintage pearl buttons and more.

Seahorse corner

This little cream lace seahorse just cried out for a sea bed to sit on. I stitched various types of seaweed in different types and textures of thread and added the tiny gold shell and starfish charms. There are a lot of irridescent bead "bubbles" rising in lines to the surface of the ocean but unfortunatly they haven't shown up in the photo.

Close-up of tatting and hem-stitched linen

I bought several sheets of these little hem-stitched shapes on eBay a couple of years ago. The circles measure 1 3/4 inches across and are meant to be used as centres of crocheted motifs. They date from around 1900. I slip-stitched some vintage tatted edging around the edge of the circle and added ribbon roses and rayon thread bullion leaves plus the little gold blue bird charm.

Method of making Solvy Fan

Here is a practice piece I did on some scrap material first. I wanted the fan to be controlled rather than just a pile of clipped thread pieces trapped between the two layers of solvy. I sewed the outline shape then filled it in with a rough grid of straight sewing lines. After a few experimental machine embroidery stitches, I finished up deciding on the top embroidery stitch which is a double zig-zag stitch, then machine stitched back and forth across the fan following the curves and making sure that each row went over the edge of the previous row. Once the fan shape was covered, I sewed an edging around all sides of the fan with the same stitch.

Solvy Fan


Solvy Fan
Originally uploaded by Crazydolldresser.
This is the fan I made for Mary's DYB block using solvy. I appliqued the fan shape onto the background over the top of a tiny organza frill then added silk embroidered bullion roses, ribbon, wrapped thread spokes and a satin stitched bow.