Ducks

Third Plus Revisited – and More

/ lesleyjjackson / Leave a comment

Purple Rhododendron coming into flower in our front garden.

Hi Everybody,

Signs of Spring have come to western Scotland at last. It’s feeling warmer and, although it is still disappointedly wet, there is so much colour appearing the garden.

Much of my time has been taken up caring for my new family of ducks over this winter. I had no idea they would be such hard work, not so much the ducks themselves, but being outside every day cleaning a pen and pond in all weather, the snow and the constant rain being the most challenging.

This pond was fresh, clear water only hours before. Hard to believe!

I can’t wait for drier weather when I am not sliding around in mud and my ducks return to being pure white again.

Yuk Yuk

I have been working on my ‘Third Plus’ experiment that I spoke about in my last post. However,  it has not been as successful as I had hoped.  I began by deciding to try using a wash away appliqué sheet,  as I had been given some for Christmas and had not tried them out.

I cut the face shape I wanted out of one of the sheets which, thankfully, was thin enough for me to trace my pattern through it. I then cut out the shape and covered it in fabric, folding the edges over the shape and gluing them down using a Sewline fabric glue stick.

The appliqué sheets are fusible on the shiny side. I chose to fuse the shape to the background fabric afterwards to stop the shape moving rather than fuse the wrapped fabric to the shape. Next time I might try it the other way around.

I thought the seam around the face looked ugly so I decided to cover it with stem stitch, using a variegated blue thread. I cut a boat out of paper to help me decide where I might place it,  though later I made it smaller. I wanted it to look a bit like a boat and a bit like a hat. You can see some puckering beginning at this stage. I have not had this happen when I have used ordinary paper inside a shape, though it could be just that I pulled my stitches too tight. I probably should have stopped and investigated but I thought it might iron out eventually. It didn’t.

This is the embroidery and appliqué completed. If I was pleased with it I probably would have added more to improve the shape of the lips and brows. The puckering seems worse now but it is possible that it will improve when it is quilted with some wavy lines. We’ll have to see. I haven’t washed out the appliqué sheet inside the face yet either and I wonder if that will make any difference. Apparently you can choose to leave it in, which may give the shape some depth, though it feels a bit hard and inflexible. This doesn’t really matter for a picture but it might matter if you were using it on a cushion, for example.

Although it is not finished as yet, I put the project in a frame to give you an idea of how it would look, proportion wise, but it was after five in the evening and so the picture looks quite dark. You’ll get the idea, though.  I do like the idea of a two-tone background, so I will definitely try that again.

‘Lady of the Lake’ 8 x 8 inches

The only other thing I’ve completed this week is ‘Farm in the Hills’, which has been equally disappointing.  I thought tossed cows in the ‘fields’ around the farm would be fun but now realise I should have fussy cut them all the same way up. Most of them look upside down. So, I’m not very happy about this one either. I can’t believe I finished it before I even noticed!

‘Farm in the Hills’ 8 x 8 inches

I ran over my index finger with my rotary cutter as well, so I was sewing wearing two plasters and a surgical glove so that I wouldn’t bleed on anything.  Not a great week for sewing, then.

In progress, despite all this, is ‘All Roads Lead Home’, which looks a bit more promising.

‘Al Roads Lead Home’ 12 x 12 inches

I have yet to add a window, perhaps  some vertical lines on the roof to suggest slates, and I want to put some hens or geese or something suggesting movement in the bottom, right hand, square. Then there is the quilting and binding to do.

As soon as the weather changes I shall be taking a break to go out in the garden as there  is stacks to do before everything  leafs up, explodes into flower, and the grass starts growing again. I also have to embroider something special for a friend’s birthday in April.

Next post? I have the embroidery bug at the moment, so I am thinking of attempting some Paisley Birds as a complete change from appliqué and design guides, though my Scottish themed EPP quilts will be chugging along, in between, as usual.

So, until next time, take a moment to enjoy the flowers….

A pink Camelia bud in the back garden.

A Duck, More Ducks and Some Sewing

/ lesleyjjackson / 6 Comments

I had this ornament before Daisy, my black and white cat, brought in a duckling. Prophetic, eh?

I have discovered that ducks and sewing don’t really mix, even though they may give equal pleasure. One makes you a whole lot wetter and muddier.

My life has been duck-full lately. I stopped sewing for a spell in the garden. When was that? April? I gardened happily until June when my cat brought in a duckling and deposited it,  unhurt, on the living room floor.  You may remember me mentioning this in passing in one of my earlier posts (EPP Loves the Hexagon).

Baby Maple that Daisy, my cat, brought to me

My little duckling has turned into a beautiful female Mallard with all of her mature colouring. She is aptly named, Maple.

My grown up Maple

When she was five weeks old I decided to buy her a friend, a lovely Aylesbury duck which I was certain was a female. I called her Alba.

Then one day, a couple of weeks later, when I opened the shed door for a moment to put a tray outside, Maple flew out of the open pen,  through the small space above my head and into the sky. After a couple of days and assurances from several people that she would not return, I bought another Aylesbury duck, a female friend for Alba, called Lilly.  Maple, I decided, was a wild duck after all. I had simply taken care of her until she was ready to go out into the world.

In the meantime, I had been having doubts about Alba. If she was female she should have had a well developed quack by 9 weeks but all she had was a croak. I had Lily delivered by the seller, so that I could ask advice from someone more experienced. And Alba, it turned out, was a male. So now I had a mum and dad. Not really what I had in mind, originally.  After Lily’s arrival, Alba began showing off , becoming quite skittish and bossy, so he has been renamed Bossy-Boy. And it suits him perfectly.

Bossy-Boy is at the back, Lily in the front.

 

But that’s not the end of the story because, no sooner had my Aylesbury pair settled in together, Maple returned. I couldn’t believe it. She came sauntering down the garden path and led me a merry dance around the garden before she let me pick her up. She was very hungry and thirsty and seemed happy to be returned to the pen. She has become more and more tame over the weeks since and clearly loves being part of our duck community.

So that’s my duck story. But not the end of it, I’m sure.

Dismayed to find it was already August, I thought I had better get some sewing done. Usually I do one quilt and finish it and then think about starting another but I thought I would try a different approach this time.

‘Monarch of the Glen?’ I plan to embroider over the stags head as well as hand quilt the surface.

Having got so behind I thought it would be a good plan to complete a series of mini quilt tops, all the same size, one after another and finish them later.  I could do this more quickly which would make me feel as if I had made good progress. I decided to do three Scottish themed ones and a couple of fun ones. All of them are based on traditional, out-of-copyright blocks, re-imagined for my own purposes.

‘Dog Log’, a variation on the traditional Log Cabin block

 

‘Liberty Square’. The house shapes that circle the square will be more obvious as houses, with windows and doors, eventually.

It was a good idea but didn’t really work. Too many of them needed small changes and when you have half a dozen quilt tops needing little changes, it doesn’t do much for motivation. I must say that I would recommend buying paper pieces if you can afford them. I make my own templates and because I am not a maths whizz, they are always slightly inaccurate. The bought ones are a breeze to put together and you don’t have to spend ages tweaking a block that is not quite square, or has a wonky triangle in it somewhere, and so on. I make my templates, not just to save money but because my ideas don’t always have standard shapes to fit them.

‘Harbour Side’ – a take on our Scottish seaside communities, little boats in a harbour with tartan accents.

‘Close Community’. Two tartans meeting around 4 neighbouring houses (still unfinished)

Followers of my Facebook ‘Forest Moor Designs’ Page, will have seen these five new mini quilts already, so apologies for that, and  I am afraid that, even though I have lots more cut out and ready to go, I have done nothing since. I am hoping this blog post will motivate me to have something more to share soon. I have about twenty (all 8 inches square) to complete, before I move on to something new.

Just a couple more things:  I framed one of my mini quilts to see how it would look in a frame. This is ‘The Wind in the West’: 

Not too bad, but in future I will make the quilt to fit the frame and not the other way around. That will ensure that borders don’t show and triangles don’t get chopped off (lesson learned).  Also, I have a new logo for my sometime-soon-to-be-opened-I-hope shop on Etsy. Someone said the font is not very clear, and I agree, so my daughter and I are working on that. I do love the way the crosshatching looks like little sticks in a forest, though.

So that was what I did in August but I am determined to have a few more mini quilts to show before the end of September.  I have also been thinking how lovely it would be to have two Indian Runner ducks when my husband gets around to enlarging the pen….  ; )

Till next time……