Stitches In the Dark...

 

Creating Comfort...

Back when it was still Winter, Dear Readers, and too dark in the evenings to indulge in the stitching of the tiny Petit-point cushions I am obsessed with, I found myself turning to the simpler exercise of sewing together tiny patches for a quilt. Some of you might remember that years ago (where does the Time go?) Daphne and Renee had embarked on a project of making a quilt from some patches Daphne had found in the attic, along with the sewing machine. And Renee had immediately taken the little piece they had started and gave it to her Grandpere for a lap quilt when they brought him to the Park in his wheel chair. As is the way of things.... this little project had not been "in the regular plan" of this story  and had been sprung on me by surprise! And I suppose you can imagine that the busy-ness of Real Life got in the way of any progress at all in this little project, and then Covid turned the world upside down and the Story itself was left waiting for the next piece to come along.... and it is waiting still. But I had cut out a "selection" of little squares to use.... and they were "somewhere..." in a pile of the not yet finished projects.... and I knew I could keep stitching the little squares together even in the poor light of a winter's night. I dug them out and decided to cut a few more tiny squares from the finest of the cloth scraps (many are old Liberty of London cotton scraps from my former Mother in Law) and so I had my stitching for dark evenings ready to go!

      Of course, it was night-time and dark, so I wasn't remembering to take many pictures either.

The squares are about one inch square... 

and once they are stitched together they are about 3/4 inch square.

 I tried to make the pattern pleasing and somewhat balanced. 

And I didn't have any idea how big it needed to be,

 so I thought I better test it on Grandpere's bed...

 

 I am sure you will think I am silly, Dear Readers,

 but the quilt looked so perfect there on his bed that I left it there,

 incomplete, un-hemmed, no backing,

 no careful attempts to make it lie flat and look realistic... 

because it looks so right!

 I can't believe how well the colors go in this room!

 

 And even though Daphne and Renee haven't "finished" it yet, 

and have not had their episode of the Story with it yet... 

I just Love the way it looks and don't want to move it at all!

 

And Grandpere still has his "lap quilt"

 which brings him more comfort than he can possibly say.

 

And I want to let you know, Dear Readers, 

that I might not be able to post very often for a while. 

My son has some extra medical needs that will require most of my attention.

I might not be able to stitch as often as I want,

 but I will be Dreaming of little patches of Comfort as often as I can.
 

 

The Fifth Cushion....

The Hound And His Mate....

I Hope you will Not be surprised, Dear Readers, to learn that the fifth cushion design also would need to be altered by the addition of the Mate for the Hound. As tempting as it was to just stitch the design as it was printed, with just the single hound, I knew I would always wonder where his mate was! I began the framework for this cushion before I had even finished the squirrels cushion, in part because I wanted to find out whether there was enough of the dark red silk thread to stitch the entire outline. As you can see, there was. And you might not be surprised to learn that I started drawing the second hound before I even started to stitch the first.... just in case there was a need for also moving the first one.

I drew the hound at about the size I wanted it to be in the chart I had printed out, so I could get an idea of what would need to be moved out of the way.

Here you can see the position I wanted the hound to take. And this is where things get complicated. Because the graph paper of the drawing is not the same size as the printed chart, (it is close but not exact) the number of squares in the drawing (ie stitches) is too many to fit in that space. So I needed to count the number of stitches for the length and height of the space on the printed chart that the hound needed to fit into... and redraw a chart to stitch from that would fit within that size.

 Here you can see the new drawing compared with the first drawing. It is smaller in the picture, but has the right number of stitches to fit into the space available on the chart. 

 Here I have taped the drawing onto the chart, with the front paw at the spot where the stitching needs to start. It doesn't look right here because the scales are just a little different, but once it is stitched it will fill a larger space!

 

Here I have begun to stitch hound number one!

 

And before long he was finished!

And the second hound is begun....

 

 

 

You can see that the proportions look right in the stitching.

 

 

Both hounds have been stitched and the outlining in the dark red is begun.

 

And here you can see both hounds outlined and the blossoms are begun!

 

 

And more flowers! I have started to design the expanded corners too.

 

 

And even more blossoms! 

And while it might seem like that didn't take long Dear Readers,

 it was actually two weeks of work! 

But the Fifth cushion with the Hound and his Mate

 is looking the way I hoped it would!