Today's blog starts with a big sigh of relief. The stitching on the rose is done, and I am very happy with the way that it turned out. And actually, I am very glad to say that it didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would (I also learned that even though handstitching can be time consuming, that it is really easy to learn, requires very few tools, can be taken anywhere, and it makes a really big impact).

But then, today's blog takes another turn. I finished the stitching, and I even sewed the square up into a throw pillow just as I had planned. The problem is that I am just not sure that the pillow shows off the beautiful rose to its best advantage. I think that there is just too much plain white around the rose. What do you think?

I can't decide at this point where to go next. I really do think that there must be a re-think involved. Maybe this rose wasn't meant to be a pillow case at all. Maybe it was, but it just needs some more quilting or maybe it needs to be framed in a colour border....

I don' t know.

At this point, I think that I just need to take a little break from the project and, as my mother would say, "come back at it with fresh eyes". And, since it is Friday, I can't think of a better time to take a break than a weekend.

But...

If you have any ideas, I would love to hear them!

And...

In case you didn't catch our Facebook Status this morning, I am starting to countdown to Christmas next week. Because Daylilies is all about being creative, I want to offer a new Christmas gift idea every day from now until Christmas - It is my hope that you will be encouraged to try and give home-made this year. There is nothing better than giving from your heart and hands. I hope that I will share some ideas to encourage and inspire you.

Until then, have a great weekend, and if you have any ideas for my rose, I can't wait to hear them!

I finished colouring. All I can say is I must be a very slow colour-er because it took me longer to colour the 12 inch square than it did to do a little machine quilting on top of my colouring!

In any case, I can honestly say that I am still not entirely happy with the colours I chose to use, but I have shown it to other people in and around the studio, and they like the colours. I guess it is just one of those personal taste things.

So what did I do?

Okay - just to back track a little bit, these instructions are based on using beeswax crayons or fabric crayons. I have no experience with using regular crayons with this type of work, and although they may work, I cannot speak from any sort of experience. If you want to try this with regular crayons, you will have to experiment a little yourself. (If you are looking for fabric crayons, I found that they were much easier to find from any US art/craft/business stores. If you are looking for the child-safe beeswax crayons, you can find them at the Daylilies website.)

Here is a quick pic of my project (so far...) but please understand that this is one of those projects where the picture does NOT do the project any justice. This looks MUCH better in person.

Once I had finished colouring my square (to see how I got my pattern, check yesterday's blog post), I placed the fabric face down on a piece of paper and ironed it on the backside of the design, on med heat with the steam function turned off. It didn't take long (just seconds, really) to melt the wax and set the design.

After ironing, the design seems just a little more stiff, but just ignore that. It has no impact on the rest of the project, and will soften again as you work.

Then, I cut a piece of quilting batting (I prefer to work with a natural quilt batting like cotton or wool - again if you are looking for this, check out Daylilies - but any kind of quilt batting will work.) and another piece of the broadcloth to the same dimensions as my original piece of broadcloth. After pinning the pieces together in a sandwich fashion - broadcloth with my design on it, right side facing up, then the batting, then the last piece of broadcloth as a backing - I took to the sewing machine.

Now, I decided that I wanted to sew on every line I had drawn so that it would mimic a quilt square, but there is nothing saying that you have to do this.

You can choose how much or how little sewing you want to do. In fact, as I started sewing, I decided that there were some areas of the square that I wanted to have more stitching, adding rows and some decoration. And, as I look at it again, there are still some areas that I might add some more.

But the question of the day is much the same as yesterday - Now that all of that is done (and it only took about 30 minutes to sew), what am I going to use the single quilt square for?

I still can't decide. Any thoughts?

Okay. Since I promised not to talk about glue any more, I thought that I would turn my attention to crayons.

I was working on some product development work in the studio last week, and all my spare time was devoted to finding fabric crayons. I remembered using them when I was a kid, but couldn't seem to find them anywhere when I needed them last week. I finally found them, but not before I got a little inventive and started trying the regular crayons I have around the studio. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the child-safe beeswax crayons just new to the studio work fabulously on fabric. Not only that, but they stay on through a cold water wash whether they have been heat set or not.

Perfect.

But the real reason I bring this up is because when I was searching for the fabric crayons online, I came across a fabric artist, Carol Ingram, that was using crayons with quilting to do some phenomenal work. Sulky of America has posted instructions for one of her projects for free on their site, so go and check it out - it is gorgeous :)

Now that I knew I had crayons that worked well on fabric (each brand of crayons is different, so you will have to check out the crayons you want to work with before you start a project like this... make sure you test them in the wash too!), I was intrigued with the idea of using the crayons in some sort of quilting work. I liked the way Carol's project turned out, and I wanted to give some version of it a try.

But I have never really quilted before.

So... I knew that I would be biting off way more that I should if I tried that project as is - my project needed to be simple. Something with simple sewing and lots of crayon colouring.

A basic quilting square!

I went to my trusty quilting book (yes, I have a trusty quilting book even though I don't quilt. There is no explaining my mind sometimes...) by Better Homes and Gardens called 101 full-sized Quilt Blocks and Borders. I picked a pretty basic square, traced it onto my piece of broadcloth fabric with a regular fine marker (mine wasn't a fabric marker, and it kind of bled a little when I left the marker on the fabric too long, but that is okay because I ended up colouring over my lines anyway).

Then I took the crayons to the fabric and started colouring. I am not done yet - really only half way through (I guess I am a slow colour-er?). I don't love my colour choices, but I am dedicated to seeing it finished because I have learned that there are a lot of times I really don't like the project at the half way point only to love it at the end. In any case, here is what it looks like so far:

I really don't know what it will be when it is done - a pillow? a bag? maybe part of a larger wall hanging? - but that is a problem for tomorrow. Right now, I am going to enjoy how relaxing colouring is (I had forgotten how enjoyable the simple act of colouring can be) and the rest will have to work itself out by tomorrow at this time. I really can't decide what it will be...