This Is How I Procrastinate

Ok,

I haven't posted anything in a while because I wanted to at least finish the tree trunks before talking about the background a bit.  But I can only take so much of piecing grey on grey. I only got this far before I needed to stop for color therapy. It's too bad, because as you can see, I am almost done with the trees. But I hit a wall.

 So this morning I sat on my porch, sipped my coffee and thought about art. I thought about coffee and art, googled a few pictures and found that Van Gogh did a painting of a coffee pot with lemons.

I love coffee. And I love art. Instead of spending my day off celebrating the 4th of July (it's way too hot to go outside), I pulled out my sketch pad, made a layout, grabbed some colors, and played with nylon thread, a narrow satin stitch and some stabilizer. I've never done machine applique because I'm not good at it. But you know what? We will never get good at anything if we don't get started. By the time I stopped this evening, I went from this,

 

  To this,

and finally to this.

 I think the secret to machine applique, is actually owning a machine that is capable of doing it. One that has that special blanket stitch, a big open toe foot and really good light over the threadplate, which is especially important when sewing two dark purples together. I think I will finish off this project by sewing the hand units by hand, then embellishing with perle cotton to hide the invisible thread.  Not so invisible, is it?

But, the color therapy worked. I feel refreshed and I'm ready to finish off those trees. Over the next weekend, I'll finish up the trees and baste Laura's quilt.