Diary of a Revolution Sampler 5

Well so much for the Easter deadline!

Thursday I finally manged to catch up and complete my daily deadlines for stitching the rows and by Thursday evening I had actually finished them all. Bang on time.

Friday morning I got up and straight to work.

First I sliced up my T-shirt from the demonstration last May 12.

The T-shirt was shorter than the sampler so I added on pieces of posters backed with muslin.

Originally I had thought of combining my T-shirt with flamenco dress fabric (of which I seem to have bought quite a lot over the last few years and not really used much) but in the end I chose a nice bright communist/revolution red - really what else could it have been.

Strips laid out in sewing order

I was a little bit worried about the stretchiness of the T-shirt fabric and I envisioned a few problems with the tension between the strips. I ripped the red fabric to make sure that they were really running down the grain. When I sewed the strips I sewed them all from the top, lining up the top edges, and I was pleasantly surprised that it all sewed up fine and lies flat - well there's one or two small bumps but only I know where they are.

The back looks a bit like a flag, and though no football fan suspiciously reminds me of the Barcelona colours.

As the top is so flat I decided to baste the wadding only to the back. Also because I don't want to put any uneccesary holes through the top. I then planned to place the top on top and do the rows of quilting stitches from the centre out.

Not even lunchtime and so much done.

Next step search through all the plastic bags in the wardrobe for the wadding. Nice piece of wool but my gut instinct is for a piece of cotton which will hold its shape. 

More bags and more bags (even more flamenco fabric, think I'll have to stop acquiring it) and finally the realisation that I have no wadding. DISASTER

It's Good Friday, everything's closed, and tomorrow I'm off for the day to the coast.

I almost made the deadline. This week I'll buy the wadding and now I'm planning on having it finished in two weeks. That's the plan.

Diary of a Revolution Sampler 4

From the back the colours stand out more.

Yesterday I managed to get to half way with the stitching. I couldn't put up the post because I had to stitch!

I'm still trying to meet my self imposed Easter deadline. To do this I've divided up the remaining stitching into daily amounts.

It's Monday, I've finished stitching and I've just begun Sunday's allotted rows.

I'm still optimistic that I'll manage it it.

Actually giving myself daily deadlines has been really useful and is definitely making me sit down and get on with it.

I think it's getting faster too. It's definitely quicker as I work out to the side edges of the piece because I don't have it rolled up in front of me.

I've also decided that I prefer twisted thread to embroidery strands. The embroidery strands tend to separate; I think because I start with such long lengths. My favourite threads are the pearl cotton, in various sizes, which I've dyed myself.

It's getting very exciting as I can see the end in sight.

Diary of a Revolution Sampler 3

Well two weeks into this project and it's coming along slowly. The piece is monopolising my work table and yesterday my sewing machine came back from being repaired. I know if I take the piece off the table it will never be finished so the project I was sewing when the machine stopped is the carrot for me to get the Revolution Sampler finished. I'm aiming for Easter- wishful thinking? Perhaps.

The sampler idea has changed. I realised that the spacing of 1cm between each row of stitching was too narrow for embroidery stitches. Also as the piece doesn't bend it would have been really hard work embroidering it; the needle can only go one way, either up or down. It's impossible to push it down and bring it up in one movement.

I first sewed the outlines of the lettering across the middle and worked out how best to handle everything when sewing. I tried rolling the ends onto a tube, but the tube was too heavy. I've tried rolling the work underneath but I've finally settled on having it rolled on top in front of me. The pictures explain it better.

The first two rows.

So yesterday I started on the 99 rows of stitching which represent the slogan 'We are the 99%'.

I managed to do ten and I was very pleased with myself. I very luckily inherited a quiting ruler in centimetres from my aunt who lived in The Netherlands. I never thought I would use it and here it's saved me. Eyeballing the lines is impossible so I draw each one with pencil, stitch and then rub out the pencil which is visible. At the moment they are all parallel even though some of them looked a bit like they were widening at the end. I checked and rechecked with the ruler and everything lined up. Finally my daughter took one look at them and said 'They're fine it's just that some are on yellow and the others are on white and that's what's making them look different.'

Every tenth row I've left a blank line and these are for the lines of quilting stitches.

Today it's been pouring with rain which should have been a godsend to sit down and stitch all day. But what do you do in Granada when it's raining? Either you go for chocolate and churros for breakfast or you go out and have tapas. We did the latter which isn't exactly conducive to then sitting down and stitching straight rows. However I did get a bit more done this evening and I'm planning on working away on it bit by bit during the week.

Close up of this weekend's work.

That Easter deadline seems a bit ambitious.

P.S. A quite funny thing happened with the first post of this diary.

I posted a picture of the collage onto my facebook page

http://www.facebook.com/PomegranateQuilts

where it was shared by a friend on his great page and website

http://www.facebook.com/SpherePoint.Blog

and then onto another revolution and democracy page.

Facebook tell me that 1,881 people saw this post!!!! 

Now I don't think any of them were quilters as I don't think any of them looked at the blog, but still......