Last of the Summer Fruits

I went into my profile earlier today in an attempt to change the picture of Don and me that you see to the right. I wanted to add the one that Kathy Howell took while she and Jack were here last week. For some reason, even after 3 attempts, Blogger.com won't let me change it. So you'll have to continue to look at the 3-year-old photo of Don and me (which Kathy also took, by the way). It's a fine photo; I just reckoned it was time for an update. You can at least see the new photo at the bottom of today's blog.

Last of the Summer Fruits is the quilt I made today. I've attached a photo of the quilt as well as a detail shot. It is 13" x 16" and was made from a rubbing taken from the bottom of one of our earthenware serving bowls. I made the rubbing yesterday afternoon on computer paper with a transfer crayon. I then carefully cut the shape of a cherry (or plum) and then with a hot iron, transferred the rubbing onto a piece of pale blue poly-cotton. There was still some crayon left on the cut-out so I next transferred the paler design onto a piece of white embossed poly-organza (actually, it was one of my late mother-in-law's fancy tablecloths that had such a bad stain it couldn't be used on a table anymore). I made a third, more ghostly, image on another piece of the organza. Then I carefully cut out the two organza fruit shapes and "floated" them over the top of the printed fruit. I played around with this idea until I had the arrangement I liked. Then I removed the two organza shapes, satin-stitched around the original transfer print so that it would look like an applique. Then I added the stronger of the two ghost prints, shifted a bit so that it wasn't directly over the original, and satin-stitched the edge of it. I repeated this process with the third organza shape. Then I quilted the stem and leaf shapes. Finally, I quilted the rest of the background with a pale blue thread to match the background fabric. I really like the way this quilt turned out.