Some of the images for this quilt have been easy to choose, others have been quite difficult…The image for this block has been one of the most difficult…This is my son Sam and I am thinking that maybe I just have to many photos to choose from…I had been hoping to get an adult photo of him but he is light sensative and it is almost impossible to get a photo of him with out sun glasses, today I got out the photos I put together for his 21st birthday and got my sister to help me choose a suitable image of him.
For the TAST Stitch I liked Sharon’s sample with 3 basque stitches hanging off the end of a stem stitch and adapted it to a seam treatment…
I can’t decide if I like it or not, it is certainly different, unlike anything I have done before…even though my seam doesn’t actually look like them I keep thinking of Triffids!
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Above is my Visual Journal sketches for this kite scene seam, which wasn’t working untill I added the cloud…
The cload is a piece of cotton batting stitched on with buttonhole stitch.
An appliqued kite with embroidered cross bars would have been just as effective but I couldn’t help myself from making a miniature kite from wire and fabric.
A bead doll is flying the kite.
I like this seam because it is the first of the scene seams that I have been able to work onto a vertical seam…
Below is the finished block 23…7 to go.
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I started this seam with the ric rac braid held on with herringbone stitch and the colonial knots…I then went looking for beads that weren’t a circle and came up with bugle beads, when I tried the red ones the seam looked christmassy so I used the irridescent ones (left hand side) but they looked a bit dull so I added the red beads to them anyway, it still looks a bit christmassy but that is OK because there is many family christmasses to be remembered.
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I realized that I had not done any of the Whipped Wheels from this weeks TAST challenge so I have rectified that by doing a seam of them…I varied the sizes and I used a couple of different varigated threads to make them a little different…Whipped Wheels always remind me of Star Fish
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 Today I found a photo of a nephew that I have been trying to find for the last couple of months only to find that the image was just to small for what I need…The other place that I might have a better quality photo of him was from when he was page boy at my wedding, it only took me a couple of hours to find that lot of photos and I was rewarded for the search with a lovely image so I was able to get another block pieced today.
When I had the block pieced I felt that the bottom right fabric was a bit bright and that it would need a wide stitch in a neutral colour to tone it down a bit, this Cross Stitch from TAST week 9 worked to do just that.
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I decided to put lace on this seam and while I was looking at the laces and thinking about what embroidery I could do on them I realized that this lace had webs on it that reminded me of this weeks TAST stitch woven wheels…
I had to add an extra spoke because the weaving needs an odd number of spokes and a colonial knot to fill the centre.
And that finishes block 22 for mum’s memory quilt.
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This seam started with the flowers in details 246 and 247 and grew in the haphazard way that my real garden dose…I added a small butterfly bead for interest…Tip: seams like this are a great way to use short lengths of thread and silk ribbon.
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Tonights detail is another stitch that I have had in mind for awhile just waiting to find a seam to do it on.
For this Stitch I have to thank Elizabeth, If you havn’t seen Elizabeths blog of Quiter Moments it is worth a visit, she is doing really exciting things with the TAST challege…This seam is inspired by her first sample on 17th march. What I liked about her Stitch was how the Up and Down Buttonhole is enclosed by the tear drop shape.
The tear drop shape is held in place by small holding stitches, on the counted thread background these are done before slipping the thread under them to form the loops, when I tried this on the crazy block I couldn’t get the stitch length or even spacing for the holding stitches and I found it easier to do the holding stitches last, I used a pin to hold the thread in place while I worked the stitch.
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 Another block pieced. I have used mostly plain fabrics in this quilt but when I found this stamp fabric in my old stash of quilting cottons I thought that it would be nice to represent all the letters that family has written.
As I get nearer to the end of a project I look for what it needs to keep the whole thing balanced/united and as I used some laces and ribbons in the first 9 blocks I need to use some in the rest of the blocks.
I illustreated how to do this Loopy Ribbon on day 8 of the details last year. For this seam I used a very narrow satin ribbon, made the loops small and gently zig zagged the loopy rosettes back and forth across the seams.
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The stitching on the first 9 blocks of this quilt, which were the UFO Portion from 1994, are mostly the basic stitches, with the influence of TAST the stitches I have been doing on the later blocks has become very varied and every so often I feel as if I should throw in a basic stitch to blend the 2 blocks together…with this in mind I had a look at all the seams that I have done and realized that I hadn’t yet done a seam of the basic Double Feather Stitch so Double Feather Stitch it was today.
And here is the 21st finished block for mum’s quilt
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