To Mend a Broken Heart

A quilted heart, that is! A result of going through the sewing room contents is finding all sorts of UFO's. Notice I didn't say it was a good result. I put together this very sorry specimen of a crazy quilted heart. It's hard to see in the photo, but many of the fabric edges are not sewn down. That's the first thing that needs to be corrected.

Then I tried to get fancy with my sewing machine's built in stitches and some metallic threads. You can see the result in the photo above. I have ripped most of the mess out, but I can't get all of it. Second thing that needs to be corrected.

I then had a brilliant idea of making some sort of border to go around the heart, covering up the messy metallic sewing, and dug through my "red fabric" box and came up with these three.

In the end, I selected this stripey batik, as it had the best color to go with the reds in the heart.

But look what I found while digging through the stash - Australia themed fabric! Funny, I don't remember buying this while Down Under a few years ago - but then I might have been too worried about being upside down while there. (I know, it doesn't make sense, but I did have this odd feeling of being upside down while in Australia)

I made a long strip - 84 inches, that is to say, two widths of fabric (WOF, in sewing terms), 2 1/2 inches wide. I turned it right side out and pressed the seam to the middle. I'm now making this shell smocked piece of trim and will appliqué it around the edge of the heart, covering up the metallic thread mess. I even bought some beads to go with it.

Tomorrow Mr. CS and I travel to San Mateo (just south of San Francisco) to take a Cindy Foose Smocked Dress class. (I'm taking the class, not Mr. CS - he'll go fishing) The class is Saturday and Sunday, but we are going a day early to see a Vermeer exhibit at the de Young Museum. Fun, fun!