Bird of Paradise Assembled

Piece by piece I got the Bird of Paradise assembled. I basted each tail feather over freezer paper and then glue basted them together. It is pretty sturdy now, I hope I can stitch thru it to applique it all together and then get the freezer paper out.

I had wanted to use the back of the red striped bird body fabric, but I ironed it onto the freezer paper backwards and decided to just practice basting the bird beak. It basted pretty well and I decided not to mess with success and just leave it.

The poison green with black has been a favorite since I got it but it would never go well with others, so in this block it can be the only leaf fabric.

I also have one precious little piece of black ultrasuede and I am going to use it for the bird feet and see how that goes. You do not have to turn under the edges with the ultrasuede so I am just going to use fusable webbing and iron them onto the block and applique them as I would a prebasted piece. If it looks well I am going to use ultrasuede for the rest of the bird feet, strawberry tops, and possibly bird beaks - all those fussy little pieces.

It has been a very hot weekend here in Nebraska with high humidity - a great weekend to stay indoors and sew. I finished Linda's tablerunners, she has the cutest fabrics in these. I love the watermelon applique tablecloth, there is a matching tablerunner she plans to put on her bar, won't that be cute! Great decoration for the rest of this summer.

I used the new long arm machine for four of the tablerunners. It has been so much fun. Stitching in the ditch is still a goal with the long arm, it

seems very difficult, so for right now I revert back to my smaller machine for those projects.

Happy Stitching all...

Cheri

PS: Happy Birthday cutest grandbaby in the world - not so much baby anymore, now cutest two year old in the world.