Travel Interlude: FrankenWhiggish Rose, Resurrected and Resumed

Hello and happy Friday!  I've been out of town and away from my sewing machine, but air travel gave me a great opportunity to catch up on my neglected hand stitched applique project, the FrankenWhiggish Rose blocks that have been sitting untouched since last September.  The day before I left for New Jersey, I spent hours prepping my reverse applique tulips (freezer paper and starch pressed edges, glue basted to the block) as well as the little rosebuds that go around the center of the block (using Jeanne Sullivan's Patch Back product with fabric glue stick to turn the edges).

Prepared Edge Tulips Get Glue Basted In Place for Stitching on the Plane

While I was doing this, my husband was making incredulous comments like "When are you planning to pack your clothes?" and "Do you know how early we need to leave in the morning to get you to the airport?!"

I had previously needle-turned the reverse applique centers of these tulips off-block, but I made double-layer freezer paper templates to preturn the outer edges with starch before glue basting them to the block background so I wouldn't have to fuss with those deep V-curves on the plane.  I was able to pop the spotted reverse applique fabric through the diamond shaped hole in the center of each freezer paper template to hold the fabric in place while I pressed the seam allowances over the edges of the freezer paper.  

Using My iPad As a Light Box

Then for those tiny rosebuds, I downloaded a new Light Box app for my iPad and traced the rosebuds onto Patch Back (similar to Floriani Stitch 'N' Wash), cut a tiny turning allowance all the way around, and turned those edges with fabric glue stick before glue basting the buds to my block.  Now I had four tulips and four little rose buds to stitch down on my way to New Jersey.

Travel Interlude

Here are the highlights from my trip:

My Canine Nephew and My Sister, and My Dresden Plate Quilt

Meet Cooper, the most lovable pit bull mix on earth.  This is a dog who snuggles and cuddles, climbs up in your lap and licks your face, brings toys to tug and fetch, and has the softest, silkiest fur you can imagine.  If I thought I could have smuggled him onto the plane, I would have tried to bring him home with me (over my sister's dead body!).  

Princess Petunia In the Theatre, Following the Show

The main purpose of this trip was to drive into NYC with my sister and my soon-to-be-ten-year-old niece to see Sara Bareilles starring in the musical Waitress on Broadway.  We did a girls' day out in the city, starting out at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (where Petunia was scandalized by the naked statues with "man bits" right at her eye level!), ate hot pretzels from a street vendor, and then stood in line for an hour to get into the Stardust Diner for dinner, where the wait staff consists of aspiring Broadway stars who serenade you while you eat very expensive hamburgers.

Giant Sara Bareilles, Aunt Becca (Moi), and Princess Petunia

It was FREEZING COLD in the city, but we had a great time anyway.  I even managed to push my niece through the crowd gathered at the stage door after the performance, so Petunia got to meet Sara Bareilles and got her autograph.  I swear her smile was bigger than her whole face!

Back to my stitchery:

By the time I was ready to fly back to Charlotte, I had already stitched down all of the applique pieces that I had prepped before the trip.  Fortunately, though, I'd had the foresight to pack the green fabric, leaf template, and chalk pencils for my leaves.  I traced my templates onto my fabric with regular pencil this time, hoping it would smudge less during finger pressing than the chalk pencils do, but it ended up being really difficult to see so I won't be doing that again on this fabric.

My Pencil Lines Are Too Hard to See

There may be an impending Fabric Crisis with this project, by the way.  I bought this green fabric back in 2012(?!) when I first started this project, and I only bought a quarter of a yard of it.  I know, right?  Since there are sixteen leaves on each block and I have seven more blocks to make after this one, that means I need to get 112 more leaves out of that piece of fabric.  I highly doubt I can find any more of this fabric and I don't even remember where I bought it.

Sixteen Leaves Pinned for Needle Turned Stitching

Having stitched the prepared edge applique on my flight up to New Jersey and switching back to needle turned applique on my flight home, I must say that I really prefer the prepared edge stitching.  Yes, it's a pain in the butt to do all that prep work, but it's easier to place the pieces on the background accurately when the edges are already turned, and I like not having those little pins to keep track of when I'm stitching on the go.  I don't like my thread snagging on the pins, either!  

I'm out of practice and my first two needle turned leaves came out kind of lumpy.  I'm not even going to show them to you, so there!  Seriously -- I know that each one will get better.  I didn't finish stitching all of these leaves on the plane, so I'll be working on them while watching television with my husband in the evenings.  And I'm seriously considering switching to prepared edge applique for all of the remaining blocks.

But in the meantime -- I'm HOME AT LAST, and my sewing machines have MISSED me!  I have two different solos to prepare for this Sunday, so for the next few days I'll be alternating between working on music and piecing my Tabby Mountain quilt top.  Finishing that quilt was my goal for February, and here it is the 22nd already and it's only halfway pieced!  Perhaps I was overambitious in thinking I could piece AND quilt it in one month, but I'd like to at least finish the top and get it loaded onto my quilting frame before the end of the month.

So if you don't hear from me, I'm either busy SINGING or SEWING!

I'm linking up with:

• ·       Whoop Whoop Fridays at www.confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com
• ·       Finished Or Not Friday at http://busyhandsquilts.blogspot.com/

Lederhosen FINISHED!

Final Lederhosen Fitting -- SUCCESS!!

...And they FIT!  Which is fabulous, since I had NO backup plan in case they didn't fit and tomorrow is the first dress rehearsal.  After the young actor tried them on, I took the lederhosen back to my studio to decorate them:

Finished, Decorated, DONE.

That's better, isn't it?  I cut the fake welt pocket leaves out of felt and used 505 Temporary Spray Adhesive to position them next to the side seams.  Same with the extra leaf that I added on the placket thingy.  Then I used my BSR foot, stitch length 3.0, to free-motion the edge stitching to the lederhosen with jeans thread.  I added the little swirly things around the placket leaf the same way.  What did I learn?  Well, I thought that free-motion quilting was challenging with a flatbed setup, but it's MUCH more difficult to FMQ when you have to use the free arm because the pants are already assembled -- if I had this to do over, I'd have done the "decorating" before sewing the side seams together.  I did it this way because I didn't want to waste my time embellishing something that didn't fit and had to be scrapped.

Could I add more decorative swirlies around the faux pocket decorations?  Would the lederhosen look more authentic with a little knife pocket on the side seam?  Absolutely -- but this is a costume for a school play, that will only be worn for three performances, and I have put plenty of time into it already.  So I'm calling it Good Enough!  Back to my Jingle BOM!

In the Battle of Family-Friendly Theatre, Annie Takes On Mary Poppins

Due to one of my husband's last-minute business trips, I had to scramble to exchange our opening night tickets to the touring performance of Disney's Mary Poppins, and the only performance for which somewhat comparable tickets were still available was for one of the final performances this past Friday night.  No one is going to be surprised to find out that I am a ticket snob, but especially since this was my first time taking the boys to a big, Broadway-style musical, I wanted to make it an extra-special experience for them.  This past weekend's performances were added to the original schedule for Charlotte, so I was able to get us seats in the second row of the Grand Tier circle.  However, I had also previously purchased tickets for Theatre Charlotte's performance of Annie for this Saturday night, so our family got an unintended double dose of back-to-back musical theatre this weekend, both classic family shows, but in two very different venues, and the difference between the Disney Mary Poppins budget and the community theatre's budget for their Annie production was like the difference between the defense budgets of the United States of America and Madagascar.

I have to tell you, I was disappointed by the Mary Poppins production.  With the vast resources of Disney at their disposal, along with a hefty box office take (my tickets cost $85 each, even for the kids) and a professional cast and crew, you would think that Mary Poppins would have been a far better show.  However, I felt commercially ambushed in that theatre, steamrolled with gimmicks and special effects that would have been more impressive had they contributed meaningfully to a production with genuine artistic merit.  The show's producers seemed unable to decide whether they were trying to rehash the hit 1964 Disney film, present something more faithful to P. L. Travers' original Mary Poppins books, or go Cirque de Soleil.  Major characters such as Burt, the Banks' household maid, and Mary Poppins herself were stale caricatures of the two-dimensional characters from the original Disney film, like photocopies of photocopies.  No one is going to do Julie Andrews better than Julie Adrews, or Dick Van Dyke better than Dick Van Dyke, so I would have preferred to see more original casting and interpretation in these roles.  Caroline Sheen's Mary Poppins came across a bit too harsh and self-absorbed, so that we really needed the "Holy Terror," Miss Andrews (she's the Evil Nanny who comes in and terrorizes the Banks family briefly when Mary goes MIA) as a contrast to show us what a great nanny Mary really is.  Choreographer Matthew Bourne's dance numbers are fabulous; just a bit confusing and out of place.  I'm as much in favor of well-muscled male ballet dancers in spandex as the next gal, but the statues that came to life in the park were more creepy than exciting, and Burt's dancing up the walls and ceiling was a gimicky, cheap thrill, not what I expect from a big-budget show.  If you missed Mary Poppins here in Charlotte, don't feel too bad -- you didn't miss anything you haven't seen a hundred times before.

Annie (Hannah Gundersheim) and Oliver Warbucks (Steve Bryan)

So on Saturday evening, we headed to a tiny little theatre in a converted house on Queens Road in Myers Park, where the all-volunteer cast and crew of Theatre Charlotte, our community theatre group, weaves magic out of next to nothing like Rumplestiltskin spins straw into gold. 

Ticket prices for Annie were $24 each, and that got us great seats in the second row.  The amateur performers (and by amateur I mean only that they were unpaid -- the cast was truly professional in every other sense) were accompanied by recorded instrumentals rather than by a live orchestra, and the sets and costumes were obviously a low or no-budget affair.  Yet the energy at Theatre Charlotte was electric, from the moment we entered the lobby until the last curtain call.  The child actors were fantastic, especially the little girl who plays Molly and Hannah Gundersheim as Annie.  Set Designer Chris Timmons and Costumer Jamie Varnadore did a fantastic job transporting us all to the Depression era.  I especially enjoyed the projected skyscrapers on the walls of the theatre, surrounding the audience and making us all feel that we were right in the thick of a bustling Manhattan thoroughfare for the "NYC" number. 

So, for all you Charlotteans out there, whether you have young children or not, I highly recommend that you make it a priority to see Annie before the show closes at the end of September, as well as any of the other upcoming Theatre Charlotte performances this season.  Even if you don't live in the Charlotte area, there's probably a community theatre in your neck of the woods, too.  Check them out!  It's a great way to support the arts at the grass roots level, and an affordable opportunity to enjoy live theatre. 

By the way, all you designers and drapery workrooms -- you know all those fabric scraps you've been hoarding that are too beautiful to throw away, but you really don't have any use for them?  Consider donating them to your local community theatre group!  If you have donations of gently worn vintage evening wear, suits, hats, gloves, sewing supplies, or fabrics that could be repurposed for costumes, contact Jamey Varnadore at (704) 840-5218, or send him an email to Jamey@varnadore.com.