round peg in square hole

Today I'd like to share some of the experimental and phsyical effort it took to get the earth ark panel put together. The photos in this post were taken over the last month. The circle and the square elements were made separately, and they went together well. (separately) The circle part is divided in half between a vintage handkerchief 'heaven' and embroidered silk squares that make up a boat or ark shape. A crescent shape embraces this circle.

The square part is also divided in half and has a white linen 'sky' and a twinkly triangle pieced 'water'. Most of the triangles were pieced by machine, some were done by hand. I used the actual size drawing on fabric as a foundation fabric and basted the square and the circle to this foundation. I had to crawl around on the floor in the church hall for about two hours to do this. Then I removed that foundation fabric. Time was spent firming up the sewing along the piped edges of the circle. The many bias edges in the triangles caused some stretching, and while I was at dad's last week, I re-sewed the side edges of the water section to tighten things up a bit and help it to hang square. Once home, more time was spent firming up the sewing and removing as much of the heavy foundation fabric as possible. Yesterday, Myra Tallman helped me to put Earth Ark into the frame in preparation for quilting. I used a Meri-Mekko print bordered with linen tablecloths for the back. It took us about three hours to stretch everything out. Ned built the frame especially for the circle project and it works really well. The quilt on the frame will be in the church hall for the months of May and June - and I am hoping that women will gather around it.

This was a long post. It's a huge project, and sometimes I doubt myself, other times I think this is the best thing I've ever been involved with.

It goes in waves.