Work on Wed 25th Diamond Hill

Hi Everyone,

Have had such fun this week making the first bock of Esther's new free BOM Diamond Hill. It is ages since I played wuth brights and especially batiks which I love for applique as there lack of fraying makes them such a pleasure to work with. My stash of batiks had got very low so the last few months I have been buying fat quarters or 20cm strips whenever I have found colours I like.
With having my main fabrics decided it was out with my stash and select which were possibles.

Batik possibles

The six in the lower right corner are the ones I choose for block 1

You can see I prefer the marbled batiks rather than those with a pattern, for me they look more realistic especially for flowers which is where I use them most.

I don't usually colour my pattern, this time I did but it was after I had picked my fabrics.

Softer colours in pencil but more to check how the colours worked together.

This also shows how I do my numbering.

Happy with how my first flower looked 

rest of my stems aand leaves added

Buds went on at this stage as didn't want to stich under them with my stems.

Maybe I should have gone with pink instead of orange for them.

With next three flowers done time to do my vase.

Tried strips but decided to add my vase as one piece and stitch the lines so that my fabric got a chance to show off. Didn't really like this either, maybe I had

chosen the wrong fabric as it didn't seem to have enough WOW factor. Time to wait and see so went back to my flowers.

At this stage I started using pencils on my yellow fabric to add tinge of orange and pink as it seemed a little light, especially the center flower of these three where I had used a slightly darker pink fabric.

Flowers being prepared on baking paper.

This is my technique for assembling flowers for raw edge applique. Pieces have been traced on to Vliesofix, pressed to my fabric and cut out with a small allowance where they underlap another 

piece. I draw this underlap on when I am tracing my pattern.  With baking paper pinned over my pattern I start with the bottom piece and gradually build my way up lightly pressing each piece into place as I go, then place and fuse each finished flower to my background. My new LED Light Pad has been fantastic for this as even with the dark background the patterns lines show up and make placement a breeze. 

Block finished and I am happy but the vase is still bugging me.

It just seems like a blob in the corner.

My first colour thought for this block had been purple instead of orange but it got lost on the big flower against my background which has a definite blue/purple tinge to it. Not sure why or how but purple leapt back into my mind. 

  Now I am REALLY HAPPY

Have about a metre of this purple so have another option in fabrics.

Now it's time to get back to my other projects - until the 1st Feb at least when Esther releases the first block of Secret Garden her new mystery Block of the Month. The preview of the first block looks so amazing I think it is going to be as addictive as Love Entwined.

Linking now to Esther's WOW for this week

Cheers Jenny