State Fair Parade 3 - Set Sail

Another project in the State Fair Parade! One of the reasons I like to enter different projects is to get a different opinion on my work. So I'm sharing with you what I sent to the state fair with the comments I received back - good & bad! Hopefully you will pick up some tips for your own projects!

This peaceful, refreshing scene of a sailing boat with a seagull flying up above is a paper pieced project. A couple years ago I taught a class on paper piecing and how to incorporate embroidery with this technique and this is one of the samples I stitched.

The sailboat (complete with the pole and flag on top!) and the water is a paper pieced block. I then added the two embroidered seagulls flying up high in the sky and a bubbling fish down below. To carry out the sailing theme further, I added the embroidered lettering Set Sail and little fish in the corner yellow blocks.

I had fun with the quilting on this little seaside theme! The blue water has quilted wavy lines to represent the moving waves. The white sail had rows of quilting blowing in the wind with rows of straight stitching on the boat to represent wood. There are also clouds free motion stitched in the skyline with the birds. The borders are all stitched in the ditch.

At the time I was working on this little project, my grandfather was in the hospital with only a few days left (December 2005) before he passed away. It was my evening to sit with him for several hours, so I had taken this project with me to get the binding stitched down. Isn't it interesting how you can look back on projects you have done and relate them to the circumstances under which you were creating them?

No ribbon for this project, but I entered another 5 items in this same class, one of which received a blue ribbon, which means no ribbons for any of the other 5.

Here are the judge's comments:

Need to work on corners. Very neat job!

My thoughts and comments:
I agree on both comments. I used a narrower binding than I normally do to scrimp a little on fabric and found out it was too narrow. See how the corners look distored and punched out? That is because I was trying to scrunch too much fabric and seam allowance in there and needed just a little wider of a binding to do it. Other than the corners, this wall hanging turned out neat! Maybe when I get a chance I'll rip off the binding and restitch it. Or maybe I will just leave it as it is and use it as an example of what not to do in some of my classes! :)