Decorating a Baltimore Album Vase

After I got the top of the vase stitched down, I didn't like the position, so I removed all the silk stitches and repositioned it where it was more pleasing to me. Then I re-basted it. The 2nd stitching went much faster, since the edges had already been turned under for the first attempt.

 

The design on the vase was not to my liking, so I re-drew it slightly. Now I had to decide how I wanted to get the design on the front. Nadine recently asked if I ever did the designs (flowers) off-block, so I thought now would be a great time to do that. By the way, if you haven't met Nadine, perhaps you would like to visit her blog, "Somewhere in Time".

 

I positioned the design on the front of the vase. The more I thought about it, it made sense to try off-the-block stitching. I normally don't do this, since I find I generally have trouble hanging on to a smaller design and end up dropping it all the time.

 

The first decision was -- should I walk all the way to the back of the house to get some pellon where my sewing room is located, or should I just grab a lightweight piece of fabric next to my sewing chair...
I grabbed the nearby fabric and basted the design on it. (Actually, I later found a piece of lightweight pellon right next to my chair in another storage bag, but the fabric worked nicely.)

Working from the back layers to the front, I added each pedal.

 

 

 

 

 

When I was done with the design, I trimmed around the lightweight backing fabric to within 1/8 inch of the design, then turned it under and stitched it to the vase.

 

It didn't look too bad.