One of the nicest things about finishing up a bunch of quilts is the things left over. I tend to batch my embroideries. Not the big ones. One four foot heron is enough usually. But the little bits that go into a quilt are important, and I tend to make batches of them.

How does that work designwise? You place your big objects, and then you build a pathway of smaller objects around them. Hence the need for a lot of small objects.

I used to sew these directly onto the quilt surface, but they do tend to pucker up. So now adays, I sit down to a batch of things, use what works, and then raid my stash of leftovers to fill things in. I thought it would be fun to show how the same batch shows up in one quilt after another.

I also used to embroider exactly what I needed, well, when I could figure that out. It never quite worked that way. Did I need four frogs, or six or five? They do shrink in process so it’s hard to tell from the drawings.

So I over produce. I draw a whole bunch of whatever it is and then embroider them. They either land on the quilt in mind or they find their home somewhere else.

Sometimes, you just have to embroider the needed bits. These were what I needed to add to the big fish head.

In between? Well, in my younger days, they went into suit cases when I traveled and wandered from one spot to another in the studio when I was home. So they tended most often, to be found on the floor.

Which is not to say that I didn’t understand their worth. I’m just not good at organization. I’m better now. I put them in bags in one place in the studio. Which is good because I raided those bags for these three quilts.

I had extra flowers, fish, frogs, and dragonflies. Can’t go wrong on that.

I also had extra drawings. Embroidered applique is a lost wax method, in a way. The pattern goes into the back of the piece and is incorporated in it. But patterns are hand drawn and a bit sketchy, so I tend to trace a smooth copy of them before I embroider. I had some great left over drawings of a frog, some fish and a hummingbird.

All in all, the pieces came together, after I got them off the floor into three new Visual Path quilts. I love left overs!