What's in a Name?

One of the lovely consequences of designing your own project, is that you have the privilege of giving it a name! I find that during the whole process of thinking up the design, sketching, writing notes, stitching and constructing, ideas for the name will be floating around in my head.

Sometimes the name is almost the first thing that happens.  Last night when I was in bed, I had an idea pop into my head and what to call it arrived the next second - the design already has a name and I haven't even put pencil to paper yet!  Other times, I might be half way through putting the project together before I am happy with a name.  Occasionally, there will be a name change mid-stream and the computer files will all have to be renamed!  Then there are the less frequent times, when I will have totally completed the project and it still remains nameless.  It's then, when I have to write up the pattern, that I really have to sit down and actually work on a name.  Thankfully, the lovely magazine editors who publish my work, usually keep the name I have chosen.

Last week, one of my favourite designs in 2012 was published in Australian Country Craft and Decorating Vol 23 No 7 - the Daisy-Jane sewing set.

 It has a lot of guipure daisies as embellishment so I wanted the name to reflect that, but beyond that, I wanted to name this design after one of our lovely grand-daughters, whose middle name is Daisy-Jane.

There's a square box for all the sewing bits and bobs:

a needle book:

and my favourite, the pincushion:

Here it is in the magazine with all their pretty styling:

I've just sent off four projects to magazines.  Two of them had a name before anything much else was done, one had a name-change during the process and then I had to actually work on the name for the fourth design. This year I've used some foreign words for the titles. I don't think that it's much use having a foreign name if the general public doesn't know what the word means in English!  So there was some research done, (thanks to Google Translate), searching for foreign words where we use the same base word in English.  The basic idea I hope is readily recognised, and then the foreign word will usually have a pretty little twist to it or I sort of add my own little bit. For example, later in the year, you will see my Floriana Quilt and my Elegancia Bed Runner. Do you like these names? 

The last few nights I have been quilting my beautiful Kona Bay panel:

It's been hiding in the cupboard for a couple of years and it was just the right project to tackle in between designs.  Originally, I started doing lots of embroidery on it, but ended up pulling the whole lot out.  It is so beautiful in its own right, that I decided it really doesn't need anything except simple quilting and a couple of beads. I'm now looking at all the walls in my house to decide where to put it when it's finished - as I definitely plan to complete it, now that I'm tackling it again!

Have a great week.

Regards

Val