As I mentioned in my post about painting the background, I was concerned that the paint had made the fabric a little stiff and might be hard to appliqué.
SO…..I performed a test!!
I cut out a small shape and prepped it for applique…..
I picked the area with the most paint and thus the stiffest…..
…and started stitching….
It was SLIGHTLY harder to get the needle into the fabric, but not enough to worry about.
I was able to achieve the stitch size I wanted, and the side I sewed looked great…
Okay….crisis averted.
Next Step…. STEMS AND LEAVES!!
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Who knew I would enjoy hand-appliqué SO much!
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Each Wednesday, I am talking about UFO’s in my studio, whether mine or inherited from others.
Today, we are looking at an inheritance from Nancy.
Nancy was a superwoman in my guild. She was highly active in our charity bee and had personally made hundreds of quilts for children in our local battered women’s shelter.
For Christmas one year, she gave me this sweet angel ornament, and it has become my “quilting angel” in the studio…
Nancy is always looking out for me!!
Sadly, she passed away in 2015.
As her friend was cleaning out her stash, she found this very cute applique quilt….
…along with the instructions saved from some magazine….
I love that she veered from the autumn colors and went for bright and bold owls!
As I have looked at this piece, I realize it just needs a border and some quilting… maybe 3 or 4 hours’ work.
SO…..I plan to finish it up and donate it to our charity group. They will either find someone to give it to or sell it to raise money for batting and thread.
Ya’ll hold me to this…. I will have it finished by the end of January!!
Watch for a future post showing the FINISHED quilt!!
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I have been thinking about the background for my floral appliqué and finally decided to try painting one.
After covering my husband’s work bench…..
…. I had a look at my green paints…..
…and decided to start with a Moss Green….
I added a fair amount of water to the lumpy paint and started brushing it onto the fabric with a foam brush…
You can see the spot that I started in because it is WAY too dark, but I will deliberately cover it up with a clump of flowers!!
After covering the bottom of the background, I added a darker green to the leftover Moss green, and added more brushstrokes….
I truly like the “streaks” of color!!
After cleaning the plastic, I turned the fabric around and started thinking about the sky portion. I started out with a blue, added water, then some white paint, and more white paint, until I found a color I was happy with…
For the sky, I didn’t want to paint streaks, so I decided to use a sea sponge instead…
At this point, I am liking the mottled sky!!
I decided to deepen the blue a bit, but unfortunately didn’t incorporate the paint well, so I ended up with dark blue dots…
You can see them a bit in this photo.
I then decided to go with solid white and create some “clouds” to hide some of the dots. After I held it up…..
… I realized it needed darker areas at the bottom, so I added some brown to the small amount of Moss Green left over and added additional brush strokes.
This was how it looked the next morning after it had dried, toning the colors down a bit….
To finish it off, I ironed it well, then washed it, hoping to restore the fabric’s soft hand..
It is still a little stiffer than regular fabric, and I will have to see if I can sew easily thru it.
I’ll let you know!!
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I printed out a photo and played a bit with colors…..
….getting more and more excited about this project!
Since the design was pinned to my design wall, I decided that I needed to draw a map to guide me over the months of sewing. I covered the design with a thin paper…..
…and ROUGHLY traced around each flower….
I then added some stems and ideas about where leaves might go….
Hopefully, that is enough planning, and I can now move on to doing some of the work.
My first step is to prepare the background. I am thinking about painting it. Wish me luck!!
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Do you struggle to decide what to quilt in your blocks? If so, check out my FREE series…..
Yesterday, I told you about a new…. SLOW…. project!
On New Year’s Day, I spent the entire day planting the blooms, so to speak!
I had put this process off, mostly because I knew I would need my printer/photocopier to make different sizes of patterns. And that printer was downstairs. Frankly, I was being lazy because I didn’t want to have to go up and down the stairs!
Then I had the idea of carrying the printer upstairs to my studio…
Well, that was an easy solution. Maybe it bodes well for the rest of the project!
I started by taping out an area on my design wall … approximately 40 x 40.
I spread out all of my patterns….
….and picked a few to start with….
I found that I needed to add the stems to get a better idea of how it would look.
The central blue tape line indicates where the background will turn from green to blue. The bottom line is extra, put there before I decided on a size!
I kept adding flowers by photocopying each pattern as many times as needed, and in whatever size I wanted, and pinning them to the board….
It was such a fun and relaxing process, and at this point, I declared it finished…
My question for you is…..
“AM I CRAZY?”
Come back in the next weeks as I SLOWLY work thru this project…..
In this blog, I post stories about creativity, techniques, tools of the trade, and lots more about the wonderful art of quilting. If you are enjoying these posts, please subscribe to be notified of each new blog as it becomes available.
