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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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.
One of my favorite things about quilting is motivating others and helping them in their quilting journey. As part of this endeavor, I LOVE to present programs and workshops to groups and guilds around the world. All of my programs work well with Zoom meetings, and I would love to speak to your group.
