Quilting Arts Magazine 2009 Calendar Contest Revisited
April 18, 2008 by crftyscrapper
I have been asked to explain the construction of this piece. Well, after I came up with the title and the words I wanted to use I had to decide how to do it. I first thought that I would have a grapevine looking thing across the top and the hearts would hang at different lengths. As I progressed with this idea it morphed into a tree. Hint, STARCH your fabric!!!! I applied the fusible to the back and then drew my tree on it but when I went to cut it out it stretched. Oh, it looks okay, but my tree was a little smaller to start with. Fused down the tree and used smoky colored monofilament with a blanket stitch to stitch it down.
The hearts were hand lettered (traced on the lightbox) as the original font wasn’t quite what I wanted. They were also fused and then satin stitched. The bows are silk ribbon, with the streamer part coming down in three dimensional waves (I took little tiny stitches here and there to hold it in place).
The “berries” are beads with a seed bead on top.
Oh, before I forget, the background is pebble quilted. I had never tried pebble quilting before and I really like the effect. But…it does take a bit longer than stipple quiting! *chuckle*
For the title I scanned the fabric I used for the leaves, changed it to green and printed it onto Extravorganza and then hand lettered the title. Organza frays very nicely so after I stitched it down I frayed the allowance and then trimmed it to look uniform.
Lastly, the leaves were applied the same as the tree trunk and then I shaded some of them with Tsukineko inks. This was one of those quilts that went together smoothly once the agonizing part of deciding what to do had passed.
I love your pieces, especially the whispers on the wind. you picked the perfect fabric for it! That one especiallyh speaks to me. I like the pebble quilting in the background on the next one, can you give any tips on it? I saw a lot of that at the Chicago quilt festival and it’s so intriguing.
The only thing I can suggest is to get a practice fabric quilt sandwhich and start practicing going in circles. Don’t be afraid of going over your stitches a few times, you won’t have a choice. I used a variegated thread that matched my fabric so you focused on the design created instead of the actual stitching. As this is the only piece I have ever used this type of quilting on I don’t have any other advice to give yet. I suppose that once you are happy with the way your stitching looks that a contrasting thread would look really neat depending on the look of the art.