BLOG 206

 

Continuing on from last week, this is how I went about designing the gate for the A4 picture made last week. It is to be sold at the Festival of Quilts to raise funds for the Quilters Guilds.

I started with a sheet of A4 paper (department of the bleeding obvious here!) On it, I drew a shape that I rather liked and divided it into balanced structural units. The decorative elements of the gate will be added within this structure. Here is the starting point with some trial lines.

                      Shape and structure

I only intend to draw half the gate as the paper can be folded and the design easily traced. On the second picture, I have added more structure to the bottom of the gate and continued to add lines.

                         More structure

Now that I am happier with the balance of the design, I free-hand draw  ‘S’ shapes and curls to fill in the spaces, making sure that they are attached to each other and the edges of the structural units. This is fun to do but an eraser is essential to the process. I make lots of mistakes and draw some pretty awful lines at times, but I get there in the end. I really like the design at this stage which is really important if I am to go on and spend time sewing it..

             Completed left side

 All I have to do now is to fold the paper down the middle and trace the design onto the right hand side. I use a light box for this.

              Completed gate

As this is a small piece, and it will never be laundered, I am not going to be a purist as I usually am when thinking quilt; 3 layers: top, batting and backing. I trace the design onto a medium-weight Vilene which will remain in place and add an extra layer to the quilt.

                  Tracing on Vilene

 

I need to add some railings to extend the ironwork beyond the sides of the gate.

                      Gate and railings

I pin the tracing in place on the back of the batting; remember that all the machine texturing has already been added to the garden picture and this can be seen faintly through the Vilene.

                            Pin the tracing

I then sew all the structural lines on the WS in preparation for doing a machine zigzag from the RS.

                       Structural lines WS

I have already chosen a metallic thread to make the gate.

                            Structural lines RS

And then I remember that this particular thread works better on the bobbin; it breaks maddeningly often on the top of the machine. So I could have saved myself the effort of defining the structural lines with a straight stitch and just worked from the back. This is how I worked for the rest of the time.

                       In progress

I did a trial run of trying to define the curly lines with a free-motion straight stitch but discovered straight away that it wasn’t going to show.

                                   Curved lines

I chose a very small zigzag and that worked fine. Here is the completed gate.

                      Finished ‘Unfini-shed

I added a backing fabric and secured it around the edge. It had to be an unfinished piece so that saved me having to bind it. It has been sent off now and is safely in the hands of the organisers of the fund raising event. JOB DONE!! I have just been on the web site to see if it has been featured, and it has and happily it has also been sold. Here’s the link if you want to have a look at other unfinished items: www.unfinisheds.wix.com/unfini-sheds