BLOG 242 Sunday April
5th
Happy Easter! Another holiday weekend is upon us and,
luckily, some lovely weather has arrived with it too. This leaves me with a bit
if a quandary … garden or craft room? … craft room or garden? The craft room
wins hands down because of course I have an exhibition looming and unfinished
items that need finishing. And, to use my favourite expression, I felt another
quilt coming on …!!! This time I decided to work on a turtle. These were often
seen during our time when we worked on remote islands in the South Pacific 40
odd years ago. We even brought back a turtle shell as a souvenir and it hangs
on our bathroom door as a constant reminder of those wonderful days. I must add
here that the local people used to habitually catch turtles for food and the
shells were often sold to the expatriates. This artefact proved invaluable when
drawing the Master pattern.
Turtle shell
I sketched some shapes initially referring to Google images
for inspiration.
Sketches
Then
I drafted one of them to size as the Master pattern. This time I chose to
include regular wavy bricks for the wall.
Master pattern
I chose 2 fabrics that I thought might work together.
Chosen fabrics
I made a template for the wall which made it easier to
prepare the fusible shapes for the bricks.
Template for bricks
I
was able to bash on with the bricks and soon they were all completed and pinned
onto a working copy of the pattern. Then I started to make progress on
the shell of the turtle and I realised straight away that I didn’t like the
fabric that I had chosen.
Wall
Back to the stash for another root about and, as luck would
have it, I found an ideal fabric; one that looked like it was fragmented
already, like a mosaic.
Ideal fabric
I used larger pieces for the shell and continued to fragment
it wherever else I used it. I felt as though I was making good progress.
Progress
More progress
Whilst I was working on this, I had my granddaughter here
for a sleep-over and she has been dying to get into my craft room for ages. From
the windows she could see colours, and fabrics and threads and a multitude of
things to fiddle with! After much pleading I took her in there and set her off
on a project using my leftover ready-fused bits of fabric. I put a small piece
of batting onto a sponge block, gave her some pins and told her to cover the batting,
making sure that the fusible layer went against the batting. When she ran out
of pins, I ironed the fabric pieces to stick them to the batting and to release
the pins again. This is what she did in half hour. I am so proud of her and
thrilled that she is interested in being creative.
Ella’s art
Back to the turtle and you will notice a great difference
between what I had on my design wall one day and what I changed it to the next
day. Going back to my original concept for these hangings, in my mind’s eye I
envisaged the animal/creature coming out of the wall subtly and I certainly hadn’t achieved that with
this hanging. I liked the shell and fragmented flippers, but little else. The
face and neck were too light and the bricks were a contrast rather than a gentle
transition.
Revised version
Here you can see how differently the hanging looks now before
fusing and I like it much better. One more thing to be done before it goes onto
batting for quilting, those two irritating and almost white shapes just above
the turtles head! They look like 2 sticky-up ears!! You probably wouldn’t have
noticed them but once you have seen
them, they leap out every time you look at the quilt!
Irritating light shapes
Final image
Only the quilting and finishing is left and I hope to do those
this coming week, fingers crossed!
