BLOG 335

BLOG 335

It has been a cheery week for me this week regarding quilting as I have been working in colour and that suits my cheery disposition very well! I have finished the colourful wall hanging this week and I am exceedingly proud of it and will hopefully use it as a jumping off spot for other work.

              Colour study

 For a while I have been doing some English paper-piecing on a good sized lozenge shape at Gresford and I have to admit that I hated every minute of it! So I passed on all the remaining papers from the pack to a friend so I didn’t have to do any more and joined together the papers that I had already covered. They were colourful too so there was some joy in that, but the size of 14” x 16” was good for nothing much really. However, in another aspect of my creative life, I had made some foxgloves using scraps of sheer fabric and machine embroidery and it occurred to me that they would sit rather nicely onto the patchwork background. And so, by marrying together two totally unrelated projects, a lovely cushion has resulted.

            Foxglove cushion

             Detail

            Quilting

The size was still a bit of a worry as I could only get a good 12” square from the quilted piece. So I cut this square out and around the edge I added a neat binding, sticking the edge onto the back rather than turning under the seam. I quilted an 18” square with a crosshatch design using a decorative stitch on my machine and I appliqued the smaller quilted square on top of it. It worked very well and I was thrilled with the finished effect.

             Quilted and mounted

          In situ

I have had a rare outing as a teacher this week. I was invited to do a mini workshop at Quiltfest at the Royal Pavilion in Llangollen. I chose positive and negative applique based on my book Dual Image Applique.

               Workshop sample

             Quilt blocks

Here’s an outline of how to do it.

1 Trace the pattern onto the paper side of the fusible.

            Pattern and tracing

2 Iron the fusible onto the WS of the fabric

                Fusible on fabric

3 Make a small cut with cutter on the line so that you can get your scissors in and cut out the flower and centre circle to produce the frame and the fillers.

                Cutting

             Frame and fillers

4 Keep the backing paper on the frame and place it onto the RS of one piece of foundation fabric. Take the backing paper off the filler and place it back into the frame where it will fit perfectly. Press the filler gently with the toe of the iron, just enough to hold it in place whilst the frame is removed. Once removed, press the block more thoroughly.

             Frame on foundation

             Filler inside frame

               Press gently

             Remove frame

             Positive sample

5 Take the backing paper off the frame and place it onto another piece of foundation fabric and press thoroughly.

             Frame on foundation

            Positive and negative applique

And here’s what I have done with the samples so far. More next week.

             Quilt in progress

             Book cover