Showing posts with label Heat and Bond. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 01, 2023

Progress on Swirling Leaves 3 for Free Motion Mavericks

Hi and welcome to week 454 of Free Motion Mavericks. I hope you had a safe All Hallows' Eve! It was uneventful here except for the snow on the ground in the morning. Of course it was all melted by the afternoon! I guess we know what's coming! ⛄

Swirling Leaves 3

I am making a third edition of Swirling Leaves for Danielle, my daughter's friend who got married on the weekend.

Final (?) leaf placement

After making the first two, I wanted to see what would happen if I used a lighter background. I was a little nervous about it, until I attached the leaves. Since colour value is relative, I'm not sure that not having dark neutrals in the background made a difference since the mid-tones are dark next to the light neutrals! Here is the background, before adding the colourful leaves.

Swirling Leaves 3 background

This is what the two previous Swirling Leaves wall hangings look like.

Swirling Leaves 2

Swirling Leaves 1

As you can see, this third one is quite different - which was the point. I have to keep learning and let's face it, colour values is a huge topic and makes such a difference in any piece.

Making the leaves

I took out my many maple leaf templates and found some amazing colours in my container of hand-dyed scraps gifted to me by Elaine Quehl. What a treasure! 😊

Hand-dyed fabric scraps for the leaves

I was planning on using about the same amount of leaves that I used on Swirling Leaves 1. After cutting the leaves out and placing them on the background, I made a couple more, for a total of 8.

Making the leaves was also an experiment. It doesn't look like I used iron-on adhesives on my first two quilts' appliqué. I've become more confident since using it more lately. Most of the leaf templates were on freezer paper, so I ironed that onto the fabric. Then, I added a backing of iron-on adhesive. That was the simplest method. No extra drawing, and I only had to cut through all of the layers.

Ironing on the freezer paper template and
then the iron-on adhesive to the back.

I did draw the leaf onto the iron-on adhesive but only when my template was not on freezer paper.

My first batch of leaves

To choose the placement of the leaves, I just pinned them to the background. It took me a while (and 8 photos) before I was satisfied with it. Here are a few images to show you my thought process.

In this image, the top pale leaf and the bottom orange leaf (both circled) are blending into the background.

Leaf placement - not quite right

This was getting a little better but the pale leaf is still blending in, and there are too many red leaves on the left side of the piece. The bottom red leaf was put over the brown fabric that stands out a little too much. It's still not quite right.

A better placement

The red leaves are still mostly on the left side but bringing the bottom red leaf up a bit has made a difference and the focus is drawn from the top red to the bottom red leaf. The very dark leaf has moved closer to the centre while the bottom red leaf is over that annoying gold block. Because the bottom leaf is also partially over a very pale block, it stands out more and stops fighting with the gold block.

Final (?) leaf placement

Of course this could change as I iron the leaves down, but they would likely be minor changes.

What I learned

Since I've been doing improv piecing fairly regularly for the last two years (with the monthly Table Scraps Challenge), I've become much quicker at putting these together.
It still surprises me that value is always so present in creating. My improv fabrics are not as dark as the previous two quilts, but since I also used lighter fabrics, the mid-tones do appear darker.
I'm very happy with how my leaves stand out on this lighter background. Is it better? I'm not sure, but it is different and good 😊
Finding the fabric for the borders went so quickly, especially compared to Swirling Leaves 2. I went directly into my Civil War reproduction fabrics basket and the inner border cried out to me! Danielle is a lover of country music and this had the right vibe. After that, only 2 fabrics were auditioned for the outer border. Yeah! I love painless decisions.
After making the background, I re-read all of my posts on making both Swirling Leaves 1 and 2. There are a lot of learning there. I do wish that I had read them before, because I would have made the outer border strips larger to be able to use them instead of binding. However, I do have many strips cut for the binding, so it shouldn't be any trouble.
I'm also going to apply another of my lessons learned - I'm not going to attach the appliqué leaves today because I'm getting tired and the post is fine with just the pinned leaves on 😁. I also have to post this today to make it in time for The Joyful Quilter's ABC (Table) SCRAPS Challenge. The October colours were light neutrals. It will eventually be Quilted (letter Q).

Free Motion Mavericks

Last week Donnalee made three more table toppers for her guild's upcoming quilt show in May. Here's to fabric being used!

Three more patriotic table toppers by Donnalee

Gail participated in the Sew It – Show It: Monster Mash Blog Hop with her pumpkin front door hanging. It got lots of swirls and twirls!

An improv pieced pumpkin by Gail

It's now your turn!

Thursday, September 22, 2016

Finally over the procrastination and planning

My favourite quilting retreat space

Life is good! I spent the first evening of my quilting retreat, starting this post while sipping a gin and tonic, and enjoying the rewards of a day spent working on my Art with Fabric piece.

In last week's post, I was procrastinating by planning my project. Although it was procrastination, it was well worth it. I was able to figure out roughly how to tackle this project.

Art with Fabric blog hop

I received all of the fabrics that I ordered. Look at these beautiful colours! If you want to enhance your stash, try making a multi-coloured stained glass window! I got the Kona cottons from Mad About Patchwork and some lovely Whisper Whites - Ultra Whites from Flare Fabrics. After washing everything, I had no excuses left!

This fabric rainbow makes me happy :-)

It was time to start. I brought my supplies downstairs to the kitchen table and made my calculations for the project based on my submission to the Colour Unboxed fibre art exhibition. The final size will be 30" by 40" (ish). Bigger than my usual art quilts but small enough to be manageable on my machine. Anything bigger and I'll need a large studio!

Supplies for drafting the window

I started drafting the stained glass window on freezer paper; the circular part at the top of the window and then the next four rows of colour. It took me a few hours but since I had practiced drawing and colouring it, this part went fairly quickly.

The first two rows drafter onto freezer paper

Once finished, I hung the draft in front of our French windows to photograph. I sent the entire plan to my girlfriend who is a stained glass artist. I'm happy to say that there was only one minor adjustment to make. Of course, I'm adjusting as I'm making the quilt, but at least I know that I'm following proper stained glass principles.

Draft of the stained glass window pattern on freezer paper

If you're not familiar with the properties of freezer paper, let me enlighten you! I imagine it must be good in the freezer, but it's amazing for quilting. You draw on the flat side, cut out the image from the freezer paper and the iron the shiny side to your fabric. This project would be much more difficult without freezer paper!

I started by numbering all of the pieces in the first section and then cutting them. Before ironing the pieces to the fabric, I take a picture so that I can put the puzzle back together again.

The pieces are cut and will eventually be ironed to the fabrics

The pieces are put back in order

I completed the top circular part of the window before leaving for the retreat. Since I want the background to represent the sandstone wall, I added the brown behind the circular piece before placing the stained glass pieces. The sides will be easy to add because they're straight, but I really didn't want to add the circular part afterwards. It's important to keep the potential complications to a minimum!

Choosing, cutting and placing the fabrics

I continued the process with the second row, learning as I went along (you can read about this below). At the retreat, I have a small table where I cut and piece my fabrics. You can see my IPod in the background. That were I check to make sure that I'm putting the puzzle back together properly.

I work in sections. Now all the pieces have been cut and are ready to be placed.

When I finished sections 1 and 2, I took out the ruler to make sure that I'm still on track. Yikes - it looks like I have some minor adjustments to make at the bottom of row 2. It's OK if the pieces are too long since they can be clipped or covered, but too short is not an option.

Rows 1 and 2

Since I'm making this up as I go along, I just kept at it. Now my stained glass has two new pieces.

What I learned:

I was thrilled when I stopped procrastinating and finally started the project. Why, oh why do I keep doing this?
The quilting retreat was a last minute thing. The Universe provided when I needed it! Thank you. I am very grateful :-)
For the first circular row I just placed and sewed the fabric directly on my background. I found it slightly hard to manage.
For the beginning of the second row, I put a little bit of Heat and Bond Light at the back of my fabric. That helped but I needed more of it.
By the end of the second row, I was on a roll. I still don't cover my entire piece with Heat and Bond Light but I put more on and this definitely helps.
At about the middle of the second row, I realized that my pieces were getting bigger because I was adding an eight to a quarter of an inch but not butting the pieces together. Good thing I figured that out before I ironed them all down.
It's tricky putting these together because you don't want to have spaces between the pieces but you don't want too much overlap. I'm now cutting the left side on the pattern line but adding the extra fabric to the right side so that the next piece will overlap. I just have to adjust this occasionally because the pieces are all different shapes.
I'm finding it hard not to make the pieces all perfect and attacking the fraying threads. I need to remind myself often that I will be covering the seams with something to represent the lead cane. Since I still have a lot of work to do on this quilt, the fraying will get worse....so just leave it!!!