Refining an Old Design

I was itching to start a new applique project, but wasn't in the mood to design.  So I went into my Adobe Illustrator files to see what I had there that I'd never done anything with.  I found this design:

I liked the design, but I didn't like all the little dots and paisley shapes, so I took them out.  Then I refined it some more until I ended up with this drawing:

I added the diamond shape to the border so I could cut it in pieces instead of one large circle which would have been a major challenge as I am using 9 x 12 inch sheets of Steam-a-Seam 2!  I also wanted a more interesting center and a bit more layering.

Now to play with fabric!

Suzy

Graffiti Quilting Part 2

Now that the central background was done, it's was time to have some fun doing Graffiti Quilting!  I went down and pulled a bunch of threads that made a gradation of threads from yellow to pink.  I wasn't sure how many I'd want so I started out with a lot.

I knew this was going to be too many colors, so I started stitching and decided to make more choices as I went along.

First up:  Yellow. I used a Polyneon by Madeira Thread.

Now it's on to other colors!

Suzy

Words of Wisdom and Inspiration

A friend of mine recently posted this on Facebook.  I love the message in the words, but to be honest the first thing I notices was the border design.  It's lovely!

I can see this as Graffiti Quilting or as a pattern for applique.  It's intriguing to me in many ways.  I particularly love the paisley in the upper left corner!  And the lower left corner too.

Suzy

Graffiti Quilting Butteryfly

I have decided that I want to try out Karlee Porter's Graffiti Quilting on Butteryfly.  I am intrigued by her book after snagging the last copy in Houston last year.  The first thing to do seemed to be to try a sample and see what happened.

I used a practice sandwich of dark gray fabric and two layers of batting.  The bottom layer is Quilters Dream Cotton and the top layer is Hobbs wool.  I like the extra puff this gives.  I like to use two layers in small quilts, but not in large quilts as they get really heavy to move around under the needle.  The thread used is Glide by Fil-Tec in Kiwi.  Love this!  So I'm ready to try it on Butteryfly.  Here is what I started with behind the butterfly:

The background is quilted in a slightly darker blue Wonderfil InvisaFil thread.  I love the way it looks like clouds.

Suzy

Appliqueing Butteryfly

The pieces on Butteryfly are very thin.  They are about a quarter of an inch at their widest.  I knew that I needed to adjust he size of my double blanket-stitch and make it smaller so the stitches didn't go too far into the fabric.  I decided to test out stitches at 1.4 millimeters wide and 1.4 millimeters long.  I was very happy with the results.  The stitches stitched out well (I tested this first!  A MUST!) and I was a happy camper.  The yellow thread is Polyneon by Madeira threads and the pink is a Sulky Rayon 40 weight thread.  I chose these threads because they were the right color.  I knew that if I stitched the wing pieces in pink or purple thread it wouldn't work because some pieces were predominantly pink and yellow and others were predominantly purple and yellow.  Therefore I picked yellow thread.

Of course, I forgot to take a picture of the butterfly before I layered the quilt, so here it is with the pins already in.  Oops.

Suzy

Pushing Myself Creatively

I am that girl that stops and takes pictures everywhere.  You never know what inspiration is going to turn into a project.  I'm finding that documenting my inspirations and creating new projects for this blog is really pushing my creativity in a good way.  I find myself designing and being creative more than I have been for awhile and it's lifting my spirits.  I'm pushing myself more and noticing more around me.  Though sometimes my students wonder why I'm staring at their shirts...

I spend a lot of time working on show quilts and it's nice to be able to do something smaller in size.  This also allows me to do more projects, though I seem to be getting a backlog of things to quilt.  I'll have to catch up!

I took this picture in the bathroom at CRAVE at the Galleria in Edina, Minnesota.  I love the symmetry.  If I had to pick a quilting "aesthetic" to describe myself like they do on Project Runway (totally addicted), it would be symmetrical design.  There's just sometime about symmetry that I am immediately attracted to.  I especially like it when it's more complex.  This design has 12-fold symmetry and I think it's fantastic.  It would be a challenge to create because assuring you get it symmetrical is important and requires a lot of careful marking.  I think the overall results are worth it in the end though.

I

Suzy

Picking Fabric for the Butterfly Body

I've been working on picking fabric for my butterfly wings and chose an amazing striped batik. I started by turning the pattern upside down before tracing the shapes on fusible.  I know fused shapes are reversed, so I had to turn the pattern upside down so that when traced and stuck to fabric they would turn out right side up.

Next, I carefully placed my pieces on the striped batik so that I got as many stripes as possible across each piece.  I did this on top of a light box so I could see through the fabric to see where the stripes were.

Now I had the butterfly shown below.

Now it was time to pick the fabric for the body of the butterfly.  I started with the dark purple shown below.  It's so dark it's almost black.  I was sure it was going to be the perfect choice.  However, once I'd cut out the pieces I felt it was too dark. 

Back to the drawing board and time to test out new ideas.  I laid fabrics on top of the butterfly wing pieces to test out which fabric I liked the best.  Here are a few of ideas.

I ended up choosing the top fabric shown here.  I probably tired 10-15 fabrics total before picking the pink.  Then I cut out the new shapes and tried it out.  I'm very happy with the finished results!

Suzy