Facings to Finish an Edge

Well, I finally tried the facing technique to finish the edge of a small piece - WHAT A GREAT TECHNIQUE!! Thinking about it before doing it - I had thought there was NOWAY that you could roll the edge of batting under after turning the facing - without it being bulky/ugly - but it works!! Thru quiltart.com, Melody Johnson of Palmer, Tennesse (gee - wonder how close that is to Savannah?) gave a link to her blog - showing instructions to her technique of an Escape-Hatch Finish published in QNM. THANK YOU MELODY! (Here is the link also..... http://fibermania.blogspot.com/2006/09/i-had-it-just-minute-ago.html )

This is a small piece made from scraps - just trying to deplete my collection of scraps. The batting is Warm & Natural cotton - and it rolled over beautifully! Melody's instructions include fusing the piece - I have onhand a piece of fusible stabilizer - essentially a light weight muslin with fusing on one side - so that is what I used for the backing. It worked great!

This is my 4th piece for 2009 with a Bible verse on it. I have challenged myself to do one each week - I think on and dwell on God's word while making the piece - and I find recall of the verses much easier. If you are a quilter and would like to combine it with your Bible study, I would recommend you try this also.

My mom was a scrap quilter. From a collection of wool and wool blend scraps, she made a few quilts. She gave me one many years ago - and my Dad recently found another one she had made - but just a quilt top. My 3 sisters and I each made a small piece, which I have sewn together for the backing to this quilt. We are finishing it as a surprise for my Dad. And I am feeling seriously 'whupped' by this project. It was extremely difficult to quilt - and I have been dragging my feet about binding it.





So to play a bit - and try to conquer this project - I made the small bag above from some of the scrap pieces. The straps are made by rolling some batting inside 3 sewn squares, then hand stitching it closed. I also used the technique of a facing to line the bag.





The picture below shows the quilt top for my Dad on the left and the quilt given to me on the right.

My daughter is 30 now - just sent off to her a box of 'stuff', clothes, schoolwork, artwork, etc. from her kinder years - almost 20lbs of stuff. I have been thru 2 major moves in the last 5 years - thought it was time to send some of her stuff on to her.....notice I write 'some' of her stuff - yes, I still have more. Oh, bringing them out and sending them off to her brought back such sweet, warm and some funny memories. I hope they do the same for her. The picture above was published in her school calendar - a published artist by the 8th grade!!

Faces Quilted

Recently there has been a discussion on Quiltart about using faces - and over the past few days I have used two faces in quilts. This one - a deer face. I had planned on adding few quilting stitches to the deer. The quilt is a YSQ (Yard Square Quilt) to be sold in the spring for charity. The batting is Warm & Natural cotton - but under the deer face, I added a piece of wool batting - to help 'fill' it out. But as I worked on it - one thing lead to another - and I heavily quilted the deer. Except for the muzzle - and it poofs out in a delightfully 3d way. The deer was painted with Tsukineko inks - only 3 colors - but in quilting, I used 6 different threads.

This is a detail of a small quilt I made last week called Cast. In it, the face is in profile and dark - with few details. So I stabilized it with Stitch Witchery to the batting - and used very little quilting on it. It is holding well - but I think there must be a better way.

Iris In Inks

This is a fairly short video on using the Tsukineko inks. No stencil - almost freehand. I say 'almost' because there is a pattern under the fabric. The pattern is made from my photo of one of my irises, enlarged and the outside edges of petals, stem and leaves darkened with a pencil.

The fabric is offwhite with a pattern - the white-on-white pattern acts as a resist - so this pretty pattern of flowers shows thru the ink.

My pallette is two inks, Peony purple (a rich, dark pigment) and Spring green. I am using the Fantastix brush tip applicators. The two applicators I am using have been used many times so that they are no longer stiff, the tips are very much brushlike. The only downside to a used applicator is that it loses its point - so finer details become difficult to make.

A close picture of the finished iris is shown also.

These inks work great with stencils - but they are also great used freehand. The flowers and hummingbird shown in the banner for my blog are all painted freehand using these inks.