Back to Fabric

I'm Home!!  We were in WI for a week and Christmas, and in MN for a week and New Year's Eve.  The family in MN were all virused up, daughter with pneumonia.  My husband brought his own personal virus from home and guess who avoided all of them.  How?  No clue, but I am not complaining about not getting sick!

I did not take my sewing machine because my quilt was in disarray with a nasty surprise.  I made a slight change in the pattern and somehow my block pattern on the computer grew bigger.  It took me a few tries to figure out why the new blocks didn't fit to the old blocks.  Probably pilot error, but the pilot has no idea how the error occurred.  That has now been remedied, but 12 blocks must be redone.   Now that I am home all is stitching up smoothly.  Then I ran out of paper to piece with, and am still waiting for it to arrive.

I did take a new project on our trip because I knew I would be spending a day with one daughter at her weekly Sew-In.  I am doing another dog and have to fuse all the fabric pieces before I need the sewing machine.  Those of you who have followed me for awhile read about creating a fabric rendition of a dog in the summer of 2016.  I had a lot of problems due to the materials used in the class I took.  Well, I am doing another dog, a different dog, and I have developed my own method.  Based on two classes I have taken I am combining techniques which I believe make it much easier and less confusing.  I will share and you can be the judge.

Lea McComas does beautiful, photorealistic paintings in fabric.  Her technique requires a lot of time drawing a pattern according to value and detailed labeling on each piece.  She avoids dark fabric under light fabric.  Her method is very precise and her fabric choices are the "real" colors of the photo from which she starts.  She does mostly people.  See her work here.  She fuses her pieces onto a background and thread paints heavily on her long-arm machine.

Barbara Yates Beasley specializes in animals.  Her animals look like the photo with which she starts, but her fabrics are abstract and fun.  A black dog may be done in blue or multiple colors.  Her method also requires a drawing based on value, but her labeling is less intense.  She teaches you to use double paper fusible, trace the pattern piece in reverse on the back paper.  This had me standing on my head and making many mistakes. She quilts moderately, not thread painting, on her domestic machine.  You can see her work here.

Now for my method. Here is how to prepare a photo to turn it into fabric art.

Step 1: Create a black and white photocopy of the animal photo.  This is to show the values from lightest to darkest.  You can do anything with color, but must have the values right or the creature won't look right.  In a photo editing program you can posterize it to separate 4-5 values.  I don't think I did that with this photo because the dog is pretty much black and white already and the values are clear.

Step 2:  Blow up the black and white photo to the finished size.  I taped together a magnified version, but you can take it to a professional printer to do the job too.  Print an 8 x 10 color version to remind you of color variations.  This dog has a little tan on her so I find the color version a big help.

Lady the Collie (we lost her in 2013)

Step 3:  Fasten the full-size black and white picture to a foam core board with masking tape or office clamps.  Overlay that with a piece of clear mylar.  Using a fine, black Sharpie pen draw around the different values and label each one with a number to define the value.  #1 = lightest to #5 = darkest.  If you make a mistake you can erase with rubbing alcohol on a paper towel or Q-tip.  Redo when dry (quick).  When the drawing is complete remove the photo.

Pattern for fabric pieces (12" x 16").

Step 4:  Secure the mylar drawing to the white side of the foam core board.  Cut two pieces of freezer paper a little larger than the drawing.  Dry iron it shiny side down, pull it up and iron again. This shrinks the paper.  Secure one piece of this freezer paper over the mylar drawing and trace it with the Sharpie.  You can easily see the lines and numbers through the paper.

Step 5:  Repeat with the other piece of freezer paper.  You can trace this one with either pen or pencil.  You will be cutting it apart.  I know this is a lot of tracing, but it goes pretty fast.

(Stay tuned for the next steps next week)

Now you are ready to gather some fabric.  By all means check your stash.  All your pieces are going to be smallish so you can use up odds and ends.  It works nicely to add some extra color with prints.  For my black dog I threw in a few blue pieces and some black and brown prints.  They add sparkle.  A couple of inches of shiny, dark gold was more than enough to add a glow to brown eyes.  White-on-whites are great for white fur.  For a white dog, light blue can be used for shadow.

You also need fusible material.  My choice is Soft Fuse (I buy it by the roll), which has paper on only one side.  Beasley uses Steam-a-Seam II, paper on both sides, but that gummed up my machine and made a mess when I went to do the quilting.  That may be a function of my own machine, but I will not use it again.  Maybe your machine will handle it.  No clue.

Work on the prep this week and I will lead you through the rest of the process next week.

Sew or fuse some happy seams this week.  I wish you fun time preparing to quilt an animal.

An Old Shoe

I really appreciate all the understanding, empathy and compassion that were expressed in response to my dark week post.  I especially liked the idea of framing Dixie, but then realized that the dog and half the background are already quilted - very poorly.  I just can't keep it, but I will redo it.  In the meantime, since I like the results so much (sans quilting), I will keep the bad one as a guide for a much nicer new one in the future with a different fusible material.  It was fun to do until it came to the quilting, which was truly a nightmare.  My real doggie gave me a sweet, loving lick to let me know it was OK...or maybe she just wanted a taste of my hand lotion.

Meanwhile, "Onward ho!"  What do I mean by "An Old Shoe?"  My mother used that expression to describe a new acquaintance who was able to settle into our life like family we had known forever.  Comfortable.  That is how I feel about the new quilt that I started this week because I am familiar with and enjoy the technique.

My new project has paper pieced spiral elements in it.  So, you say, "What is a spiral quilt?"  A spiral quilt can be made from any and many geometric shape(s) and is sewn like a log cabin block, but is made with triangles instead of rectangles.  I will try to give you a general, but admittedly skimpy idea, but if you want to try it I recommend RaNae Merrill's "Simply Amazing Spiral Quilts."  Her directions are clear and precise, covering the drawing, designing, and sewing.  Her second book, "Magnificent Spiral Mandala Quilts" is also excellent.  I design my spirals on Adobe Illustrator, but they can be drawn on paper with pencil, ruler and eraser.  They are sewed with foundation/paper piecing.

Step 1.  Draw the outline of a shape.  In this case I started with a triangle.

Step 2.  Draw a ring of small triangles inside the outer border, one along each side.  You can measure or make your triangles any size that you like.  I make mine kind of free form as I find the measuring tedious.

Step 3.  Draw another ring of small triangles inside the first ring.  Continue making similar rings until you get to the center.  RaNae Merrill goes into different ways to draw these triangles.  The way I am showing is the easiest to sew.

Step 4.  Fill all those inner triangles with color.

5.  Print or draw your design on paper (I use Sulky Paper Solvey and print it from my computer).

But....that is only one triangle. Let's play with that single triangle:

Now here is what you can do when you combine several geometric shapes into a 60º wedge.  This example is symmetrical, but you can get some interesting designs when you introduce some asymmetry with your shapes:

Symmetrical
60º wedge made with several different shapes.

Then rotate six copies of the wedge around its center point:

Six wedges can make a quilt.

See the wedge?

Now fill with color.  It is full of primary, secondary and tertiary design possibilities.  Talk about an adult coloring book!  There are so many ways to portray this and no one can figure out how you did it!  You can turn your imagination loose and it is not hard to sew one of these, but it takes time and attention to detail.

TIP:  Try a simple design or two this week.  It is fun.

Sew a Happy Seam this week.  I wish you some designing fun.

Fabric for Rhapsody

Did you have fun creating a design?  I always do.  I love what Paul Nadelstern says about creativity:
"Please, let's not allow external pressure to dictate that we conform to an imaginary standard based on the mythological perfection of the quiltmaking legacy.

My next step is to go back to the little 8x8 inch initial drawing and assess the fabrics that I want to be my background.  The drawing is just that:  a background that will support appliqué.  I cut the fabrics to fit the various elements in the small design and glue them to the appropriate spot on the dull side of the freezer paper with glue stick or double-sided masking tape.  A mirror can give an idea of what two or more triangles will look like together, but I prefer to take a digital photo, bring it into the computer, and rotate to see how the four corners will look together.

I no longer have a photo of my chosen fabrics for the quilt I am describing so I just filled the spaces with color on the computer to give you the idea.  Below is the total design with color.  It would be more lively with real fabric.

Now that I know what fabrics I want where, I go back to my full size freezer paper corner (20x20" for this quilt, which will give me a finished quilt about 40x40"), and make a copy of that full size corner.  Did I mention that if the drawing is not done on a perfect square, the pieces won't fit together?  It pays to be fussy at the very start of the process.  I have no way to do a machine copy so I just hunker down and carefully trace it by rubbing or using a light box.  This will serve as a reference copy in case I need it down the road, and it pays to do it carefully.  Ask someone who knows about this!

TIP:  Don't have a light box?  If you have a plexiglas extender table for your machine, take it to a table or the ironing board, put a goose-neck desk lamp underneath and you have your lightbox.  No fuss, no muss, no expense.  You can also buy a square of plexiglass and set it on book stacks leaving space in the middle for a lamp underneath.

When I am satisfied with what I have done so far, I take a ruler and draw lines on the freezer paper that are parallel to a straight edge through all the elements to indicate the fabric grain.  This kind of quilt can easily go wonky with its seams wandering all over the grain and bias.  Cutting the pieces with grain in mind will minimize or eliminate potential problems.

Pardon my inaccurate drawing.  I did it on the computer for this post, long after finishing the quilt.  

This is why I draw my designs on paper with pencil and eraser! 

TIP:  I use a colored pencil for the grain lines to avoid mixing them up with seam lines.

TIP:  In spite of my slipshod example, I must stress that accurate lines and a perfect square make a beautiful quilt.  Skewed designs will not work and you will end up wearing a turban after pulling out all your hair.  The sloppy line design above will NOT work because the square is not perfect nor is the diagonal.  You can see where the fit is going to be pulling, rippled and rumpled.  My original was done carefully by hand and it paid off.