Weekly Square #22

As I hoped, I was able to back up and finish another 6x6” weekly journal square—this one, for week #22, the week of July 19-25.

As I wrote a couple of posts ago, I spent an entertaining couple of weeks with the desperate housewives of Wisteria Lane. This square, then, is my homage to that time:

My perspective is a little off, obviously; I think I should have started the road much wider and narrowed it more rapidly. I really enjoyed thread painting this piece, though, and I think it was good practice for a future project.

I started this square with a piece of painted fabric, and fused the road over it. Then, I thread-painted the road and the wisteria. Finally, I fused the arch and lattice over the top of the square, then stitched those pieces down.

I originally wanted to add a black binding around the edge to simulate the edges of a television sceen, but I didn't want to cover up more of the piece, so I just finished it with a zig-zag stitch.

Tutorial: Transferring Patterns to Fusible Fabric

I’ve been patiently working on my largest fused quilt to date: 36”x24”. This is a project for Susan Brittingham’s Flower Power class at QU. I seriously considered using freezer paper-appliqué for this quilt, but since I’ve never used that technique, I thought I would save it for a smaller starter project.

I’m a little further ahead with my fusible-piecing than this photo shows, but I’m saving that for the “big reveal”:

In the meantime, I wanted to share a really useful technique I learned from Laura Wasilowski for transferring patterns to Steam-a-Seam. This saves a lot of time, in that you don’t have to mirror-image or continually retrace pattern pieces.

You’ll need to estimate how much fabric you’ll need, since you’re adding the fusible in advance of cutting out the pieces.

1. Lay fabric face-down on ironing surface. Peel release paper from one side and lay Steam-a-Seam (I use S-a-s 2, which is lighter than the original version) fusible side down, paper side up, onto the fabric

2. Press with hot iron (no steam) for 5 seconds or so

3. Let the piece cool for a couple of minutes, then peel the release paper from the fabric. You should now have fabric face-down, sticky fusible face-up

4. Take the release paper you just peeled from the fabric, and lay it over your pattern. Trace a pattern piece onto the release paper with a Sharpie (you can also use a pencil, but my eyes appreciate the thick line of the Sharpie. I don’t know whether the black Sharpie will show through on lighter fabrics, however). Do NOT reverse or mirror-image the pattern. I trace all the pattern pieces for one color of fabric at the same time. Leave a little “cutting room” between each tracing on the release paper.

5. Take your release paper back to the ironing surface, and lay it face-down (Sharpie side down) onto the sticky fusible side of the fabric.

6. Press with a hot iron (no steam) for 5 seconds or so

7. Slowly peel back the release paper to make sure the Sharpie lines have transferred. If they haven’t, replace the release paper and continue to press with the hot iron.

8. You should now have the pattern pieces transferred to the back of your fusible-fabric. Whether you cut them out on the lines or leave a little extra “cutting room” will depend on whether the piece will be overlapped with another piece.

Let me know if something isn’t clear in this tutorial or if you have any questions. Have fun fusing!

Productivity is Spelled T-I-R-E-D

Here’s my latest screen printing project; this one discharges a piece of previously-dyed fabric. I cut a stencil from a transparency, then used that for the print and SoftScrub with bleach to discharge the dye:

And, here’s another (very un-fractal-like) spiral; the pieces are fused on, but I haven’t done any stitching or quilting yet:

My plan now is to scrounge up some leftovers for lunch, then rest for the remainder of the day!

This is what I'm working on for Terri Stegmiller's Faces on Fabric class. So far it's been a lot of fun drawing faces and putting this quilt-top together, but at some point I'll have to paint her face. That's pretty scary considering that I've already put a lot of work into it.

You'll recognize that nagging voice in the back of my mind saying, "but what if I screw it up?"

Here are a couple of cool things about this piece:

1) Her t-shirt is from some shibori-dyed fabric I made a year or so ago. I completely forgot I had it until I started considering what kind of t-shirt she might wear; then I remembered it.

2) The flower and leaves are cut from what Sherrill Kahn calls a "serendipity" cloth. It's a piece of fabric I've had in my studio for a while, and I use it to wipe my brushes on, to mop up extra paint, etc. The other day I was testing out some bottle tips for paint, and I drew a flower onto the cloth. The more I looked at it, the more I really liked it as a flower! I just love it when my refusal to throw anything away actually pays off :-)

Musings on a Perfect Day and a WIP

Saturday was my birthday. On Friday, I had the perfect day: it was beautiful and sunshiny, and the temperature was perfect. I went to Michael's for beads, then to Barnes & Noble for a magazine. I sat outside and ate a cinnamon scone and drank coffee with cream (a rarity these days; I used to be a coffee fiend, but since getting sick I mostly stick to tea). I came home and created an art journal page with watercolors and inks (still outside in the beautiful weather, of course). My sweetie took me to Truluck's for dinner and it was wonderful. The kids brought me a cake this weekend and we celebrated more. I had a wonderful birthday weekend, but it really wore me out and I'm still recovering.

Here's a WIP I've been working on for days that's both easier and harder than I thought it would be. Easier because once I figured out what the heck I was doing, it came together pretty easily. Harder because . . . well, I couldn't figure out what the heck I was doing.

This is from a pattern and project instructions in the Viewpoints class at Quilt University. I'm really enjoying the class, because I'm finally understanding how to create scenes in one-point perspective.

Anyway, here's the process to this point:

Pick out a landscape fabric. I could have used a small landscape quilt I had already made, but I didn't want to mess one up. I thought about copying a premade landscape piece onto fabric and using that, but then I saw this interesting fabric at JoAnn's and, well, it gave me an excuse to buy it!







Add a "sky" to the landscape fabric. I cut along the top edge of the landscape motif and fused it to a background sky of hand-dyed fabric.










Copy the column and arch patterns onto fusible-backed fabric and cut out. Attach to landscape piece and fuse in place.

Select "wall" fabric (the premise is that this piece looks out from a room onto a landscape). Find the perfect fabric, then realize I don't have enough of it. Dye more fabric.

Attach walls & landscape unit to a background of plain muslin.


Wait for next week's lesson to learn how to do the floor . . . patience is NOT my strong suit!

Back to Basics

I've been so busy creating fabric for quilts that I haven't made an actual quilt in a very long time. I think that's one reason I took Ellen Lindner's Instant Art Quilt class; I tend to be much more structured and disciplined when taking an online class.

So, here are the results. Can you believe this quilt came from this piece of fabric?

I love being able to use the fabric I've dyed in an actual quilt!

Since my Quilter's Palette class at Quilt U was drawing to a close, I felt like I should actually USE some of the hand-dyed fabric (this doesn't count the hand-dyed fabric quilted sweatshirt jacket I've been working on for the last month and that will likely be finished around July or August, of course). So I made this little journal quilt to commemorate the class with some of my hand-dyed fabrics, all except the "trees," which are black fabric discharged with bleach. It's interesting how photos play up some aspects of the piece and downplay others; the rings aren't really that prominent in RL, but I stitched them with invisible thread, which the flash reflects off of and makes more visible in the photo. I almost didn't post this because, as usual, I'm now picking the piece apart for all its flaws, but I have to keep reminding myself that these little journal quilts are for experimentation and practice.

Speaking of practice, my hand-quilting is improving! It's all that stitching in front of the television while watching episodes of Lost. We're almost through Season 2 and will probably finish the season this weekend.

The other big project I started this week was a clean-sweep of my home office. I have had enough of paper-slides from my desk, tripping over stuff all over the floor, and not being able to find anything. I started by tossing everything off of my desk onto the floor. We have wonderful cabinets in the office--full of junk, of course, so next I tackled those and cleaned them out. I found all these diskettes and tossed them into trash. Then that evil, never-throw-anything-away-crafter side of me kicked in, and I made the mistake of going online to see how these might be recycled. It turns out you can make all kinds of nifty, geeky things from old diskettes. Sigh. Now they're back in the cabinet, but at least they're stacked neatly in a corner.