Collage Quilt: Ice Skater

I've been wanting to try a new technique, fabric collage, for awhile and I have also been wanting to make an ice skater quilt for a few years.

I decided it would be perfect to do both together and set to make a quilt last weekend (or so, not sure when I did it...)  I'm telling you ahead of time that it is an ice skater, because other people have guessed it is a lizard and a turkey!

I started by outlining a photo of Mirai Nagasu doing a layback spin in photoshop, printing it, and then tracing that outline onto a piece of fabric (it is about 17 x 20 finished size). Since it would be covered, I just used a sharpie to trace.

Then, I filled in the entire outline with various green fabrics. Some of the fabrics I used were sort of large, and I maybe should have used smaller ones, but I think it is okay for a first effort.I used a glue stick to hold all the fabrics down, being careful not to glue too close to the drawn line on the fabric.  Once the whole area was filled, I cut along the line to leave the outline of the skater.

Then, I used black and white fabric to completely fill the background. Since I did not glue close to the traced line, the fabric that butts up against the skater is tucked under the green fabric.

This was where I made my mistake. Since the green is dark, there is not enough of a value difference between the black and white and the green. The skater recedes in the quilt.  If I had thought to take a black and white picture in process, I would have seen the problem.

I've since learned "Color gets all the credit, but value does all the work". Oh well, it was a first effort, and I decided to keep going. I thought maybe quilting would help a bit (and it did- a bit...)

So onto the quilting. I took the collage layer (piece of fabric with tons of fabric scraps glued to it) and sandwiched it with backing and batting, like normal. However, the secret here is to also layer a piece of tulle over the collage. This holds down the hundreds of raw edges.  Then, quilt like normal.

I started by outlining the skater, and then filled her in with pebbles.  I used flowing echoes on the black and white, but you really can't see much of them in the final product.  However, the green pebbles, and the black thread on the background did pull the colors together just a little bit.  Here is the quilting:

And, since I'm really trying to practice my hand binding- I pulled the binding to the back and hand stitched it.  I have to say- it really does look better than machine stitching.  I got milliners needles, and they help 100%- it is so much easier to go through the layers. And using a longer needle means I don't prick my finger with the back of the needle.

Ghost Dog

I was embroidering dogs for a baby quilt (will post that in a month or two- I'm waiting on fabric) and  I joked about making a ghost dog.

Well, one of my high school friends said something about it, and how it would fit in her house because her house is haunted, so I made her a ghost dog. 

I think I might go back and put a little more stitching around the A, because it looks like an N.


Yeah, me and my friends in high school were a bit weird.

Building Blocks Quilt Along: Block 7

This month's block was a disappearing 9 patch.  I am definitely not a piecer. This was just way too many seam for me. (For some reason it was also not strip pieced like that last 9 patch, and I think that made it even longer.)

The quilting designs on these were interesting. Sadly, I wasn't perfect, and on one of them I am debating ripping the thread out and giving it another try on the part where the mistake is the worst.

This is the one I'm thinking about redoing. The third circle in the center has one quadrant where it is just WAY off. I really think it might be worth fixing.

This one is my favorite of the group. I love the starbursts.

 This one Leah suggests you mark the circles with a circle template. That seemed like A LOT of circles to me. So I just drew the general idea of where the circles went and free-handed them using a squiggle all the way up the column and then back down; kind of like when I do "Diane-shiko" design. I think for free hand, most of them came out pretty circular.

 And here is the progress on the quilt.  I'm not looking forward to doing the sashing. First, because I need to get fabric. And second, because it is going to be a lot of hand stitching.