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.