Did you ever have a bunch of fabric pieces land on your table and ask to be put together in a piece? Well, that happened to me this week. While cleaning up in my studio (just tidying, actually), some chunks of fused quilt sandwiches fell together and told me to put them together. Now for the really weird thing…. the colors were red, black and gray, with a sunprint thrown in. Definitely NOT "My" colors. If you're familiar with my work, red is not a favorite color at all.
Here is how it all happened, step by step (that is after the "chunks" fell together and talked to me).
Photo "Chunks"- The Layout- These are the little quilt sandwiches, or "chunks". They really did fall together really close to the way I have them here. I was going to ignore them, and put them away, but they wouldn't let me do that. I only had the red chunks to use for making pins- Yea, some people really do like red. This shade of red seemed to look OK with the peachy tones of the sunprint.
Photo 2- On the Janome 6500 Challenge Yahoo group, we have a challenge to use the decorative stitches our machines can do in a project(s). Since I really didn't care what happened to this piece, I decided it would be a great guinea pig for the challenge. I decided to paint the edges of the chunks with a metallic brass colored fabric paint, and use different stitches for the seams instead of satin stitch. I put paint on palette paper and "dunked" the fabric in, then used a brush to be sure edges were covered, to seal them from later fraying.
Photo 1- shows the edges done- pins mark outer edges, that did not get painted.
Photo 3- This shows pieces, after the paint dried, with edges butted together for stitching. I found some stitches that I liked, and many that didn't do just what I wanted. I was hoping more of the paint would show, but after stitching, not much did. I did have to overstitch one of the decorative ones with a zig zag to keep things together.
Photo 4- Stitching done- I used different stitches for just about every seam. The only one I did more than once was a memorized group, using the snowflake like stitch in 2 sizes with a narrow zig zag between them. I did different length zig zag. OK, I have to admit, I didn't really like this yet, so decided I would keep playing.
I decided to do some more with the brass paint. A little peeks around the stitches, but not too much, so I dug out a couple pressed ferns from my sunprinting stash. I painted the first one with the paint, then pressed it onto the quilt, covering it with a paper towel and pressing hard, to transfer the paint.
More photos of the piece as I printed on it with the paint, ferns, and stamp.
Photo 11- A closeup of the flowers stamped on.
I free motion quilted the piece with silver metallic thread to contrast with the bronze paint. I quilted either just "skeletons" of the ferns, or around the leaves, for a little variation. I used the snowflake like stitch from the machine programmed with the lock stitch, for the stamped flower centers. This stitches the pattern, then locks the stitch, then stops, so only one snowflake is stitched at a time.
After I finished quilting, I decided to add some beads. I just happened to have a vial of small red, silver-lined seed beads, that I used for pins. I added the beads to the flower centers, over the sunprinted flower centers that were painted brass first, and then added beads to the tips of the fern skeletons. I used a black Boucle yarn for the binding. It adds a good amount of texture.
Last is a detail shot, showing some of the piecing stitches, the paint, and beading in a corner.
OK, I have to admit….. I do like the way this piece turned out. Even though it done in colors I don't really care for. Just think, if I hadn't listened to my fabric chunks on the table, this would not have happened.
I guess you don't have to like the colors to end up with a decent piece, though I still prefer pink, blue, purple and green.
Here is a piece I ran across that I decided to see if I could do something with. It is a dingy blue-green. I spent a day last week playing with paint in my greenhouse again. I had to do a bit of tidying before I could paint, but I was able to get in a bit of "play time".
