Splendiferous

Sunday, June 5, 2022

Jenny Anydots

A quilt shop about an hour and 45 minutes north of me hosts an annual fabric challenge, with gift certificates to the store as prizes. Here’s the challenge packet. Must use Kaffe Fassett Tiddlywinks fabric in blue, finish 24" square or smaller, and have a face on it

Started with cat photo, and edited in photoshop to have smaller value range. Printed out grayscale photo to 24" square size on several sheets of paper, and taped together.

selected fabrics and arranged in value order. All Kaffe Fassett.

made a value scale from a strip of background

Outlined and numbered areas with red sharpie. Easy to see, and I want it to bleed to the back side to trace onto fusible. I later gridded the master drawing with blue sharpie, and eventually drew the whiskers with green. Easier to see if each is a different color (and not black). Each square on the blue grid was labeled a, b, c, etc. Each part of the cat is traced onto the paper side of Soft Fuse, and labeled with color number and location on the grid. When I trace, I add extra on the sides going under a darker color to avoid gaps.

Pieces ironed on some of the fabric.

Assembly underway. I press each section between sheets of baker's parchment so it doesn't stick to anything else.

assembled cat. checked for any gaps, and patched them on the back with a small piece of matching fabric. Ironed the assembled cat to lightweight fusible interfacing. Stitched the cat in the direction the fur grows.

hard to see the facial features, so I traced them onto Solvy with colored sharpie, and overlaid onto face.

Wet blocked after stitching, which also melts the soluble stabilizer away.

Made overlapping darts to flatten the cat, trimmed the interfacing, added the background, added whiskers, stitched them to background and blocked again (#2)

added borders, and layered. I used some small pieces of batting, butted together with a strip of fusible interfacing ironed to the back to keep them together. It wasn't worth cutting into a new king size batt for a 24" square quilt. You cannot tell where the joins are after it's quilted.

backside, after the face is quilted

all quilted and blocked (#3) before trimming and facing

blocked (#4) after facing attached, to get edges straight and square

Finished quilt

Some detail shots of the eyes

The quilt won 2nd place and Viewers' Choice, so I'm doing a happy dance.

Monday, June 7, 2021

Making my cicada quilt, Cicadence, step by step

Cicadence, 2020, 24 x 24 inches

Here’s what I started with: packet with fat quarter of this fabric, and a sheet inside with the rules. Rules: must use recognizable amount of challenge fabric, no bigger than 24 x 24, and must have a wing in it somewhere. The challenge was supposed to be for 2020, but we know how that went. I had already started it, so I kept going, and hid the finished quilt for almost an entire year. Since it was made in 2020, I had no idea about Brood X hatching this year, and what a timely topic it would be. And this one is quieter! No weird fungus, either, lol.

So, I started by enlarging a drawing of a cicada to the proper size, selecting fabrics, and making them fit on my drawing. All the cotton fabrics are Kaffe Fasset Collective fabrics. Eyes are a metallic knit, leftover from making danceline skirts. Tried several different colors of iridescent organza for the wings.

Next, I found fabric for the parts of the legs, and cut those out, front and back, for each leg.

Selected the organza for the wings, cut it down to a good size, and drew the wing lines on Solvy, which is a transparent water-soluble stabilizer.

Hooped the organza between the Solvy with the lines drawn on, and another piece. Hooping on a machine is done so the fabric is flat against the machine bed, the opposite of hand embroidery. Sewed over all the lines with 12 weight thread, so they would be more easily seen. Soaked the finished wings in water to remove Solvy (rubbing gently with a washcloth helps). Ran a line of fray check around the edge stitching after the wings had dried.

Attached all the pieces to the body, appliqued them with blanket stitch, then free motion quilted the head and body.

Turned the ends of six long floral wires using jewelry pliers so they would not poke through the fabric, and inserted them in each leg section, adding polyfil stuffing as I went along, and pinning together. Antennae are wire wrapped with fabric and held on with glue. Wavy wire is so I could sew it down and it would stay in place.

Another view of leg assembly and stitching on the wings. I added a facing to the body, and left spaces to insert legs and antennae, which are stitched down inside the facing. The wire legs are bent to form a T shape inside the facing, so that they can’t twist around or flop forward.