YES.. I know it's months away.... but when I teach there I really try to have new and good examples, ideas of the class I am teaching. This year... "The Filling Station" class is all about enhancing machine quilting skills and confidence using fillers. Students will be creating a 'filler sampler' in class that can be used later at home as a reference library for selecting stitches they've already conquered and know they will like on the piece at hand. A few years ago I created a series of small pieces called "STRINGS" which quickly sold to one buyer. I'm creating anew now as they are interesting design pieces and are quite versatile for teaching/learning/reference.
Here's the big picture to where I'm heading.. Each of these 3 mini quilt tops began as four 6" monochromatic squares stitched into a 11 1/2 inch square 4 patch. The dark design atop represent dropped/pooled threads which is how I usually audition thread choices before beginning the quilting process. The 'thread or string image is one piece of cut out fused fabric.
I'll quilt in upcoming posts, but for now... here's the fused creation part... To design a new "string pool", I first used light pencil and drew a single pooled string line atop a piece of tracing paper. So you could see the initial line better, I used the pink highlighter to retrace the line. Then... a sharpie was used to echo roughly 1/4" to either side of the pink line.
Now we have a pattern for the fabric cutout that will be fused to the quilt top. YES>>> some are already thinking " why couldn't I just create my pattern on the paper backed fusing material... Indeed you could.... I just feel more free drawing on the tracing paper where I could easily erase a line I didn't like.... AND now I have a reusable pattern if I really like it as I did the one you see above. In this case... I retrace the design on the fusible paper back product ( I'm using wonder under regular which I buy by the bolt to insure there are no krinkled edges on the paper.)
What I've photo'd here is an earlier drawn pattern from my pattern stash... i.e. slightly different than my PINK drawing which I will use on one of the three photographed pieces above. I pencil traced on the wonder under paper side. (Reverse your pattern if the orientation is important to you)
Next iron to the string fabric ( I am using a hand dyed high thread count cotton fabric... I want little to NO loose edges once fused.
Cutting out takes some time but is reminiscent of kindergarten so kind of fun!
Peel the backing and carefully place the string piece atop the quilt top. A little tricky because it's like loose lace.... but very doable.
Place a cover sheet (eg. teflon or parchment paper) over the string 'lace' to keep it in place and flat when iron fusing is done and also protect your iron plate from picking up any possible glue.
Iron as directed on product sheet.... in my case dry hot iron on cotton setting... and now we'll be ready for sandwiching batting and quilting.
Ta da!!!
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