First the design.... Using pencil and paper I drew a tree with lots of texture. I wanted to thread paint and quilt it on a solid square and quilt an appropriate background. Thread painting or quilting a picture has fascinated me for a while. As you can see the tree is tipping so that is why I drew the line through it so the next draft I could straighten it. The next draft will also have the root area shortened and have fewer fine branches but at least it is a start.
Next to choose my fabrics – lots of plaids and the red arrow pointing to the real challenge part of this quilt. Yes that is vinyl or faux leather. Have never worked with it in quilting so this is a new experience for me. I wanted the center tree to be of the vinyl and have a pieced border of the plaids and vinyl.
For the pieced border I settled on making triangle squares using 2 squares stitched diagonally and cut apart. Since I am using the vinyl I can not press them with an iron so instead I finger pressed them open and top stitched the faux leather side down about 1/8” from the seam line. That controlled the bulk and kept the seams open. The squares were all trimmed down to 1 1/2” and ready to stitch together in a border.
I used a variety of brown/grey plaids in combination with the black vinyl. I topstitched the seams open again to keep it all nice an flat. So far so good or so you might think......
Stop in again to find out the rest of the story.
Until Later,
Lynn
2 comments:
I've never thought of using vinyl for quilting - but I have some black left over from making marimba covers for our high school band a few years ago. Did you use a teflon foot or walking foot to top-stitch it?
Oh Lynn this looks very interesting. I love that you are stepping out of your comfort zone, so to speak. Isn't that fun!!
Can't wait to see more of your tree project.
Post a Comment