May 20, 2014

Some hot air

I've decided to start a blog as a means to share some of my quilts.  I don't expect to be posting often, but I do hope to share a bit about each quilt I finish.

My most recent finish is a small wall hanging:



The design is based on a mini-flag I made last year for the "To Boston With Love" project coordinated by the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild:


I enlarged the applique design by 200% for the wall hanging, but I kept the background triangles at the same size, to help use up some scraps.  The border uses leftover strips as well.

 
 
I used a trapunto technique to add an extra layer of batting behind the applique pieces.  I tried a shortcut at this step, which did not work out as well as I would have liked.  I fused the shapes to the background, then layered a piece of batting underneath before stitching around the shapes with a blanket stitch.  I used a walking foot for this step, but the stitching turned out quite uneven, as you can see in this photo:


I hindsight, I think I would have been better off by doing the blanket stitches without the batting, then add the batting with either clear or water soluble thread.

To complete the trapunto effect, I trimmed the batting from the back, close to the stitches.  Then I sandwiched the top with a regular-sized piece of batting and a backing fabric, and did the quilting.



The "ropes" were machine stitched using Aurifil 12wt, after quilting the background.

A lot of the scraps in this small quilt are from a larger project which is almost completed.  I had hoped to have the larger quilt finished in time for the Blogger's Quilt Festival, but since that isn't to be I decided to enter this one instead.

10 comments:

  1. I'm so excited to see you are starting a blog! Love your quilts and the beautiful photos of them! I'll be following...

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    1. Thanks! It will be interesting to see where this leads.

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  2. Okay - that's adorable! I love all those LV fabrics you've chosen - you got the tone right for each of them (not an easy task!)

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    1. Thanks -- I learned from a previous quilt that sometimes fabric that you think should work, doesn't necessarily play well with the other fabrics.

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  3. that is just adorable! I love the heart balloon. I don't think the blanket stitches look uneven at all - remember, hand blanket stitch would never be so precise.

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    1. Thanks, and that's a good point about hand stitching. (I do believe I get better results without the batting.)

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  4. This is such a cool quilt- I adore the colors and the piecing! And that hot air balloon of course.

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  5. What beautiful, detailed work. I love all the little things, like the patchwork in the balloon and the pieced low-volume background. Awesome!

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  6. This is a fabulous little quilt, as are many of yours! Glad I "found" you.

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