W.I.P.

Solar Flare Eclipse – The Process: Appli-piecing

September 25, 2015 by Cilenia 2 Comments

So in one morning I cut out all the pieces and put together my art quilt. Was a learning experience I can tell you!

The way the original technique worked was to use washable glue to turn under one of the seam allowances and then glue basting to the adjoining piece. What I learned part way through this was that the glue basted seam allowance is a pain in my butt! Can’t readjust easily and can’t get the nice smooth curves I want just perfect. Yes, I have OCD or something. LOL So I’ve gone back to my tried and true method of 30 years using spray or liquid starch on the seam and turning under then ironing to set the seam. Fabric is much more forgiving on curves and if I need to tweak, I just dampen the spot to adjust and reset. 🙂

Maybe this will help you understand the process. 🙂

Here you can see two sections of the templates to go together. With pieces cut, ironed to fabric on the right side, you would notch the seam allowance for curves on only one side of the pieced fabric to be matched up. Notice I have tic marks, made before I cut them apart, so that I can perfectly match up the seams. HUGE help!

Using the washable glue, I folded over the one seam and ironed to set the glue as shown here. This is what I changed up part way through. I gave a light misting of liquid starch instead of using the glue.

Use tiny dots of glue on the opposite seam (left open not turned under), and place that folded over seam on top of the adjoining piece with the flat open seam. (right sides up), Carefully match up the tic marks and iron to dry and set the seam. In the picture I show below, this is shown just a tad away from the seam so you can see where I’m joining. This would of course be butted up paper to paper as shown on the seam above. Triple check all your tic marks before you set with an iron!

The hardest part at all about this process is deciding which pieces to fold under and how to work sections. You have to put a little thought into how it will all fit together. Good example is this section below. I cut the freezer paper template out as a section. Pieced all this together first, then the next section above this, before adjoining the two sections. Reason is that curled flame between them. All those pieces needed to be together to join smoothly along the entire edge of the curled flame. And this large section even has smaller sections… I don’t cut apart any of the template until I’m ready to work on that part… would be way too confusing to put that puzzle back together! LOL I did end up adding numbers too before cutting apart to help me keep them in order.

NOTE: I got excited and removed some of freezer paper to reveal the design. Note how I left the paper on where I still needed to match up seams.

Just keep working around adding pieces and groups of pieced sections to complete. Then I added the sun and eclipsed pieces after background was completed. This was a bad photo as I was holding my camera way above my head and at an angle so it’s deceiving to look at. LOL It’s a lot more square than this in real life. 😉

And here is the finished piece all basted and ready to sew. I won’t square it up till after I’ve completed all the thread sketching and quilting. This was much easier than I anticipated and has taken a LOT of mystery out of some the awesome art quilts I have seen out there! I think I’m in love with the process! It has really sparked some ideas I have for future art quilts. Think I see a stellar series coming! I have wanted to make some art quilts of my brother’s Astro Photography for a long time now and this was just the technique I needed to make that happen!

Hmmm… See all those tiny confetti looking scraps from notching out the seams to the bottom right of this photo? The black is actually my large ironing board I made… As I sit here writing this, it has given me an idea… I could put tiny triangle scraps into a black background for distant stars! Yes… my brain sees things like that and put it into my digital note book with this image for future! LOL I think that may also work for making a complex Nebula… ok, mind is racing now. Need to finish this up so I can start another one with these ideas. LOL And you wonder why I haven’t found time to blog? There’s the reason! LOL

Off to get this quilted and then add a nice black binding for a frame. 🙂

WIP – Work in Progress – Solar Flares

September 23, 2015 by Cilenia Leave a Comment

So while we are waiting for the next Block of the Month for our Technicolor Galaxy quilt, (my Color Wheel quilt as I am calling it, I got bored and decided to put to use all the left overs of hand dyed fabrics. I’ve always wanted to figure out a better way to do curve piecing in my art quilts and just loved the idea of doing a solar flare with the gorgeous results of some of those pieces we dyed last month. My bother is also an Astral Photographer and really would love to take one of his photos and do an art quilt… but first need to learn how to do first… the traditional way of curved piecing would kill me! LOL

Did a search on Pinterest for curved piecing techniques and found something I’d like to try out to learn. Honestly, this technique was exactly what I was thinking would work, but didn’t quite have it figured out yet. It was developed by Caryl Bryer Fallert. It’s called Appli-piecing. Saw her first quilt Corona years ago. She’s done many since then. She figured this out years ago! LOL Why reinvent the wheel. Wish she was doing a workshop in MY area! But I did find a fairly good tutorial of how to do on a blog. Find that here if you’re interested. Appli-piecing Tutorial.

Going to stay on the smallish side with this one while I learn. I hand sketched out the design onto freezer paper. 18″ x 24″. I traced it a second time so I could cut one up for templates and have the other to refer to as I worked. I did add tick marks and numbers after I took this photo so I could align it back up when piecing. I added a stroke of color to each piece so HOPEFULLY as I cut this apart I won’t get confused. Yea, will let you know how that works out. LOL Think I’ll do small sections only to create larger sections.

Then I gathered my fabrics and put it all up on the design wall to see how this would all work together. I’m liking it!

I want the background to be dark blues and deep purples… think I need to dye some more… most of these too light. Maybe over dye them… I’m not loving all these anyways, for this project at least. LOL

All for now! Will keep you posted on how this goes. 🙂

WIP – Work in Progress

September 20, 2015 by Cilenia Leave a Comment

OK… so I’ve been SO busy playing in the Studio and was gone most of August I have severely neglected blogging. Just not enough hours in the day I’m telling you! LOL So BIG catch up post.

I’ve been busy dyeing fabrics for a new quilt project. I’ve always wanted to make a color wheel quilt for my Studio and found a BOM (Block of the Month), project over at PileofFabrics.com It’s a skill builder project and thought it would be perfect for Miss Bailey and I to do together. We hand dyed 100% of the fabrics being used. This was our first batch trying to make all the rainbow of colors. Just LUV them! We did 7 months of blocks in a little over a month. LOL

Dyed the fabrics in July before we left for Ohio. Did some more after we returned in August.

We set to work and decided our inner color wheel and laid that all out and used a bias tape fusing method to create the center block. No curved piecing doing it this way. Was an experience I can tell you! Not sure I like this method yet as we really had issues with the fusing not fusing and we ended up glue basting most of it down. Here it is up on the Design Wall. You can see my colored cheat sheet to the right there. LOL

Miss Bailey helping make those TONS of Hexagon pieces. We glue basted all 84 hexies first and then sewed them into flowers. Looong process! She quit on me half way thru. LOL They are only 1 inch big! Tiny little suckers. LOL

I didn’t take pictures thru all of it, so here are some from here and there. But we are almost done with all the piecing!

Inner two rings completed and started on third ring. Think we need a bigger wall!

Paper piecing the ‘Geese’ blocks. Makes for extremely accurate piecing. I learned this years ago, but first time for Bailey. Verdict is still out with her. LOL Does take a bit to wrap your mind around it with all the flipping you do each seam.

Each block is created separately and quilted before assembling. Close up of getting ready to quilt if we can decide on a design.

And let the quilting begin! Each block to be quilted as a Quilt as You Go project.

I will hopefully have this back up on the design wall this week and get some more pics posted. Having so much fun on this project. Trying new techniques, but for the most part I have decided I like my old tried and true ways. I would not glue bast anything I want to hand appliqué again.. I’ve always used liquid starch to set and turn my seam allowance. Using the glue made it very difficult to hand sew. Almost impossible. We ended up machine appliquéing the Hexie Flowers.

W.I.P.

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