Solar Flares Quilt

Finish it Friday – Solar Flares Eclipsed

October 2, 2015 by Cilenia Leave a Comment

Woot Woot! I finished my Art Quilt project this week in plenty of time for ‘Finish it Friday’ with a group of Quilting buddies that challenge themselves each week to finish a project quilting, sewing or otherwise!

If you missed the process I did for this art quilt here are the two other posts:

WIP – Work in Progress – Solar Flares

Solar Flare Eclipse – The Process: Appli-piecing

I spent two whole days thread sketching the quilting designs. Mostly because of deciding on how I wanted it quilted. I decided to make the dark space have a little flare and whimsey like I see in actual astro images with far off galaxies and gas clouds. I am really tempted to paint some tiny stars too but haven’t decided yet. LOL

Then I put on a 1/2″ wide black binding to frame the whole thing in. I am really happy how this came out! I learned a LOT during the entire process.

A few close ups…

And an additional surprise?! The back! Never planned on this, but loving it too! But I already put hanger squares into the binding so this will never be seen really…. may have to do another one! LOL

So I’m ready to tackle another one. I want to do the Orion Nebula. Have images from my brother, just need to decide how detailed I want to go and the final size. I think this is going to turn into a series. 🙂 I’m in love with this!

Another bonus… usually I wet and block my quilt when it’s completed… I haven’t done it to this one yet… why? Well, because when I held this up to show my other half, we noticed that all the teeny tiny holes from thread sketching showed dots of sunlight through them as I had held it up in front of a window. LOL Hmmm maybe this need to be hung in a window! LOL No, living in Nevada, the sun would surely destroy the color quickly. But it was kewl to see. LOL

So, do have a project you finished up this week? Share away and give us a link in the comments and I’ll be sure to visit. 🙂 It’s always a rewarding experience to finish something… or in my case, it’s permission to start another one! LOL

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. 🙂

Solar Flares Quilt

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