Garden Lady #10 - Part Five

This is a continuation of 4 previous posts about the  making of Garden Lady #10.

I decided that I wouldn't add a lot of distracting flora and fauna to this piece.  The idea of a bird feeder and a chickadee would have been a stand-alone figure that didn't seem to fit with this piece.  I still wanted the holly and red berries, but not much else.

I quilted the piece on both my longarm and my domestic sewing machine.  I find that I can use more delicate thread on my sewing machine for the face and finer details.  After it was quilted, I stitched down the wings and added the belt.

I made a small sprig of holly by sewing together 2 shades of green fabric and fusing and gluing them to a solid back piece.  

The berries were made of two layers of red fabric fused together.  I embroidered a stem and glued the applique pieces down.  then I made some tacking stitches.  

I hope you still like it!

Garden Lady #10 - Part 4

This is a continuation of 3 previous posts about the making of Garden Lady 10 - Winter Interest.

I wanted to produce the background by painting the fabric and then embellishing it this time.  I started with PFD white fabric, laid it out on black garbage bags and using Inktense blocks, diluted fabric paint, diluted acrylic paint, and splatter techniques, I did the first pass, and let it dry for a couple of days.

I put this up on the design wall after it dried and put the pieces already made on top.  I'm sorry to say that I was stuck for days trying to figure out where to go from there.  My quilting friends, relatives, and searches on Pinterest gave me ideas, but I didn't have the inspiration I needed. 

After another sleepless night, I had the genius idea to take it back off the wall and do some more painting to darken the lower section to make it grounded.  I put it back up on the design wall and liked it much better.  I still had to decide what to add that would be of winter interest....holly, chickadees, bird feeder, red belt, red berries.... 

Anyway, stay tuned to see what else I did for Garden Lady #10.

IMPROV OMBRE - QUILTED VERSION

There are previous posts about the making of the Improv Ombre quilt from leftover "Lipstick Cowgirl" fabric.  But this one is all about the fabulous quilting by Corrie Coldwell of C2 Quilting.

Here's what she posted on Instagram:

Well, her quilting is what makes it gorgeous.. just take a look!

I finished it with a facing and just love it.  Don't you love it too?

Garden Lady #10 - part 3

This is a continuation of two previous posts about the making of Garden Lady #10 - Winter Interest.

Face and hands were the next components.  I tried a technique recommended by Kestrel Michaud to eliminate/reduce the fraying of  the edges of fused applique.  She uses a diluted Mod Podge that she paints on the fabric and lets dry overnight.  I didn't know if this would work with Steam-A-Seam because she uses a different fusible product.  Well, I tried anyway.  I cut out pieces of the 4 values of fabric for the face and hands, fused it to Steam-A-Seam, then painted it with dilute Mod Podge and let it sit overnight.  The pieces curled up when they were wet, which they were supposed to do. 

Then, I prepared the face and hands the normal way.  When I pressed them together, they buckled a little bit, so will have to see how they look when applied to the background!  I decided to give this lady bright red hair~

Not sure if I like it so far, but I hope you do!

Garden Lady #10 - part 2

This is a continuation of the making of Garden Lady #10, Winter Interest.

I tackled the dress next.  I found a commercial fabric that was off-white with flecks of gold that seemed like it was perfect for this quilt.  The top of the dress and the bottom of the dress were made as two different pieces.  I used freezer paper underneath the fabric and traced the lines with a water soluble blue pen.  Then I used two different colors of Tombow ink pens to draw the seam lines and shadows.  

When the inking was done, I pressed an interfacing to the back, sewed on the outside lines, and glued the seam allowances to the back.

I put the pieces up on the design wall and liked the way they turned out.

I also bought a couple yards of an off-white tulle and placed a double layer on top to see how I liked the effect.

I like it, but think that I will wait until the piece is quilted and add it at the very last.  (That was a suggestion from one of my artsy quilting friends!)

I hope you like it so far.

Garden Lady #10 - Part One - Winter Interest

Nearly everyone that I asked told me to make a winter scene for the final Garden Lady in the series.  She is going to be #10 and I'm going to name it "Winter Interest".

I found a digitally generated design that I liked on Pinterest.  I tried very hard to find the artist who was the source of this pin, but couldn't find it.  Dang it.  I really want to give credit to the originators of my ideas. It was pinned by Anouklaga, who has pinned many artists on her pages.  It is a very sweet and fitting end to my series of Garden Ladies.  It'll be a challenge to make so many wings!

I traced it and had it enlarged at my favorite blue print shop in Portland.  For this piece, I decided that I would definitely start with the wings.  I like wings to be transparent and so organza was the obvious choice for the fabric.  I made wings for my second Garden Lady the same way, which was to layer 2 pieces of organza between dissolvable stabilizer, draw on the veins, stitch it around the edges and along the veins, soak it in water, and press it into shape.  I found a couple of sheer fabrics at JoAnn's and decided to layer 2 different ones on the wings.  Here are the 2 fabrics, which I know are hard to see in the photos.  One is iridescent shimmering, and I put that one on the top.

I traced the wings onto freezer paper to make the pattern.

This was laid down on my cutting table.  

The next layer was Aquamesh, a product from AES.  

Then the two layers of sheer fabric.  And finally, the top layer of Solvay.  I traced the pattern onto the Solvay with a permanent ultra thin marker (this gets washed away!).

I pinned it all in place then removed the freezer paper pattern from the back.  I used gold metallic thread in the top and the bobbin of my machine and zig-zagged on top of all of the drawn lines.  

The next step was to cut around the outside of all of the wings, leaving a scant 1/4" from the stitching.

It got soaked for a few minutes to dissolve the top and bottom products, then laid out to dry, ironed, and placed on the design wall on top of the pattern.

 I hope you like it so far!

Improv quilt using ombre leftovers - part 4 - Top Complete

This is a continuation of 3 previous posts about the making of an improv quilt using leftover ombre fabric.

I sewed all of the extender pieces to the vertical rows and added the little bits of striped fabric here and there.  I added a 3" border around the the sides.  Actually, I'm not sure that I want to leave the border on the top and bottom....there seems to be too much fabric between the improv blocks and the border.   It's now 51" x 64".   Anyway, here it is:

Later - I didn't like the empty space on the top and bottom, so I shorted both ends.  It's now 58-1/2" L x 51" W.  

I like it much better and hope you do too?