Elaine Quehl Workshop In Full Bloom - Part 6

I was thinking about the border treatment for the poppy wall hanging and I did a bit of experimentation today using some techniques from Seminole Quilting.  Some of you may ask what is Seminole Quilting.

"The Seminoles are American Indians that live in the Southeastern United States in the States of Florida and Southern Georgia. Seminole quilting originated from the Seminole patchwork used for clothing by these southeastern Native Americans. In the late 1800s it was a long trip from the Everglades to trade for cotton cloth so women began sewing strips made from the fabric left on the end of the bolts to make what was know as "strip clothing". It involves sewing solid pieces of fabric together to form designs in strips. These strips are joined together to form decorative bands of fabric which are often used in skirts, blouses and other articles of clothing. Often quite a variety of colorful fabrics are used in a single garment." From article found on: http://www.eldrbarry.net/im/meg/semstyle.pdf

So I decided to try and make a diamond border here are my steps.  I first cut 3 strips of fabric 1 1/2" wide and sewed them together.

Next cut the strip into 1 1/2" pieces and when you go to sew them you have to step them as I have shown in this picture.  The tricky part here is once the two pieces are stepped, when you start to sew, if you start at the end you are sewing on a single thickness of fabric which often wants to get sucked into the machine, even with a throat plate that is designed with just the small hole for the needle.  So what I ended up doing is starting each piece part way in so unfortunately you can't chain piece these.

Once it is pieced together and ironed this is what it looks like.

This is what the diamond border looks like with the poppy.

So this project is now on hold since my fabics are on back order.  Hopefully I will get them within the month.

Elaine Quehl Workshop In Full Bloom - Part 5

I was going through my stash of fabric and it's interesting when you think you have a decent stash and should be able to find all kinds of great fabrics to use for backgrounds and borders, but it turned out that a lot of the fabrics just weren't quite right.  Either too light, the wrong tone, didn't fit well with all the hand dyed and batiks fabrics but I think I have found a combination that will work.  I have two options.  Now when you look at these pictures you will have to use your imagination as to how this would look like as a whole wall hanging. I only have fat quarters of them but fortunately they are Hoffman Bali hand dyed watercolours (style # 1895) so I can get more of them. Here is the first:

Here is the second one, and the only difference is the outer border fabric.  I'm leaning towards the second one since that outer border fabric just looks a bit richer than the first one.  What do you think?

This may help everyone to see the difference between the first outer border fabric and the second one since my camera hasn't done the best job of distinguishing between the two.  I went and got the fabric samples from the Hoffman web site.  So in the first version the fabric was called 571-Barbecue.

The second fabric was called 241-Sonoma.

Elaine Quehl Workshop In Full Bloom - Part 4

I finally made some progress on the poppy wall hanging this weekend.  I got all the applique fabric pieces off the design wall, labelled on the back, then ironed onto the muslin and the poppy cut out.  It was very important when I took off each piece that I labelled it on the back so it was easy to know where it went back on and also I sorted them by each petal from A to K so I knew what order they had to go in.  I think the numbering and making sure everything was in the right pile took longer then when I actually sat down to iron everything in place.  That bit of organization was well worth the effort.  Here is a picture of the poppy with all the pieces ironed on.

Now this looks a bit different from the previous picture because I did make some changes to selected pieces where either the contrast in fabric was too much or too little between adjoining pieces.  So once this was completed the next step is to cut out the poppy from the muslin and this is what that looks like on my design wall.

So I'm now ready to addition background and border fabrics for this wall hanging.

I also have to tell you another funny story.  While the poppy was up on the design wall before the pieces were ironed on the centre of the flower (the little green pieces from the seed pod) kept dropping off the wall.  I get tired of hunting for those little pieces so I thought I will fix you, and iron you onto the brown seed pod piece ahead of time.  So I got things set up on my towel that I was using when I was originally pressing the steam a seem onto the fabric to get all my pieces, and as I put the iron to the seed pod I realized that was a really dumb move.  Why you may ask, well the brown seed pod also has the steam a seam on the back of it, so I just ended up ironing on my seed pod to the towel I was using.  Fortunately it was only a cheap dollar store towel, I had lots of fabric left to make another one and I had a good laugh.  Here's my decorated towel.

Elaine Quehl Workshop In Full Bloom - Part 3

Happy National Quilting Day.  I hope everyone has had a chance to enjoy working on a nice quilting project today or will get a chance this evening.  I have finished cutting out the rest of the fabric pieces for the poppy wall hanging and the first version is up on my design wall.  As a first attempt I do like it.  As I look at it I do see a few places where I do need to make some changes to the fabric that I selected because there isn't enough contract between the pieces or too much, but not many.  I will wait for a few days before making any changes just so that I don't make any quick decisions.  This is what it looks like at the moment. 

Once I'm happy with the final choices then the fun part starts, I have to take everything down very carefully from the design wall, because each peice has to be ironed on in order from A1 through K10, so this will likely be the challenging part in making sure that I don't mix anything up.

Elaine Quehl Workshop In Full Bloom - Part 2

Here is my progress on the In Full Bloom Poppy Wall Hanging.

What I ended up doing first on the big paper pattern was writing down in general terms which colour each petal was as a reference.  So whether it was a light red, medium red or dark red, and the same with the orange and yellow sections, these references were marked.  Next I went and made drew up all the pattern pieces on the steam a seam light, petal by petal.  On each pattern piece I also wrote down the colour reference.  Then when I actually worked on selecting the fabrics, I worked on one petal section at a time, pulling fabrics based on the colour references, and building the poppy a section at a time. 

I found working this way was better for the way my mind thinks, than to draw out a pattern piece on the steam a seam, then go and pick a fabric for it, then cut that fabric out and build the petal linearly.  Once the whole flower is finished I will review all the colours and there may be a few changes depending on how they all play together.

For those who read my previous post in the first 2 days of my posting it, you would have missed the links to Elaine's web site and blog so I'm reposting them here if you wish to go and have a look at her work. 
http://www.equarelle.ca/ & http://www.elainequehl.blogspot.com/

 

Elaine Quehl Workshop - In Full Bloom

Yesterday I took the In Full Bloom workshop from Elaine Quehl. This was also a very interesting one, I learned a lot, but definitely more intensive and required more brain power than the Tue one. Elaine went through how she starts with a photo of a flower and turns it into a pattern and that is suitable for using the fusible web and creating a wall hanging. By the way here is a link to Elaine's website: http://www.equarelle.ca/ and to her blog: http://www.elainequehl.blogspot.com/

You basically start with a 8 by 10 size photo and place one of those acetate overhead sheets over the photo. Then with a marker draw out the various sections that will become a pattern based on the light, mid and dark sections of the various colours of the flower. The easiest way then to get that enlarged is to take it to a copy place where they can do enlargements. The ones we were working with are about 36 by 30. The other method is to take the acetate and project it on an overhead projector onto a wall. Have a large piece of paper taped to a wall and draw it out. With that method you need a lot of patience and it is hard on your back and shoulders.

If I was going to make more patterns I would go with the copy place for the enlargements.

Once enlarged, you then have to sort out the petals, and do some numbering when furthest petal is the first one, then the second furthest petal is the second one, etc. The furthest petal is labelled A, and then within A, you have to determine how to the various sections A will be put down and number them from 1 through whatever. I think this process would take practice before you were good at it.

So once you have the numbering figured out , (ours was already done for us) tape it down to a table, then cover it with light weight muslin, and tape that down. the muslin should be about an inch bigger than the pattern. Then you need a fine point Pigma Micron pen (it is permanent and doesn't bleed), to trace the pattern as well as all the letter and numbers for the sections onto the muslin.

Once you have all that done, you have to flip the pattern, and draw all the outlines and renumber everything, because you need the reverse image for the steam a seam light fusible web stuff because it is cut out from the reverse image pattern.

Once that is done, you get your fabrics together, arranged light to dark and start figuring things out. Again this part will take practice. I got my first petal done in terms of placing it on the muslin. you don't fuse anything in place until everything is cut out and up on the muslin. She then said to take a photo and look at it on your computer to see if all looks good or if anything looks a miss. There may be some fabrics that may need to be changed. Once good, then you can start fusing everything down.

So this is Elaine's poppy quilt.  I'm doing the poppy, but only one flower, and it is the lower flower.

Here is my muslin piece with the first petal done.

Once you have the whole flower done and fused, you cut out the flower from the remaining muslin and then you need to audition background fabrics.  Once you find a suitable one, then the flower gets attached to the background fabric, and then the quilt sandwich is made, and you can start quilting.

Elaine Quehl Workshop - Surface Design Techniques

Yesterday I was at the first of 2 workshops taken through my Guild (York Heritage Quilters Guild) given by Elaine Quehl on Surface Design Techniques. Elaine currently resides in Ottawa Ont., but was originally from a small farming community in Waterloo county. As she said at her trunk show last night at the guild meeting she was born with the quilting gene having great grandmothers, grandmothers and her mother who were all quilters.

This class was about having fun and experimenting with various products to see if you actually liked them enough to invest the money. So I'm going to go through the products from least favourite to the ones I really like and will likely invest some money to buy a supply of my own to use in future projects.

The first product just wasn't my style and I didn't even bother to make a sample and they were called Tsukineko Inks. Next came Prismacolor Artist Pencils and Caran D'ache Water Soluble Wax Pastels. I'm putting these two products together since they give you similar or related results and often you can use the products together which is what I did in my sample. They are good if you are looking for a water colour effect on fabric and then would be great enhanced with thread painting.

The next product I really liked the effects you were able to achieve using it in stencilling but it turned out I was allergic to it. They were the Shiva Paintstiks which are an oil based product, fortunately i had my allergy meds with me. I had asked Elaine if there was another product like the Shiva that wasn't based on oil but unfortunately there isn't one. I guess the good thing was that didn't end my quest. I kept thinking what else could I possibly use to give me a similar effect. As I was working with the various products if finally dawned on me and Elaine also had Setacolour acrylic fabric paints. Normally these are just paints that you use to paint on fabric. But if you use them sparingly on a stencil brush, making sure that you remove most of the paint but working it off the brush onto your palette, then you can use this product for stencilling and get the same effect. Here is my sample using the Setacolours. So this product I'm thinking I would use.

The last one is foiling, where you take a medium and apply it to the fabric to provide a bonding agent and then iron on coloured foil. Again a very striking effect which I can see using in art quilts and wall hangings.