The Quilt is Out of the Bag
Posted by: devilgirlangelquilts on: February 6, 2012
I’m always worried about posting here before the quilt I’m making is revealed to the recipient. Not a lot of people know I have a quilt blog and I tend to keep it fairly anonymous when posting, but still! There is that off chance that the person the quilt is meant for will stumble across my humble little blog and somehow put two and two together and the whole wonderful surprise will be ruined. As is the case with the last quilt I posted (minimally) about. BUT, never fear, the reveal happened yesterday at the baby shower so now I can finally get to the meat and potatoes, so to speak, of my latest baby quilt.
My first step was making the background. I decided to step it up a notch with this quilt and instead of using a solid piece of fabric for the background, make our own with strips of fabrics. This way I would have control over the colours and be able to create the illusion of a horizon by changing the colours as it moves down the piece.
As you can see I started with blue at the top (sky) and transitioned to green (foliage) and to beige/brown (ground). I chose mostly lighter fabrics to allow the darker tree to stand out (a tricky I learned during my painting years – when you make the background fainter and less defined and the foreground darker and more detailed it looks visually believable).
So, I sent the picture of the sketch I made and the background piece to the awesome friend who commissioned me: she loved the drawing and the colours of the background and gave me the go ahead to proceed!
When I go to make a little picture into a (relatively) big quilt, I generally follow this procedure: use a roll of paper to make a continuous sheet that is approximately the size of my background fabric, look at little picture, try to accurately make the little picture big. This is sometimes easier than others and it often leads to changes in exact dimensions and branch positions, etc. As you can see I drew out many pencil lines before I got the right proportion of trunk width and branch length in order to make it look good full size. Once I am happy with my sketch I go over it with marker (all those little pencil lines get confusing if you don’t somehow show the one you want to use).
As you can see I also come up with a numbering/lettering system to show where each limb/branch attaches. This is because my next step is to cut it all out (and once everything is in pieces sometimes it is hard to remember how it goes back together – take a pic is also helpful and not just for showing the world on a blog). Next step – wonder under, stitch witchery or whatever favourite fusible bonding web is your favourite. I’m going to leave it there for now and pick up at this step in my next post – where I will impart a helpful piece of ‘using-fusible-webbing-knowledge.’
