Tuesday, June 20, 2006

One arm and one leg aren't moving




Yay not only is the chair done and the quilt on the frame but I have managed to quilt one arm and one leg. I'm so pleased. I've also managed to get the photos off my phone and onto here. I use the phone a lot when I am working on picture quilts. It is hard to see the image when you are concentrating on one aspect of it so throughout the process I take pictures. The camera is very good at showing anything that is really wrong and making the good bits look better.

Sorry the pictures aren't very well laid out, I need to do some more research to find out how to move them around.

So can you tell that the same fabrics make her hair and the chair :) I don't think it is too obvious which is good.
You can see in some of the pictures that there is a guide sheet to help me lay out the pieces. I take a tracing of my master design and then pin it in place over the section I want to work on. It also gives the impression of colouring in an image which can make it easier to see what you are building before it reaches a stage where you can recognise it.

For the letters I tried a slightly different technique. I used steam a seam 2 and built the whole banner on a teflon pressing sheet before applying it to the backing. It worked fine for the banner but I think it would be very fiddly and make a very think quilt if I used it for the whole of the image. The rest of the pieces are held in place with 606 adhesive. It becomes a fusible web when it dries and it can then be ironed in place. I wouldn't trust it to permanently hold anything, but for things like this that will be heavily quilted it is great. It doesn't add anywhere near as much weight as the steam a seam.

Tomorrow I hope I can finish the quilting, but I will have to take it easy. I am concentrating too much and hunching over the machine which is no good for your shoulders and neck. On the bright side if I have to take a lot of breaks I end up reading a lot.

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