Pandemic Hobbies

To start with, in my last post, I said I would share my finished green stained glass quilt square – here it is – it was purchased on Etsy by the daughter of a woman who owns a quilt shop.

My first quilt class led me to Pinterest to see the creative possibilities in the quilting world. After following many Pinterest rabbit holes, I ran across quilting artists like Barbara Yates Beasley, Susan Carlson and Danny Amazonas who just took quilting to new creative heights. I was in love with the concept of art quilts. I had to try.

My quilt gallery shows some of my first attempts but I feel like I’m learning as I go. My mother and my sister got me a Bernina 475 quilters edition sewing machine for my birthday and after viewing a bunch of YouTube videos on how to use it, I am now hooked. The perfect hobby for the lockdown of the pandemic.

I’m currently working on my own dog after practicing on my friends pets trying to get my technique perfected. So here is Finnegan in process. He’s my little fuzzy buddy. I started with a picture of him that I had on my phone, used Rapid Resizer software to print him the size I was looking for in black and white and then traced the value changes on the picture. The traced lines were transferred to muslin and I had my pattern.

When I start a dog portrait, I almost immediate have to add the eyes and nose. It makes it “real” to me…. gives the dog a soul….

I then start picking colors and patterns of fabrics to reflect the lights and darks that were reflected in my black and white print out of the photo that I used for the pattern. Then I start building up fur texture. I free-hand cut my fabric with really sharp scissors but I still am looking for a better way to get more accurate pieces but paper and fabric gets flimsy and find it hard to cut – if anyone has advice, I’ll take it!!!!

As I build up the fabric collage, I tack the pieces in place with a tiny bit of Aleene’s original tacky glue applied with a toothpick. It allows me flexibility if I want to move pieces around but keeps it from shifting around. The beauty of this art form is that it’s super forgiving….if you don’t like the way it looks, just stick a piece of fabric over it – nobody will ever know! I have painted with watercolors and felt the frustration of a mistake that requires you to throw the whole darn thing away….this allows for freedom of screwing up!

When I’m happy with my fabric collage, I then add more glue – I use a disposable brush and glue down all the edges EXCEPT for the outside edge – because I cut off the excess muslin, I leave about 1/2 inch around the collage perimeter to make that easier.

I then pick my background colors and build a little simple quilt with borders for the dog portrait to sit on.

For this one, I placed Finnegan on the blue quilt and sewed him into the inner border (I find I like this look better than the floating head portrait – so sorry to the people who got the floating head dog quilts).

I then add quilt batting and a backing fabric and pin it all together with safety pins to get it ready for the actual quilting.

I use the image in my iPad to determine how the fur looks….for instance, what direction is it growing in, is it long or short around the muzzle. And I choose thread colors to allow the texture to show through without it being to overpowering.

In quilting this, I use free-motion techniques but the saving grace is that Bernina makes a foot called a stitch regulator. My sister was able to find me one on ebay for a reasonable price but I think it’s PRICELESS!! What it does is it ensures your stitch lengths are standardized as you move the quilt under the needle. I laugh because to me free-motion quilting is like doodling but instead of moving the pen over the paper, you hold the pen steady and move the paper to make the doodle. I actually practiced using pen and paper to get my brain to work that way!!!

When I’m done quilting the dog, I move on to the background quilt – usually just do straight lines to fill the space and then the borders just have a free-motion doodle look to them. Nothing too complex because I’m not there yet.

I find that taking pictures along the way is a great way to make sure that nothing about the quilt bothers me aesthetically. I found either viewing in a photo or looking at your in-progress artwork in a mirror helps to highlight flaws in the design before it’s too late.

Finally, I have a finished quilt!