Teal Dragonfly

Yes, I know, the dragonfly is cream/beige/brown but I've been calling this the teal dragonfly all the way through making it so the name has stuck. I love this quilt and I'm keeping it!!

I've used three different techniques for the curves seams. The middle part is my baste and topstitch method. The circle blocks on the outer border were done using the method I described in this post, making great circles. Then the circle blocks were cut with a gentle curve by stacking one strip of blocks on top of another and just going for it with the rotary cutter.  As long as the curve is not too curvy, the two bits will go back together with a 3-5mm seam.

Metallic thread was couched on to the body.  The thread has slubs (lumpy bits) so it wouldn't go through a needle.

I've done quite a few dragonfly wings now so it's getting easier to do. If you look at real dragonfly wings, you'll see that the small veins between the main veins are more like pentagons than squares.  They are quite easy to quilt too.  Also, dragonflies have a solid bit on the front tip of the wing.  Adding that little bit of satin stitch makes all the difference.

I bought the binding fabric for another project but discovered it was perfect for this quilt! I think my brain is just fixated on this beautiful dark teal colour.

Here are all the posts about this quilt:

Grid quilting

Pebbles and swirls quilting

Centipedes in my sashing

Variation on hearts quilting design

Variation on hearts

I've been looking for an opportunity to try out this variation on my favourite quilting pattern, meandering hearts. I came up with this during one very boring exam supervision last year. Isn't it just so cute! I had to make up for the nasty centipedes with something cute.

This little bit took me about 30 minutes. If I don't get any faster at this, it's going to take 20 hours just to quilt the last border. I'd better get faster!

Centipedes in my sashing

Leah Day calls this quilting design Trilobite. I think it looks more like a centipede, those really nasty ones you get in St Kitts, Scolopendra Gigantea.

Would you believe when I was looking for an image of this centipede I found out that people keep them as pets! I had one crawl across my foot once and even the little bit of venom on it's feet was enough to bring out a reaction on my skin. Why would you want to keep one?? But doesn't it look lovely as a quilting pattern in my sashing.

Updated to remove image. I just read a scary blog post about getting sued for breaching copyright. Since I can't remember where I got the image and it is highly likely that it wasn't from the original, I decided I'd be better off deleting it. Take it from me, it was a nasty big centipede and you can google it yourself if you're interested!

Pebbles and swirls

I've quilted a bit more of the dragonfly quilt. My first attempt at pebbles...

 

And this is based on a design I saw on Leah Day's blog, Poseidon's Eye. I wanted something that looked like eddies in the air from the dragonfly's wings.

 

You can maybe see the pattern a little better on the back. There is a definite circle theme in this quilt.

 

For Melanie

My poor Mel is not feeling well and she is a long way from home so I can't give her a hug - so I'm showing her my quilting instead.

 

And the back. How do you like the backing fabric? I thought the circles were a nice touch. Maybe I should do a whole cloth quilt one day. I love the back of quilts.

And a note for Melanie, a casual email from your hospital bed is not going to stop me worrying. Worrying is my job! I'm sure all the mums out there would agree with me. Get well soon pet.

My ghost layer quilts

I was really excited about using Katie Pasquini Masopust's design technique after reading her book 'Ghost Layers and Colour Washes'. It's a three step process that is really simple to follow and is fun to play around with.

This was my first one, done in a hurry as I needed it quickly for an exhibition at school. I didn't put a lot of thought into it. In fact, I think I used the squiggle from the example in Katie's book. I loved the design technique but I struggled with the piecing method Katie described. As you can see, my straight lines ended up a bit curved as I tried to match seams together.


I came up with my own method for piecing, which I will explain in another post, and made this little sample to try it. It was going to be a throw away sample but you know what quilters are like, can't throw anything away. So I added some embroidery and borders and it became a small wallhanging.


This sample was made to test some of the kinks in my piecing method. I discovered that fine bobbinfill will show on the top when you use monofilament thread in the needle. It was a useful exercise.


This is my latest project. It has grown a bit since this photo and deserves a post all to itself. More later...

Becky's Dragonfly

Becky picked out some blue fabrics from my stash and asked me to make her a blue dragonfly. I had just made the Highland Dancing Fairy with see-through wings so I wanted to use the same technique for the dragonfly wings.

The first step was to draw some dragonflies or parts of dragonflies. I think one of these is actually a grasshopper!

The bit of green fabric was a trial of a foil.  More on that later.


I couldn't use all the lovely blue fabrics that Becky had chosen as a background. A blue dragonfly on a blue background wouldn't have worked. So I decided to use them in the border. The dragonfly image that I liked the best was actually not a real one but a painting by Katsushika Hokusai, a Japanese painter from the Edo period. I love the look of this period, which is probably why I love my vases. One of things that characterised the art of the Edo period is that objects were not necessarily grounded in the background. Things are not realistic but the beauty of each object was shown at its best. I decided to use this idea in my design. I had bought a lovely pink floral fabric in three designs, each one in the same colourways but different sizes of flowers. I wanted to use the three sizes as foreground, background and distance but this is not a realistic landscape quilt so more flowers and less leaves!

This is my sketch.

To get the proportions right, I scanned in the flowers and my sketch and messed about in Paint to put the two together. I can't wait to get a proper programme but Paint works for what I do. Then I projected that image using a data projector at school and blew it up until the image of the flowers was the size of the actual flowers on the fabric. Then I traced the dragonfly and the position of the flowers and border on to stabiliser and used that for the positioning and dimensions.

I made the wings using two layers of a fine net, one layer of soluble stabiliser and a tear-away stabiliser.  The tear-away was removed from the middle after stitching the outside of the shape.  I also added a little Angelina fibre to the wing tip and more where the wing joins the body.  The bottom wing has been washed to remove the stabiliser.



At this stage I had put all the blue border together by randomly cutting strips and sewing them together. Then I cut some blocks at an angle and fitted them together to make strips.  I left the outside edge all random lengths and cut the inside edge straight and added to the green background.  I had also added the foil at this stage.  The idea is that this is a shady pond with oily slicks or ripples.  Here I have pinned all the elements I have so far to the design board to see if I need more foil.  My big patch didn't come off the acetate as well as the other two patches but I figure I can cover most of the blotches.

I made up a mitred border and then used spray adhesive to temporarily attach the middle plus blue border to the orange border. The blue border was then satin stitched to the orange border.  I liked the way that the orange border looked like a wood frame.

I added more flowers using raw edge applique and invisible thread and I used a fabric pen on the distance bush (top left corner) just to give it a bit more definition.

The branch in the foreground was applied using a whole cloth applique method.  I'm moving away fusing applique.  I don't like the way it makes the fabric hard.  Whole cloth applique is just that, the whole piece of fabric applied to the front of the work.  Then I work from the back using the stabiliser on to which I traced the design.  After sewing around the leaves and stem, I removed the stabiliser and trimmed the fabric back to my sewing line.  Then I used free-motion embroidery on the stem and satin stitch around the leaves.  I added another leaf to the design since Becky wanted the dragonfly sitting on a leaf - and what the client wants, the client gets!  By using fabric pen and a different colour of thread for the stain stitch on the curled part of the leaf, I managed to give the impression of the underside of the leaf without looking for another fabric and fiddling with small pieces.

This was a sample for the dragonfly body. I like to do that not only to try out a technique or, in this case, the holographic thread, but also so that I have something to put in my scrapbook.

And the finished quilt.