The vistas that I am blessed to see up here in Colorado have inspired a new piece! It also helps that I have a good size blank wall in my bedroom that needs filling. :) This piece, like many of my others, started out as a sketch on a piece of freezer paper. I love using freezer paper for my patterns or templates because it is readily available, affordable, and can be ironed on to fabric, making the cutting process so much easier. After sketching the pattern, I traced a duplicate; another thing I normally do for those "oops" moments! Then I pinned one copy onto a piece of Sulky Cut-Away Plus to use as a foundation. Next, picking the fabrics! For this step, it is extremely helpful to have a furry companion help you ! ;) To make the sunset seem more realistic, I free cut strips for the background sky using my rotary cutter. This step was really fun, because there was no pattern to follow and no measurements to use!
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Last week, I showed you how the background and quilting turned out for my new piece. This week, I'm going to skip ahead of some of the applique work I did (I'll save that for the final reveal) and show you the faux piping binding technique I used. I am only going to do a brief overview here and a detailed tutorial in the future. This binding is made up of two different colors of strips. In my case, the yellow batik will be the "piping". To achieve the length you need for the binding, each color of strip is joined as you would normally (at a diagonal to reduce the bulk). The color you will use for piping has to be a smidge wider than the other strip and then they are sewn together length wise with a scant quarter inch seam. Next, the seam gets pressed to the outside color edge. In my case, this is the turquoise. Then the binding strip is folded in half, width wise, wrong sides together, leaving the finished edge on the outside. In the picture on the right, you can see that I am sewing the raw edge of the binding on to the raw edge of my art quilt with the "piping" side up. Notice anything? Yup, that's right! In this technique, you sew the binding on to the back and then fold it to the front! You can also see that I folded some of the unused binding up on the machine to show you what it looks like before being sewn down. In the first picture above, you can see how I folded the binding to the front and clipped it,
so it is ready to top-stitch down. The second picture shows the mitered corner (the process is the same as traditional French fold binding) and the top-stitching. It is important to use a thread that matches your "piping" for the needle, and a bobbin thread that matches the back of your quilt. In the third picture, you can see how much that little flange of yellow really adds to the piece! It only measures about 1/8", but the impact is HUGE! I really enjoyed incorporating this technique into this piece and it turned out exactly how I had hoped. Plan on seeing it in more of my work in the future! |
About MeFiber artist, wife to a wonderful husband and mom to 2 awesome, grown kids Archives
July 2023
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