So what do you make for a friend who has a birthday and is moving away? How about a little wall hanging for her to remember you by! That's exactly what I did for a friend whose birthday was yesterday.
I started with an empty frame I had and gathered some fabric and batting scraps, pearl beads, white buttons and some pretty thread. Oh and my printer! I know what you're thinking, "why would she use a printer?" Well, for the letters of course! :-) After I found a cute font on my computer, I typed out the word "friend" to get the patterns for my letters. I printed them out and then flipped the page over to trace onto fusible web (that way the letters would be correct once the fabric was applied). Next, I fused the letters to my turquoise scraps, carefully cut them out and then fused them to the white piece of fabric. I centered the white fabric on the background piece of turquoise fabric and hand stitched it in place using a running stitch and a blue-green variegated thread. Then, I put a thin piece of batting behind the turquoise fabric rectangle and trimmed it to match. Using a seed stitch and white thread, I "quilted" the batting and fabric together. For the finishing touches, I stitched four white buttons to the corners using the same blue-green variegated thread from earlier, sewed the pearls in place on the curly-cue parts of the letters and did some detail back stitching to the letter "I". Of course, if you try this, you can change the font, the word and the colors, but I hope it gives you an idea for a fun, easy, and meaningful gift! Maybe even for yourself! :-)
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Today, I got the opportunity to do a program for a small quilt group in my local area. I talked about batting scraps and what we can do with them. You know what scraps I mean, right? The ones we can't seem to part with, but aren't big enough to use in a quilt. Here's what I came up with: 1. Applique: Cut shapes out of plain or dyed batting and use traditional applique or needle felting techniques to adhere them to your project. 2. Trapunto. If you have elements in your quilt that you would like to be "puffy", use a scrap of batting to quilt just the motif. Then layer the entire quilt as you normally would and quilt. 3. Miniature Quilts. No need to cut large pieces of batting down for small quilts, instead, save your scraps! 4. Book and Jounral Covers. Pick your favorite fabrics and piece together a cover. No lining fabric is needed. Quilt the fabric to the batting and the batting will glide over the cover of your book. 5.Needle Books. Great for storing and transporting hand or machine needles, these handy little carriers have "pages" made out of felt, or in this case batting. Organize and store your needles on different pages. 6. Construction. That's right you can actually use the batting to create with. The photo above is a small snowman pincushion (the little guy stands about 3" tall) that I made out of 6 and 4" circles. Just think how cute a teddy bear would be, made out of dyed batting! What else can you come up with? |
About MeFiber artist, wife to a wonderful husband and mom to 2 awesome, grown kids Archives
July 2023
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