Sewing Saturday Project Quilting and round robin

 

The Seeker 10" X 14"

For this week's sewing round up I have two pieces to share. The first is my Project Quilting challenge piece (the challenge was to be inspired by crazy quilting and finish within one week) I started this Friday and finished the next day by noon. My computer crashed this week so I thought I wouldn't be able to do it til dh fixed it by Friday!

Now, I do not like crazy quilts at all. I did make a challenge quilt once laying odd pieces of silk over each other, hand embroidering them and it came out great! So after I remembered that, I decided I wanted a female who's dress was a crazy quilted silk affair. I began looking at images online, and since I LOVE Klimt I scanned a few of his, and tore a lovely add out of a magazine to inspire the face. 

I pulled out silks, and began sewing them into some water... free form curved piecing of two close blue shades, then appliqued the cut off pieces from that onto the surface, and used metallic threads to do machine dec stitches 

I found an upholstry sample sheer and that became my background, loved it!  Quilted it first onto peltex and a lovely tree fabric for backing. Next I added my water square. 

 

To form her dress, I laid odd pieces of silks onto paper, and started stitching decorative machine stitches. Like Klimt I love gold so I took some flimsy gold lame, folded and stitched over it to have three gold squares on the stitched dress

Pretty! fun to design too... this reminds me to work more often using my silk stash!

Next I pulled out a piece of tan fabric, and drew on a face. I knew I wanted it mysterious and 3/4 view, turned toward the viewer. Prisma pencils and markers, light hand with colors. When I put it on the background with thread, I sewed a bit around one edge, then stuffed it and finished sewing, just to give it a bit of dimension. 

It's so much easier to make a piece if I have the face done first.

When I stitched the dress to the background next, I pulled and distorted it, adding in a 3-d quality I like. 

Next the binding... I cut into a favorite brown with gold fabric at 1 inch. Fold in half, cut the edges with pinking sheers, folded it onto the quilt and sewed around. Then the extras... glass fish, a real branch I found once on a walk, an old insect button with glass, the leave on the left is a stick pin given me when I lived in Canada

a little metallic butterfly and three golden roses. 

I'm calling her the Seeker... and she took up pride of place on the mantel

So... this time it didn't turn out like my vision... I saw it as much darker with less facial features, more indistinct but you know, it's like the saying, get out of the way and art will make itself. I'm thrilled to use my specialty fabrics again, and wanted something like this to use that modern sheer on. 

next I worked hard this week on putting together my Stay at Home round robin...

a thousand little pieces! This week the challenge was to add pinwheels... I put four in. After moving rows and pieces around the design wall, I settled on this layout, and then had to make it all go together and fit exactly. Whew! It's bigger than I thought, and will be even bigger once I add on those border pieces by Jane Sassamon designs, on the right. Right now it's about 44" long by 30" wide but will get bigger. Oh and I made the iron and fabric bundles

so those had to be fitted in too! (from Lori Holt's book of patterns)

all in all, a successful sewing week!

Linking to

off the wall Fridays
can I get a whoop whoop Fridays  

SAHRR

http://www.inquiringquilter.com/ Wednesday wait loss

Midweek makers wednesdays 

 

design wall Mondays at smallquiltsanddollquilts
lovelaughquilt.mondays

project quilting challenge

oh Scrap Sundays