Modern Fusing

It all started with a free(!) day to play and a pile of scraps I have been collecting for a while. I call this quilt "Modern Fusing."

I started cutting little leaves out of the leftover scraps I had after making my hand-dyed fabric packs for Houston this year.   They were already fused so why not make leaves? I had no ideas on how or where I would use them, but they were so cute and so easy and mindless to make.  Let's just call this therapy!  So I stuffed then into a plastic bag and would add to them with each new color I dyed and fused. Well, the next thing I know, I have piles of these little leaves in different values of green.

Here, I've separated them by values and started to play with them on a white piece of fabric. White will always make your colors POP!

I stared with the darkest green values and worked outward to the lightest green which was a robin's egg blue.  They took on a pattern of their own as I worked.  It's kind of a leaf flower. 

I always take pictures of the messes I make when being creative. I don't know why but I like looking at controlled chaos.

 Now for the pressing of my quilt top.

Now the fun part, quilting!  I layered the quilt top with batting and a white backing fabric and put green Sulky Variegated Blendable thread in the bobbin and on top of my BERNINA 750.

I free-motion quilted veins in the little leaves and did a simple echo stitch on the background, still using the variegated green thread.

I found this robin’s egg blue stripe for the binding in my stash . This is why I LOVE my fabric stash - I think the stripe gives the quilt a fresh look.

Keeping with the theme of Modern Fusing, I folded the binding to the back and placed a ¼ inch strip of Steam-a-Seam 2 (which is back and better than ever) on the edge of the binding and fused the binding down to the back of my quilt.  

Can I get a shout out from the crowd?

Then I added this twisted piping to the edge of the binding. I have been making this braided, or twist, cording using the leftover strips from my hand-dyed fabrics.  I'll show you how to make this in the next blog.

I played around with different presser feet to find the right foot for couching this twist down. That was tricky but with the right presser foot BERNINA # 20C it was a breeze. The open foot held the piping up against the binding.  The needle would catch one side of the twist up against the binding edge.  As I sewed I was also caughting the back of the fused binding. 

 I added seed beads to the leave for a little bling. 

 Here you go, my Modern Fusing wall hanging.