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.
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.