Charly & Ben's Crafty Corner: February 2018

Last year, I answered a call for quilters who wanted to take part in quarterly challenges and push themselves to try new things. The idea was to have some fun, learning and playing with fabric together, through themes randomly chosen. I was delighted to see names of quilty friends and those new to me on the groups blog page : The Endeavourers. There are 14 of us taking part and encouraging each other in our explorations.

Today is the reveal day for our first challenge: Nature.

I am very happy to share my quilt idea, 'Making Waves'. Mine is a top only at this stage and not a finished piece which it should be. As my back issue, though settling and improving, had a bit of set back a few weeks ago and sitting is still no fun at all, I haven't been able to sit at a sewing machine.

The Irish Patchwork Society (IPS) national exhibition theme is Making Waves and this has been on my mind so with a theme of nature and my love of the west coast of Clare, part of the Wild Atlantic Way, I guess it had to be a wave! To read more about the inspiration and influences behind the idea for this wave, please visit The Endeavourers blog.

I thought here I'd talk a bit about how I made it, in case you were inspired to break out the bondaweb and a big bucket of scraps!

I made this sketch to work from as a pattern, fiddled with it for ages, even though it is a simple enough shape. I printed it on A4 and taped it all together and then thought now what? My friend Louise asked if I had seen Shannon Brinkley's collage quilts using animals and cityscapes, so remembering her bear quilt, I looked her up and her website here where she offers an online course and patterns to buy. I didn't use Shannon's process as I hadn't the materials she recommends but I was inspired by her bear pattern to make the quilt as a collage, and knew I wanted a strong line for the wave and not a broken one with overlapping collage pieces. I highly recommend Shannon's process as she has multiple ways of finishing the edges and using different types of collage pieces to build up your design. If you take her course you get to choose a pattern available from her shop so worth having a look!

I had previously made an art collage quilt before, of a boat on the river Shannon, for our branch's Local Landscapes exhibition. I wanted to try something different for my wave and this feels a little more grown up for some reason. I think it might be the fabrics; less contrasting colour and more blended maybe?

I pulled a lot of aquas, turquoises, teals and blues and in the end used mostly scraps and very little from the fabric pull. Still, creating that palette helped me select from my scrap basket (yes this is all the scraps I have!).

I wanted some strong clean curves in the piece even though it was going to be made of scraps and many pieces of fabrics, so I remembered my quilt friend Paula Rafferty telling me about drawing directly onto fusible bondaweb and not the paper at the back. This means no faffing about with reversing patterns and I could stick pieces directly onto the fusible paper. A pencil was no good as it's hard edge caught the bondaweb but an embroidery transfer pen was perfect and glided over the fusible smoothly.

I traced the whole pattern and then some of the smaller elements separately. I used some parchment paper between the pattern and the iron to prevent my iron getting all gunky when fusing down the fabric. I have a silicone A3 sheet for just this type of thing but I couldn't find it anywhere- it has to here somewhere in my kitchen/sewing room but no luck finding it when I needed it, so parchment paper it was!

The paper stuck to the fusible around the pieces and instead of pulling it apart which might dislodge the fabric pieces, I simply cut around the shape I wanted and the parchment under the fabric just fell away. There are loose spots where the pieces overlap but I'll be quilting it all down at some stage so I am not worried about raw edges or un-fused pieces. This little wave is not intended for washing!

Then using some photographs of real waves from a google search as inspiration for fabric placement, I built up the collage keeping the lightest sections at the top left hand corner of the wave and adding my curved pieces where I liked. I used some backing fabric as a cushion for the iron to press onto and kept on building.

Finally I had a finished wave. Next decision: background fabric. I tried patterned, solid baby blue for sky, black for high contrast, and eventually settled on a graduated blue that seems to fit the highlights of the piece just right.

This is where I have gotten to as the next step involves basting and quilting and that means sitting at a sewing machine! I do intend to face it when quilted so there will be no visible binding and hope it will look something like this.

I always use the Silly Boo Dilly's tutorial for facing a quilt - it is a very well written tutorial and super handy to have when you don't want binding to show on the front. So even though I didn't get her finished I certainly feel like I have lived up to the spirit of The Endeavourer's group challenge. This was a great first theme and I am looking forward to seeing what nature themed projects are being revealed today.