Ticker Tape Workshops

A few weeks ago I gave the Ticker Tape workshop I developed from my Wilbur scrap quilt to the Western Branch of the Irish Patchwork Society in Galway. This was my third time giving this workshop and I have been adding to the templates for people to try. I used the guitar as a teaching piece and am working on a sketch of a West Highland Terrier for one of the ladies in my own branch, the Mid-Western Branch in Limerick.

Not everyone has been lucky enough to have a Basset Hound in their house (?) so I have added in other shapes for people to try including cats, teddy bears and other breeds of dogs! For some reason, just like when making Wilbur, I got the head and body drawn up on the Westie no problem but struggled with the legs. I think I have his little feet right now and am making adjustments for the next class which is in a Quilt Shop in Tuam, Co. Galway called Quilt, Yarn, Stitch. Really looking forward to the 2nd December and teaching my first quilt shop class! Very exciting!

This is a photo of the progress made by Nora on the scrappy Teddy on the day in Galway and below is a photo I took of Olena's dragon she made from the workshop given to the Eastern branch of the IPS in Dublin. I had the honour of being mentioned in her artist's statement when she showed it at the River of Dreams quilt exhibition in Limerick this year.

That was a special exhibition as in addition to the bed quilts on display there was a wall of donated baby quilts for the Henry Bear charity where each child undergoing heart surgery gets a quilt to wrap them up in for their recovery.

 Mine was Kenny the Koala! And he ended up a pattern.  

It's funny where an idea for a quilt can take you and what can develop from it!

Fun with scraps - ticker tape pictorial quilts

Just over 2 weeks ago, I had the privilege of teaching a ticker tape class in the Cork branch of the Irish Patchwork Society.  We looked at examples of Quilt-As-You-Go and joining blocks but spent the most of a beautiful sunny afternoon playing with scraps making pictorial ticker tape quilts from scraps.

In addition to redesigning Wilbur, I had prepared a class sample showing the technique of a guitar and brought with me templates of shapes I thought peoeple might like, as not everyone is lucky enough to have their joy of Basset Hound pups, taking up all the sofa space in the house!

As it is quilt as you go and involves basting and messing about with scraps of all colours, quite a few people took to the floor!  Some decided to make a Rose...

One musical lady tried out my guitar...

There was a dolphin...

And yes one or two Basset's!

Quite a bit of progress was made on the day.  I love this very Bohemian looking guitar.

And Joanna's original circles design for a baby quilt.

Lastly a new puppy!  Assumpta was so speedy in getting this little guy filled in.

Thank you ladies for a brilliant afternoon and I hope you had as much fun as I did!  I love visiting the Southern branch and hope to be back again sometime soon!

WIP Wednesday - the colourful ones!

In between getting ready for our Modern Irish Quilters Sewing Day this past weekend, I have been preparing samples for a Quilt-As-You-Go class showing the ticker tape process and using scraps to make a wall hanging like Wilbur and QAYG panels like this version of a pattern by Stitched in Color called Bottled Rainbows. 

Rachel's pattern uses 16 rectangles to make up the quilt.  I'm using 9 bigger square blocks measuring 20" square.  I don't have as much variety in my scraps to get panels of both orange and tangerine so I've tried to come up with 9 colours I think work well together and pick scraps that live in that colour family that go well together.

Not having that many yellow scraps I've included some gold and browns.

I'm hoping this will be a handy quilt to use for teaching the colour wheel for the Rainbow Rose quilt in April too and I like it's bright and happy feel.   Hard to resist a rainbow!

The other project I'm working on is for Aurora, a co-exhibition between the Irish Patchwork Society and the Northern Ireland Patchwork Guild.  Inspired by these photos by Mike Taylor which shows how digital cameras are capturing intense colours when photographing the Aurora Borealis, I tried to pull fabrics from my stash that matched that intensity.

To give it a bit more impact I've made Dresden blades by resizing templates from Aneela Hooeys Bloom pattern. 

 I'm really liking this colour combo against the dark blue background fabric.


And while I've been so busy Maggie has been in chewing mode so I've had to keep the dogs far from my end of the kitchen where I sew.  She has quite a few toys but still manages to eat what she shouldn't.

I normally have Charly beside me while I work and Wilbur finds the comfiest spot to snooze on but if Charly is with me Maggie wants to be too and gets bored, poor pup. So in fairness I have them all barred from the sewing space and Charly is not one bit impressed. 

Can't blame her, Maggie destroyed her bed while I was out at our Modern Quilters Sewing Day and its G's fault as he had a nice lie in and left them to their own devices!  Just as well the daylight is getting longer as we need to walk the legs off the pup and do more training with her to get rid of some of that excess energy.  Busy, busy weeks ahead.

I was thinking of making Charly her own dog bed but I might just wait a while yet!

Ticker Tape Basset Hound - Here's How I made Wilbur in fabric!

Over the last few weeks, I have had a few people ask me how I made my Ticker Tape version of Wilbur, our Basset Hound.  I thought I'd write about how I made him, so if anyone wanted to make something similar they could!

I bought a copy of Scrap Happy Quilting and like most quilting books admired it, thumbed through it and put it back on the bookshelf.  Adrienne at Chezzetcook Modern Quilts had a quilt a long two years ago to get us using our Library books and I picked this project as something to try from the book.  Then we had a get together with the Modern Quilters Ireland group in Galway and I swapped it! It has a lot of colourful projects and you can buy the book as a PDF here.  Having given mine away I had to come up with a plan to do my own ticker tape project!

So of course I chose Wilbur!  Elephants are cool and I love them in fabric, so much so, it was because of this elephant print, that I bought my very first fat quarter bundle of Valori Wells fabric, called Karavan.

Having said that, any Basset Hound owner will tell you not much compares to a Basset, so I pulled out my scraps of Karavan that I had left over from my first pieced quilt and arranged them in a bassety shape and thought this could work!

The first step is to draw an outline on your background fabric of the shape you want to fill in.  Then hand stitch along that line with perle cotton to give yourself an outline to work with.

I had great fun sketching Wilbur and was very pleased with the head and nose but couldn't get his legs right so I turned to google and searched for Basset Hound Silhouette!

I chose the first image to work with from Silhouettes by Lena and used that as a basis to complete my design.  If the image is not in the public domain you may have to ask the copyright holder for permission to use their image for your work.

If you don't feel comfy scaling up an image by hand to draw on your fabric, you can do it on the computer easily enough and print your image across multiple pages.  Tape them together and you get a full size image you can trace.  The easiest way I found to do this was to save my drawing in Photoshop Elements as a PDF, then open Adobe Reader and print my drawing as a poster or banner across multiple pages.

Once you have your outline sewn on your background fabric you then baste your quilt top, wadding and backing.  My project was about 40" x 30" so I spray basted my quilt sandwich and that made it easier than having to remove and work around pins.

Ticker tape is technique that uses raw edge applique.  You sew through all the layers of your quilt as you are applying your scrap pieces. The idea is that the pieces fray over time and you get a textured effect.  I first tried a straight stitch and realised that 1/4" was too big a seam.  Reading up on it, it should have been closer to the edge about 1/8" or less so I ripped this bit out and went again but this time with a small zig-zag all around.  I got lucky with the eye fabric and am delighted how his head turned out.

Sewing through all the layers makes a really cool outline on the back of the quilt too!

I first started with laying pieces down and trimming around them with a sharp scissors using the perle outline as a guide for the outside edges.  For the inside edges I cut straight lines and left a small gap between the pieces approximately 1/8".

It got a bit messy with lots of bits and pieces on the floor but I really enjoyed the process and trying to fit all the pieces together like a jigsaw. 

I did try to use fabric colours guided my Wilbur's own colouring.  He is a tri-colour Basset so he has black, white and a beautiful reddy brown coat.  I used blue for the black areas, white and pink and mustard for the red/brown areas.

Even though I like the shades of pink, maybe that might be a colour choice I would change going forward as G commented that it reminded him of the butchers diagrams showing the various cuts of meat you can get.  Wilbur and I are ignoring that comment!  So ploughing ahead the final layout was like this!

I initially pinned the fabric in place but with all the turning through the machine zig-zagging the little pieces down it was easier in the end to use glue. 

I tried both fabric glue and fusible tape and the tape was the easiest.  I have since bought Roxannes Basting Glue and have had great success with it so I would probably use that next time instead!

If you don't like the frayed edges of ticker tape you could use Lara's no fray applique method from her new book Crafted Applique.  Lara's method would make this process very easy!  I'll be giving away a copy next Tuesday on the blog so please come back and visit.

Finally when all the pieces are secured, quilt to finish!  I used a wavy line just like the elephant project that inspired all this in the first place.  When washed it gives amazing texture!

So there you have it - Ticker Tape Wilbur!  I hope you are tempted to try your own ticker tape silhouette project.  If you do I'd love to see it!

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