Friday, June 01, 2007

Making the Leap

I've been watching the PBS series Craft in America the last few mornings, and today it finally got to me. I've been squandering my time and opportunities, no doubt letting some doubts and fears keep me from forging ahead. Time to get on with the angel quilt. These fabrics I've most recently settled on are just fine, so time to get cutting and sewing.

Once again, I'm employing the "Accidental Landscape" technique of Karen Echmeier to free-form rotary cut the shapes of the mountain, lake and beach. I used a sketch as a guide, slipped each piece under the angel to verify the line, pressed the edge under about 1/4" then pinned in place. I left each section longer than necessary to be sure I had enough for each overlap. The curves look much better than the straight swathes used in auditioning. I also roughly pinned up the bottom edge into a curve as I think that is how I will finish it.

Once I had each section arrange and minimally pinned, I took the whole thing off the design wall to more carefully pin for sewing. Since excess fabric would be cut away, I only pinned one section at a time. I stitched very close to the turned under edge using a straight stitch and clear thread, then turned the piece over to trim away the excess.


As you can see from the top picture, I'm still toying with ideas for bordering. At present, I plan to use that green fern fabric on the sides (but not necessarily in a straight strip like you see) and possibly the dark brown as the final side borders. Binding in brown would complete it - no top & bottom borders. More sketching today produced some possibilities for scrolls or branches running up the sides. Time to make some full-size paper patterns to refine this idea.


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