This year the challenge for my guild's quilt show was 'Home'. It is described as
"What home means to you. Whether it is a place: your house, a place you have fond memories of, maybe flowers or family." I decided to make mine based on family.
After a few ideas tossed around in the middle of the night. I know that I am not alone in the late night designing department. I finally settled on a brilliant idea, all my ideas are brilliant at least I think they are. I wanted a heart and family.
A red heart that said home, maybe some flowers as I love flowers and maybe a picture of my family. Everything spiraled from there. The challenge had a mind of it's own.
First the red fabric. I couldn't find anything I liked and I wanted something that said home. I could have appliqued it, or stitched it or even used fabric markers all would have been fine. But I choose to go another direction I had fabric printed from
Spoonflower, that I designed with '
Home where family is sewn into the fabric of my Life' printed on it.
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fabric from Spooflower minus a heart shape |
Once the fabric arrived I quickly cut into as you can see in the above photo. Next up the flowers, for which I first applied Steam a Seam 2 Lite to the back of the flower fabrics, before cutting the flowers out. I had and still have a lot of flowers cut out.
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flowers, flowers and more flowers and this was after finishing the piece |
I printed out pictures of my family, sorry no in-laws. I asked my family if they all wanted to be included and my daughter in-laws said no so I decided my son in-law wasn't going to make the cut either. My hubby doesn't want his picture front and center so I coloured him out of the photos.
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first layout |
One nice thing about the Steam a Seam it allows you to easily move the pieces around as long as they are not pressed down. I put them on a piece of pattern ease
(Pattern Ease is a polyester non woven tracing material that can be used to create pattern pieces or sewn into projects as a light weight interfacing or stabilizer.), as the fabric pieces would be fused down to it. I cut the fused piece from the pattern ease along the outer edges, then appliqued the whole piece onto the background fabric latter. I wasn't happy with the first layout and moved the family around a lot until I settled on the final layout.
I was right into the piece and forgot to take pictures along the way.
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thread work |
I used Superiors monopoly for appliqueing the piece to the background. Then I cut loose using my favourite threads, Aurifil for the thread work, there where a lot of colour changes and burying of thread tails.
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a selection of Aurifil threads where used |
I should have done more thread work before I started quilting it, but as I said earlier this project had a mind of it's own and decided I should add more thread work.
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the back of the piece showing some of the thread work |
And now for the big reveal in amongst my hostas.
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my home, my happy place |
These are the people who hold my love and will always come first. They are the 'Fabric of my Life'.
If you are in the area come and see what our show has to offer. We have quilts aplenty, a boutique and vendors. Some of the vendors are Sue Patten, K&A Quilts, Caroline Quilts. Even if you're not close by come on down. The show is at the Norwich Historical Museum, 89 Stover St. Norwich Ontario.
Friday June 7th 12PM to 5PM
Saturday June 8th 10AM to 4PM