My stepson, Austin, graduated from high school on June 1. I had started a quilt for him several years ago, and like all good intentioned quilt tops, it sat in a drawer with the rest of the UFO’s. I decided that it was time to pull it out and finish it for this grand occasion.
It’s done!
The last week, I’ve been working hard on several projects. I’ve got the piece I’ve assembled on May 31, 2015 at Bridgeway Christian Church, a graduation quilt and heavily been updating “behind the scenes” of my blog incorporating some pretty niffy plugins. I hope you poke around and notice the changes.
I’ve added an Instragram and Facebook feed, as well as a calendar. My goal is to make everything work more efficiently together and more options for people to follow along what I’ve been doing in “real time”.
Enjoy! I’ll be back later in a few days to update you on the God and Country piece!
Wow, has it been a busy few months! However, my hiatus is over and it’s time for my next “Live Fabric Painting” session. Come join us on Sunday, May 31st, at Bridgeway Christian Church’s 5th MVMNT event at 7pm.
We’re moving into the summer months with Memorial Day quickly approaching, Father’s Day in June and ending with patriotic Fourth of July. What better time to honor our military, reflect on our fathers and proudly display our patriotism to God and Country? I’ve got a piece planned that surely will make any patriotic Christian proud!
So how did I do it you might be wondering. This post will recap that process.
This piece was definitely a learning curve for me because my main purpose was to be able to create something in front of a live audience. Now, I have been quilting for quite a number of years, created a lot of different tops that are sitting in a drawer, but I’ve never created anything “live” before. So, I had to think “out of my box”.
I created a small portable design board out of a piece of press wood and wrapped it with several layers of batting. The idea was to make a sturdy flat surface that I could press a hot iron on and it’s perfect! It also fits on a large canvas easel. This new setup allows for mobility and it doesn’t take up a whole wall in my house! Bonus!
The next thing that I did was prep and p
rint any reference material as any other artist would. I often like to find royalty free or public domain images or stain glass patterns that I can compile together and modify them in a photo graphic editor like Adobe Photoshop. I manipulate the images with different filters until I find a comfortable “template” I can work fabric with. (Filters like Paint Dubs, Mosaic or even Cartoon work best.) It’s not going to be perfect but it gives me a perception of depth, tone and shapes- the areas that pop out at you. Once I figure that out, I print a large poster size and tape it to a window. I trace pieces from this template.
In this piece, I used a single layer of muslin for my background that allowed all my pieces to adhere to because I was making this portable. Normally, I would only fuse onto any background fabric at the edges. I began with all the corners and I slowly worked my way around the piece adding pieces like a puzzle. I used a fusible web interface, in this case, Heat and Bond Lite, which is a sewable heat activated adhesive that provides a smooth edge-to-edge application for appliqués. It has a paper backing that I traced a reversed image of whatever piece I’m working. So, basically, I worked in a reverse image of the finished project.
This piece took about a month to complete simply because I worked sporadically, just a couple hours at a time; but all in all, it probably took about two weeks total.
Below are some time lapse photos as I worked the piece and some close up images of the quilted work. I hope you enjoy it as much as I loved creating it.
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Thank you!
Emily Easley
Welcome to the blog of Emily Easley! Here I will journal my process as I work on a project so that you can be apart of that experience. I am very excited to be able to share my love of fiber art and hope that you enjoy it. I have a couple of exciting new projects to come so please stay tuned! Thank you.
Emily Easley Art 