Decor Bond

In response to Vivian's question about Decor Bond, I thought I would post a bit about my experience with it. Decor Bond is made by Pellon and is a crisp, fusible interfacing. You can find it with the other fusible interfacings at fabric stores. I buy mine at JoAnn's. Since it is stiffer than most interfacings, it holds up well on the longarm machine.

I've tried other fusible interfacings as stabilizers for thread painting, but always had issues with the fabric puckering. I don't have that problem with Decor Bond. It may be because I tend to thread paint fairly heavily.

When I have the quilt top finished to the point that it's ready for thread painting (before quilting), I cut a piece of Decor Bond the size of the quilt and iron it to the back of the top. Then I load the top onto the longarm machine and do my thread painting. Once I'm done thread painting, I un-pin the top from the take-up leader only, leaving the top pinned to the "top fabric" leader. Then I load the backing fabric and batting, and quilt as usual. I don't thread paint through the entire quilt sandwich as it will make some areas more heavily quilted than others, causing difficulties trying to get the quilt to lay or hang flat and square. Such as "Blue Tigers"; I will thread paint the flowers and the cat. The quilting in the background won't be as heavy as the thread painting. I will add quilting to the cat and the flowers equal to the amount of quilting I will do in the background.

Appliques Done

After more playing around with the appliques last night, here is what I've come up with. The appliques are all fuse-tacked in place. I didn't want to take the top down from the design wall and fuse-tack on my ironing board for fear of the appliques shifting out of place. The problem is that my design wall is insulation board and I didn't think it was a good idea to use the iron on it with just the fabric separating it from the iron heat. My solution was to take a piece of Insul-Bright by The Warm Company, and tuck it underneath the quilt top, pin it in place, and then fuse-tack the appliques down. It worked like a charm - no damage to the insulation board. I'm now planning on covering the entire design wall in Insul-Bright underneath a layer of cotton batting.

I'm still pondering border options - haven't come to a conclusion there. I have decided to back the entire top with Decor-Bond then load it onto the longarm for the thread painting. I've done that with one other quilt top and it worked great.

I will probably back the entire top with Decor-Bond by Pellon, then load it onto the longarm frame to do the thread work. I have 3 weeks until quilt entries are due for the guild show, so I need to get busy.

Blue Tigers

I made some progress on the applique quilt last night by working on the leaves and stems. There is still a lot of work to do, yet.

I named the quilt "Blue Tigers" because there are 3 different types of "Tigers" in this quilt: Tiger Lillies, a Tiger-striped cat, and Tiger-striped butterflies.

Making Progress

I started adding stems and leaves to the blue lillies and finally things started coming together. There is some depth now. It also pointed out to me that the little coneflowers and bell flowers on the right side of the quilt are too pastel for this background fabric. So it was either choose another background fabric (which I am having a hard time finding), or make new flowers.

So I made new flowers. Here are the ones I finished last night. I am still playing around with them for placement as well as digging through my stash looking for other fabrics that may also work.

If I keep this up I may just have this quilt done in time for the Missour River Quilt Guild Show in June!

Decisions

Today I'm working on the cat applique quilt. I found this piece of Indonesian Batik and auditioned it with the appliques. This one isn't working for me either. It's too flat - not enough depth in the fabric for what I'm looking for.

This is the other piece of batik that I was leaning towards. The problem with it is that some of the appliques tend to blend into the background depending on what color they land on.

I'm going to continue working on the appliques this afternoon, adding leaves and stems and perhaps adding more flowers in different colors. I'll keep looking for background fabrics until I find something that works for me.

Computer Woes

I don't have any photos to publish today. My computer crashed last week on Wednesday and I just got it back from the Geek Squad this afternoon. Anti-viral software didn't catch a couple of viruses and they did my computer in :(

The computer is working much better than it has in almost 4 months, but I all my photos and other files are on a new external hard drive and I haven't had time to plug it in. That will have to wait for another day.

DH and I spent Saturday morning cleaning out the basement getting it ready for the rest of the drywall installation. It is up now and waiting for taping and mudding which will probably be done next weekend. Then I'll paint the walls and shop for new flooring. I'm leaning towards vinyl flooring of some kind. I'm also going to rearrange the studio and purchase a couple of tables to make a larger cutting table. It should be a much more pleasant place to work once it's all completed.

Yesterday I finished a sweater I have been knitting for 2 months. I made it out of acrylic yarn by Red Heart in Monet color-way. I had to take it apart once and make some changes in order to get it to fit well. Now that I have the pattern figured out, I'm making a 2nd sweater - this one using Wool-Ease by Red-Lion Yarns. I'll post photos on these 2 sweaters soon.

Two New Quilts and an Award

My new wholecloth quilt is finally off the frame and ready to rinse and block. This photo is the back of the quilt. The front is full of marks from the water soluble pen as well as water-soluble thread. After it's blocked, it will be ready for binding and a label. It needs a name yet, but I haven't made up my mind about that yet. The plan is to enter it into MQS as well as the Missouri River Quilt Guild Show, and the Missouri State Fair this year.

This is a photo of appliques auditioning on background fabric. Or should I say, the background fabric is being auditioned. I made the pattern for the cat from a photo of my own calico cat. I haven't added her eyes yet. They will be painted on after the quilting is done. The greenery is yet to be cut out, and the entire composition needs to be decided. This has been a fun project - something I needed after the past year full of stressful life events.

The Wedding Gown quilt won "Most Unusual Quilt" at the customer's quilt guild show! Congratulations Pat! Pat has also applied for the quilts' entry into Paducah. Wish her luck.

Companion Quilt

This is the other customer quilt made with 1930's reproduction fabrics. Very sweet!

It's one of those quilts that makes you feel happy.

30's Reproduction

This baby quilt is made from 30's repro fabrics with unbleached muslin. This is a customer quilt and is one of two quilts she made from 30's repro fabrics. The 2nd quilt is still on the frame, but almost complete.

A close-up of the quilting.

DH and I are working on enlarging my studio space :D  We're cleaning out the storage side of the basement and will set up a cutting table in that space. I haven't decided what else to include, but will have a better idea of the usable space once we're done clearing out stuff. Oh, the possibilities!