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Friday 27 February 2015

Progress on the Leaf Art Quilt

Wow, it was Christmas when I last posted about this project. I have been continually working on it when I could and now I have finished the main design of the leaves on the quilt top. I've put the quilt batting behind it and added a backing fabric and quilted around the leaves and added the veins to them. Now I'm ready to quilt the background. I had to distance myself from it for a few days while I mulled over what design I would quilt into the background.

As I looked at the fabric, I found the background to be too light and plain so I knew I needed to liven it up a bit but not make it too overpowering. I still want the leaves to "jump off the page" so to speak.
As I was investigating different patterns for free-motion quilting, I came across the patterns I used to make the fabric cards with leaves on them. Good thing I didn't throw those away. I decided that they would make a wonderful quilted background that would tie the whole piece together.




I decided to use the three colours of thread I used on the leaves themselves, a burgundy, ochre and brown.


I didn't want to start right out on my finished piece in case it looked horrible so I found a piece of fabric that resembled the background fabric and did a test drive on it.


I thought it looked pretty good. Not too overpowering and still interesting. Ok, time to start on the actual quilt. I photocopied my pattern pieces on sheets of photocopy paper which was used on once side. (That way, I didn't feel like I was wasting paper).  I then pinned the pattern to my quilt where I wanted to stitch the design.


Using this pattern I free-motion stitched right through the paper, changing the thread colour three times for interest. Once the whole pattern was stitched, I tore the paper free leaving just the stitching.






You can't really tell that the pattern is leaves but you get the feeling that it's leaves. I am in the process of filling the whole background with this stitching. It's quite time-consuming but I'm liking how it's turning out.

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