It was inevitable. I had to start a new project. And it will be small new project because the fabric I’m using is one I used for the Tiffany Lamp New York Beauty top and is just about gone. But … Continue reading
Kaleidoscope Stars
Tag Archives: fussy cutting/printing
Colourful Crosspatch Quilt
It’s done! Finally done! Monday night at about midnight I took the final stitch, graded the final few seams and my version of Lucy Boston’s Patchwork of the Crosses top was completed. That was far too late to try to get … Continue reading
A Few More Pickled Ladies
While working on the pieced border, I decided that more of the ladies needed to join the party. A few minutes of fussy cutting/printing and I had all I needed for the extra Pickled Ladies. First up is this pair. … Continue reading
Fussy Cutting/Printing – Lots of Photos
There have been a few questions about how I fussy cut and print the florals for the Pickled Lady blocks so I thought a short tutorial might be the best way to describe the method I use. Lester is watching rather intently.
When I decided to make the Pickled Lady blocks, the first thing I did was print one of the clam shapes on a piece of plain paper which I had cut to the size I would be using. Once that was done, the interior of the shape was cut out along the stitching line and I had my window template.
I identified a few flowers on this piece of fabric that were going to be perfect for fussy cutting. Once that’s done, I start looking for one of the flowers that’s near the edge of the fabric.
This is where the window template comes into play. Once I’ve found a flower that I want to fussy cut, I place the window template over it and move it around until the flower is in the centre of the clamshell.
If you look closely at this shot, you’ll see that I’ve got the quarter-inch line on the ruler placed on the printed ruler line on the paper. When I cut out my window template, I cut off about an eighth of an inch along two of the edges of the paper so that I could use the printed ruler line on the paper to line up with rather than trying to line up the edge of the ruler with the edge of the paper.
Here I’ve cut along two sides of the fabric, once again using the quarter-inch line on the ruler lined up on the printed line on the fabric. The printed line is directly above the cutting line of the shape and that gives me the perfect placement when it comes to ironing the fabric on to freezer paper and getting it ready to print.
The selvedge is still attached. I leave it on when I’m fussy cutting as sometimes there will be a flower at an edge that I want to use and I will need a sliver of it to have a large enough piece to iron on to the freezer paper. I know it will be cut away once the shape is printed, so I don’t worry about it. In this case, the majority of the selvedge will be cut away even before pressing it to the freezer paper.
Once I’ve cut the top and right side, I remove the window template and cut the bottom and left side of the fabric piece. At that point, all I need to know is the size of freezer paper I’m using to cut the fabric to the right shape. Then it’s simply a matter of pressing it on to the freezer paper and printing my shape. Here you can see that while the selvedge was still attached, once I cut out my shape there will be none of it left.
Once that’s done, it takes only a minute to cut the shape out and then start stitching. Smudge hopes you found this as relaxing as he did. In fact, he was unimpressed when the printer started as I think it woke him up.
A bit of stitching and a few minutes later, I had a Pickled Lady block finished to add to the stack.
The back.
Fabrics for Pickled Ladies
On Saturday we went up to Sew Sisters as I wanted to look for more florals for the Pickled Ladies blocks. I found these and then, on Sunday, went through the final container of shabby chic fabrics here and found another great grouping. So now I think I’m getting close to the halfway mark with florals for the clamshells. I’m thinking of adding some Oriental florals into the mix as there are some that play quite nicely with the shabby chic.
As well as the florals, I found some great blacks that will work perfectly for the spiky triangles in the arcs. There are some super black fabrics around now and they’re light enough on the back that printing the shapes with Inklingo is no problem. I find that now I look at the back of fabrics when choosing them and am surprised at just how many dark fabrics are quite light on the back. This photo doesn’t really show the black fabrics that well — they’re much darker than they appear in this. I think I had the flash on when I took the photo.
Sunday afternoon I got out my window template and fussy cut and printed enough of the clamshells to keep me stitching for a couple of weeks. Using a window template makes it so easy and quick that I had close to 30 blocks ready in next to no time.
Friday we had temperatures in the 90s. Saturday? Saturday it was maybe in the low 60s but very breezy and it felt unbelievably chilly after that heat the day before. The sky on Saturday looked so stormy, although we had nothing but a few sprinkles of rain. We got this shot just down the street from Sew Sisters.
This one of some of the trees in the area looks very much like fall to me. I kept saying to Mr. Q.O. that the clouds looked like snow clouds. Hopefully we don’t see any of that white stuff until January or February.
Last week I went to visit one of the blogs I read, Ann Champion‘s, and got a warning about malicious content. On Sunday, Ann posted about what had happened — all as a result of links left in comments to pages that no longer exist. It seems Google has a bot that crawls through links on blogs and if a link doesn’t work, the warning goes up about that blog. Rather than repeat what Ann wrote, I’d suggest you go to Ann’s blog and read about her experience. What it has made me realize is that links in comments are something I’m going to go through and delete. It’s going to take a couple of weeks to do so but, after reading about Ann’s experience, I’m thinking I’d rather be pro-active on this issue. I think I’ll also test any links I had in older posts and, if they no longer work, then I’ll delete them as well. Ann wrote, “As you have time..go through your blog and check your links. Active links of any kind are considered dangerous by the Google ‘bot’ when they reside in your comments,” so I think it’s worth the effort.
We had the heat on, on and off, during the weekend. At one point, Lester was sitting on the windowsill and the warm air blowing up from the heating unit was making his ruff look rather — well, interesting.
Smudge we caught in mid-yawn.
Pickled Ladies Quilt, Block 1
The new clamshell pickle collections have me completely enthralled. I immediately had at least three different ideas, one of which will involve my favourite shabby chic fabrics and some Oriental prints. I’m calling it Pickled Ladies as there’s a story that goes along with it which I will eventually write and share. The first of the Pickled Ladies is shown above.
The back:
I’m fussy cutting/printing the clamshells. It’s quite quick to do as I printed out one clamshell on a piece of paper cut down to the right size for printing just one shape, Mr. Q.O. cut out the interior of it and I have a window template which makes it very simple to figure out how to cut the fabrics and have a flower or other item as the centre of the clamshell.
The baby quilt top is finished, pressing is partially done and I’m still hunting for the flannel backing for it. As soon as it’s quilted, which I expect will only take a weekend or two, we’ll get good pictures of it.
Labour Day weekend was chilly. In fact, so chilly that on Monday we turned the heat on for a bit. It’s too bad that it was chilly, windy and rainy as so many people head to cottage country for that one last summer long weekend. Of course, today it’s supposed to be quite warm and humid again — typical of the weather here, as I can’t remember a year when, on the first day of school, we weren’t all roasting by the time school was over.
Smudge was curled up on the pink chair.
Lester was also on the pink chair … at the same time.
Quilt Obsession 