The red bench quilt is all fused and ready to be quilted.
I purposely cut my fabrics larger than required to allow me some leeway when I cut it down to the final size of 18 x 45 inches. I don’t want to cut off the extra fabric yet (it’s nice to have extra fabric at the edges to hold onto while I’m quilting) but I didn’t want to waste time quilting fabric I’m going to cut off. My technique for squaring up a quilt is to lay a piece of Pellon 1-inch grid on top of the quilt. It’s sheer enough that I can see the quilt through it. I folded the Pellon to a size of 19 x 46 to allow for a seam allowance when I add the facing. I lined up the horizon line and smoothed it out from there. I pinned the Pellon to the quilt, then took it to my machine and basted around it with orange thread. When I quilt, I’ll know to stay within the orange basting lines.
Meanwhile . . . (you may recall that this piece is for a show titled ‘Abstracted’ where pairs of artists will choose an image, and one will create a representative fibre art piece, and the other will create an abstract piece – more info here) . . . my sister Anne has started working on her abstract piece.
Below you can see her initial fabric selection and some fabrics prepared for vat dying. Several months ago, I gave Anne some of the fabrics I was planning to use in my quilt. But I think I’ve changed my mind about a lot of the fabrics since then, so I just mailed her a package of the fabrics I actually used. To design her abstract piece, Anne will work with the photo image upside down. That makes it easier to design in an abstract manner, as objects read as shapes rather than recognizable “things”.
As always, I’m linking up with these blogs for WiP Wednesday. Click on the buttons below to see all the people participating and check out their projects.
Thank you for sharing your great technique for marking the boundaries of quilts – I, too, like to trim a project after finishing it and was until now resigned to quilt more than required. Your bench is coming along nicely!
That is brilliant, your squaring up and basting process sounds really good!! Thanks for telling us about it!!
Clever girl! What an excellent idea,Terry!