This project began a few weeks ago with my first snow dyeing experiment. Yellow, ringed with red and then purple snow dyes turned this:
Into this:
This looked like one of those NASA images from space to me so I decided to see what I could do to accentuate it with some free motion quilting.
I used June Tailor fusible polyester batting for the first time. As this piece was going to be a wallhanging, I figured that I would be fine with some stiffness from the fusible. At first, my machine occasionally skipped a stitch, which was frustrating. Then I changed my needle and all was fine. I was surprised at how much the batting flattened down though. Despite the poly batting being about a 1/2-3/4" thick, it flattened right down to about what I'd expect from my regular Warm & Natural. It is stiffer though, which it fine by me because I like it to hang straight.
For the quilting, I did swirls, pebbles, wishbones, loop-d-loops, stars/satellites, and ribbons. I put the information I learned from Angela Walter's Free Motion Quilting Negative Space class on Craftsy to good use in mixing up the swirls and pebbles and moving from one type of motif to another. I'm very happy with the quilting, especially after the first sad attempt at the centre nebula - happy dance!
I used a variety of Aurifil colours in the yellow, orange, red and purple families (#2277, 5009, 1103, 2581, 1240, 1243, 2140 to be specific) in the front and black thread in the back. I just love the sheen of the Aurifil thread against the colours of the fabric. It's hard to see the quilting in the photos so feel free to click on them to enlarge.
I faced it using Susan Brubaker Knapp's Non-Mitred Facing, which I've used on a number of pieces.
Snow Crab Nebula - Front |
Quiltography: "Snow Crab Nebula," by Michèle-Renée Charbonneau, Ottawa, 19" by 21", 2013.
Snow Crab Nebula - Quilting Detail |
Snow Crab Nebula - Quilting Detail |
Snow Crab Nebula - Quilting Detail |
Snow Crab Nebula - Back |
Linking up to TGIFF!, which is over with Lynne @ Never Too Hot To Stitch.