Colorful Fabric Collage! Come play inside Sue Bleiweiss' new book!

When Sue Bleiweiss invited me to be a contributing artist in her new book I jumped at the opportunity to participate.  First, I like and respect Sue as an artist and author.  Second, I love to use fusible, and when I say fusible I am ONLY referring to Mistyfuse because it is the only kind I use!  It works beautifully on a wide variety of quilt and mixed media projects.  I love using Mistyfuse on both cloth and paper!  I work with silk organza a great deal.  Nothing, and I mean NOTHING will allow your sheers to look like they are supposed to:  transparent and with a lovely non-stiff hand, like Mistyfuse.

For my project in the book, a small piece called "Labels", I opted to use silk organza, a wool-blend felt for the substrate, and a wide variety of clothing labels.  I wanted to show how much fun it can be to work with silk organza (in this case, a piece of my hand-dyed) as the layering possibilities are endless.  I discovered how cool it is to cut two different shapes from (as it turns out) two different die cutting systems and create an entirely new look.

"Labels"

First, I pressed the felt, organza, and the clothing labels so they were as crease-free as possible.  

I applied Mistyfuse to the surface of the felt and the "wrong side" of the organza by placing a Goddess Sheet under and over the surfaces of each.  

Note:  This is one of the two places I use rechargeable electric scissors:

Cutting Mistyfuse off the roll is a breeze with these, especially when working with organza.

Organza tends to have a great deal of static electricity.

Once the felt piece was cool, I cut a second piece of Mistyfuse and overlaid it on the surface of the felt but did not fuse it.  With certain items I have discovered that a second piece fused to the first will often assist in containing things that are errant and loose, such as these wonky clothing labels.  The labels do NOT want to play nice, so the second layer of the Mistyfuse makes it mind better!

I took the organza and cut the Ricky Tims shape from my Accuquilt Go! cutter, the layered it onto the remaining uncut piece of organza.  This double layer of fused organza was then cut with the dress shape on the Big Shot cutter.  Magical!

Note:  I prefer laying the organza over the cutter so that the fusible side is facing up but it isn't 

necessary.  The main thing to remember if you are cutting more than one fused layer is to "stack" your pieces so the fusible sides are always separated.  They can get stuck together a bit and it will cause you a bit more work!

This die-cut piece is then overlaid onto the remaining piece of organza and fused.

The double-layered piece is then positioned over the dress die 

and run through the Sizzix cutter.

Yay!

I carefully placed the labels in some sort of closely organized mosaic over the surface of the felt (remember I have a loose layer of Mistyfuse there).  Once I have it the way I want it I fused it to the surface.  

Then I placed the dress in position and fused it.  One of the best parts about the organza is the layered transparency.  I love being able to see the clothing labels through the dress.  So much fun!

The original piece was very closely quilted in rows using my dual-feed on the Bernina 750QE.  

The book is available on amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1620336928/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=3BRRCQ3CEFRP7&coliid=I1G6SU3YD7AFOR

and here's the interweave website link:

http://www.interweavestore.com/colorful-fabric-collage-grouped

Please be sure to stop by all the other blogs on this hop and leave a comment to be eligible for the giveaway!

May 4: Sue Bleiweiss: http://www.suebleiweiss.com/blog/

May 4: Jamie Fingal :http://www.jamiefingaldesigns.com/
May 5: Leslie Tucker Jenison: http://leslietuckerjenison.blogspot.com/
May 6: Terri Stegmiller : http://stegart.blogspot.com/
May 7: Deborah Boschert : http://deborahsjournal.blogspot.com/
May 8: Desiree Habicht : http://myclothesline.blogspot.com/
May 9: Kathy Sperino : http://finishinglinesbyksperino.blogspot.com/
May 10: Barb Forrister : http://www.barbforrister.com/blog/
May 11 Kathy York : http://www.aquamoonartquilts.blogspot.com/
May 12: Lyric Kinard : http://lyrickinard.com/lyric-kinard-blog/

  

Using Kaffe Fassett Shot Cotton in a Baby Quilt!

I'm sure I'm late to this party, but I recently fell hard for Kaffe Fassett's "shot cotton" collection.  I even splurged and bought the entire palette of colors, and as you can see by this image, it is a very big selection of colors!  I bought this quarter-yard assortment from Glorious Color.com.

My first project using these gorgeous colors involves a baby quilt.  I co-hosted a shower for a young (LA Modern Guild) friend recently, and decided to pre-fuse the fabric with Mistyfuse, then die-cut circles and flower petals in a selection of colors she is using in the nursery.  Each shower guest was asked to write a word describing a characteristic they hope the baby will have.  I used Pentel gel roller fabric pens for this and they worked beautifully.  For ease of use, I temporarily fused the die cuts onto squares of parchment.  

The fabric on the left is stretched over a canvas for nursery decor.  I am basing the baby quilt colors on it.

A close-up image of one of the shot cottons.  Gorgeous!

After fusing the cloth sections are doubled up and die-cut with my Go! cutter

I cut 4.5 inch squares from all these prints.

The flowers & circles will be fused onto the squares after the shower.

Rather than a traditional batting I have decided to use one layer of diaper gauze to keep this lighter in weight.  This is, after all, a California baby.  I also know that the baby has received two other beautiful quilts!  

 Here is the Pentel pen.

A sample....

die-cuts fused temporarily onto parchment squares....

After piecing the quilt top the die-cuts were fused to the surface

Two sections of diaper gauze yardage were zig-zagged together for the "batting".

This stuff is lovely!  (although I found out later that it causes a lot of tension issues when I attempted to free-motion quilt it!)

I pinned the quilt top to the gauze.

I decided to pillowcase the quilt and avoid the additional bulk that a binding would create.  Therefore, I pinned the gauze to the quilt top-only, stitched the quilt back (right sides together) around the perimeter and left an opening.  The quilt was turned right side out and the opening hand-stitched closed.  The edges were steam-pressed and re-pinned.  

I found that I had to use my regular presser foot (#1) and use feed dogs up to stitch this quilt together. 

San Antonio Modern Quilt Guild Retreat (my first quilt retreat ever!)

Why did I wait so long to do this?  Maybe it was because I wanted to have the best-possible retreat experience!  The young SA Modern Quilt guild hosted a wonderful retreat in Boerne TX at Ye Kendall Inn from Friday through Sunday.  It seemed like a perfect experience to me:  a great location just up the highway from home (it only took me 15 or 20 minutes to get there), lovely accommodations and great food, and we had a nice conference room with everything we needed.
It seemed like I hauled everything I owned (again) out of my studio, but I was glad I took it because I used it all.  One of the fun new toys I played with during the retreat was my shiny new GO! die cutting system, now called "Go Get Em".  I got a great deal on it at the Cincinnati quilt festival, but frankly, I wasn't quite sure how I would use it.  As soon as I started playing with it the wheels started turning.  I have a LOT of plans for this guy.
This thing will cut strips and shapes, even difficult-to-cut applique designs.  Apparently one can get custom die cutters made for the professional model.  I love this thing!  I cut strips, and also cut pre-fused cloth for the appliqued pieces on my little quilt top.

Never able to leave well-enough alone, I cut up my strip pieced top and resorted it, inserting a thin strip of orange batik fabric into the mix.

Look at the cool die-cut applique pieces!

I used the negative space around the cut to fashion a second shape, which I like a lot.

Now, take a look at the facility:

 I had this 1850s-era cabin to myself, which had been restored and moved onto the property.

A claw-foot cast iron tub!  I loved it!

Here is the conference room.

Lunch on the patio.

We were fortunate to have pleasant weather all weekend.

We dined on the back porch.

The food was excellent and the service was equally great!