Fiber Artist Journey: Work in Progress Wednesdays

Original sketched design

New week, new project. Well, actually one completely new, one just finished, and another in process. First, I started my next 5 x 7 Challenge piece, which I had sketched out last week.

Paper-piecing pattern

In thinking about how I could most effectively make this, I decided that paper-piecing would probably be the quickest with a nicely finished result. Since most of my art isn't geometric, I haven't had a lot of practice with paper-piecing.

First section completed

This is where those of you who are familiar at this skill will probably laugh. When you look at my pattern to the left, I have had to build each section with numbering. However, I'm having to build parts of the sections on separate papers and then combine them, as my lines don't all match up. It's seeming to work however.

"Opening" by Christina Fairley Erickson
100% Freehand Machine embroidered and Freemotion Quilted

I also just completed my first piece for the Fiber Funsters 10 x 16 challenge. Guess I'm all about the challenges this year! finishing off this dense freehand machine embroidery was more difficult than I expected. I decided to do a trap unto effect with a second layer of batting inside the lily, to have it stand out from the background. I then added the backing and freemotion quilted around the flower and in uneven horizontal lines over the blue background. Of course, I realized after doing a good portion that I could have just as well quilted from the back side since the flower was already outline, which would have made it possible to have even spacing of the lines. As it turned out, I couldn't distinguish my quilting lines from all the thread of the background, which makes it a little less precise when you view from the back side.

"Opening" back - faced and freemotion quilted

See the white
on the edge?

The real difficulty came when I faced the piece and tried to turn the facing to the back. With such dense stitching, it was remarkably stiff and didn't want to gracefully bend and hide the facing. Also, the process stressed it a bit and little bits of the white under-fabric were showing through.

The edge after painting
with fabric markers

See the difference/?

Well, I steamed and starched and pulled and cajoled, stay-stitched the seam allowance to the facing, and cut away as much of the seam allowance as possible. I hand stitched the facing down, but still wasn't fully satisfied with the result. In the end, I dug out some fabric markers and 'painted' the edges and little white spots that shouldn't be showing! I think it did the trick!

My final piece to share is the second quilt for Fiber Funsters. The word we're using this time is "Celebrate!" as our theme. I'm not sure what I think of this piece yet or if it has any promise. I played around with some fabrics I'd hand-dyed and painted and this is how far I've gotten. I don't really know how I'm going to free-motion quilt it yet... But it's supposed to be done in a week, so that gives me a little motivation!