Thursday 8 May 2008

New feathers

Last night I started designing the 2nd of the quilts I've entered for this year's shows but haven't made yet (gulp).I sat at my desk with a pencil and an eraser and played around until I came up with this. Most of the erasing was done to stop the feathers looking too formal. I find it quite difficult not to make the lobes even like the old feathers.
Once I was happy with it, I went over the pencil with a black pen. I then flipped the paper over (lightweight sketch pad) and copied it onto the back of the sheet. This gave me the mirror image.
The fabric is fine enough to trace through without the use of a lightbox with extra white paper behind the design. The brown lines are a disappearing Clover pen ti give me registration marks.
Whenever I've marked up wholecloths, I've always been a little sad to see the marking disappear. It's a totally different look. So this time the marking is part of the design. The fabric is pale blue and the markings are in teal and deliberately blurred. I shall stitch in teal thread to emphasize the lines.
Once I have this border design marked up, I shall design the centre of the quilt. I'm wondering whether to stick with the teal or change to a different colour for the central motif.

3 comments:

  1. Your work is amazing. I was wondering what type of machine you use? Is it a long arm or a regular sewing machine? I am just getting into machine quilting and would love to know if there are any books you could suggest?

    Thanks so much!

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  2. Very yummy, and much more what I had in mind than what I have just drafted. Still I guess we do have to go with what the quilt wants. It's odd but I don't think mine will look like one of mine at all now.

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