One of the things I really like in Vanuatu is the barking gecko. Actually, I like all geckos, full stop. They do the job of spiders without being anywhere near so nasty about it. We have geckos at home in Adelaide, and there are geckos in many of my favourite destinations in Australia. All different sorts and shapes of geckos, but all a variation on the non-threatening, insect-eating, big-eyed and big-toed small nocturnal lizard. Most geckos make noise of some description, but the barking geckos in Vanuatu are LOUD. It is unbelievable how much noise a tiny lizard can make!
Finding Quilt Inspiration in the Everyday: Day 11
I have been intending to add Vanuatu’s barking geckos to my everyday quilt inspiration series pretty much since the beginning. I would love to be able to FMQ their shapes onto a quilt such as the Tanna Island quilt design from Monday, or maybe even the black, white and red quilt I am planning for the Splash of Color QAL. They would also make great silhouette shapes for appliqué. For that matter, appliqué is an easier place to start with a new shape because it does not require drawing skills in real-time. You can edit until you’re happy. 🙂
How was I inspired by the Barking Geckos?
To start me on my gecko journey, I photographed several barking geckos as they hunted their evening meal by the light over our backdoor. Then I traced their forms. This gave me instant shapes I can use for appliqué silhouettes, but also a place to start working out a formula to quilt them freehand.
Would you like some gecko shapes for appliqué? Here are the six that I traced today. They are small so I could fit them all on one pdf page, but you can enlarge them as you need. Download my barking gecko silhouettes pdf here: Barking Geckos
How to quilt Barking Geckos
What makes a shape a gecko? Well, for these geckos it is a distinctively shaped head, the angle and size of the legs, the bulbous toes, the fat tummy and a tail that is about the same length as the rest of the lizard combined. When I can recreate these shapes with relative ease, I will be able to quilt barking geckos.
Here is my first attempt at free-hand drawing a barking gecko. Only happy with one of the four legs…..
Here is my second attempt.
Better. Three legs are great. The head is right. The tail could be a touch longer, but who would notice? Actually, if I could quilt geckos that looked no worse than this reliably I would be happy. If anyone is analysing my quilting shapes that closely and critically, we are not likely to see eye-to-eye about life’s priorities! So, my conclusion is…. with a bit of practice I think I will be able to quilt geckos. Yay!
I hope you like geckos. I do! If you like quilting critters, you might also like my post in this series about hermit crabs.
Also, the Fall 2017 Art with Fabric blog hop is now well underway. You can find Day 2 here. My favourite blog post from this set of artists is by Heather about her quilt “Dancers”. She describes how she takes her inspiration and turns it into an abstract representation. If you are looking for more ways to turn your everyday observations into quilt designs, I think you might like her post.
Dandelion Shadows: How to Shadow Trapunto with Felt.
Did you know there are an amazing number ways of achieving the stuffed quilting known as trapunto? When I was at school we were only taught one method. Snip the back of your work after stitching the trapunto outlines, stuff in some extra padding and sew the hole back up again. Of all the trapunto methods I now know, this would be my least recommended!
Trapunto quilting can be achieved by hand or machine. If you want to do trapunto by hand, read this fabulous article by Quilts A Lot and watch this video she recommends. This is a much nicer method than the slit and stitch I was taught. I would like to give it a go, “one day”.
Actually, even if you don’t want to do trapunto/french boutis by hand, these links are worth a look. The trapunto wedding rings quilt of Quilts A Lot is amazing, and the more techniques you know about, the more idea resources you’ll have to use in all your designs. 🙂
Machine Trapunto
Probably the most common method of trapunto I see these days is created by machine free-motion stitching onto fabric layered over polyester wadding. The wadding is then clipped to the trapunto shape before a quilt sandwich is made. There are many experts out there on this, including Geta Grama. I am not one of them, but I have given this type of trapunto a go recently on my Dream Big mini quilt. Now I am playing with shadow trapunto.
Shadow Trapunto
Shadow trapunto is when the top fabric and clipped wadding is laid directly over a second fabric rather than straight onto the quilt batting. The fabric between the polyester wadding and the quilt batting is expected to show through the top layer, except where the trapunto lies. Here the wadding obscures the fabric design underneath, creating a “shadow”. Thus the trapunto design has even more visual impact than ordinary trapunto.
Cross-section through a shadow trapunto quilt sandwich
The remainder of this blog post is a description of how I did the Dandelion Shadows trapunto with felt.
Felt Shadow Trapunto Cushion Project: materials
What you need: which fabrics to choose
The first step of a shadow trapunto project is to choose the top fabric and the feature fabric. The main requirement for the top fabric is that it needs to be partially see-through. You can use very transparent fabrics like tulle, or more opaque fabrics, like cotton lawn. Choose white or a very pale colour. For this project I wanted a subtle effect, so I choose white cotton lawn for its partially opaque nature.
The most important requirement for the feature fabric for shadow trapunto is that there is good contrast within the print. Light coloured prints often perform very well. Saturated prints that look bright but have low colour value contrast do not give very pleasing results. If in doubt, lay your top fabric over potential feature fabrics until you find one that shows through as you would like.
The feature fabric for my Dandelion Shadows project practically chose itself. While I was out shopping I noticed this hexagon print fabric, and it sparked an idea. It is “Grecian Bath House Tiles” by Emma & Mila.
Grecian Bath House Tiles fabric by Emma and Mila
Don’t forget, of course, that you’ll also need quilt batting and a backing for your project, seperate from the trapunto supplies.
What you need: which trapunto stuffing to choose
Finally, you need a material for the trapunto stuffing. To do a project with the method I am describing here, you will need a thick non-fraying fabric that you can cut into shapes without stitching it down first. I used felt, but thick fleece or similar would also work. The result is a much flatter trapunto effect than the traditional method…. perhaps it is “modern trapunto”. I like both effects…. but I would use them in different contexts. Choose a colour that works with your feature and top fabrics, because the idea is that you will partially see the trapunto stuffing through the top layer.
How much of everything you will need:
For this cushion (about 42cm square) I used:
– 50cm WOF of the feature fabric, cut into 2x 50cm² pieces.
– 50cm² white cotton lawn
– scraps of yellow and white felt
– 50cm² low-loft polyester batting
I didn’t use a backing because I intended to make a cushion out of the trapunto piece, so a backing would just be hidden inside the cushion. However, if you wish to back your trapunto, by all means do so.
My furry helper approving materials for the shadow trapunto.Time to do something else for a while. These materials are taken!
Felt Shadow Trapunto Cushion Project: creating the trapunto quilt sandwich
How to create your trapunto shapes:
Once you have chosen your trapunto materials (and rescued them from your furry quilting friends), the next job is to produce the felt shapes to make the trapunto design. I chose to overlay the printed hexagons on the feature fabric with felt hexagons of the same size. You could exploit any medium or large scale fabric print in the same way. Or you can create any original design that you are willing to cut out and glue down onto your feature fabric. Either draw your design in reverse onto the back of your felt, or trace your reversed design onto freezer paper and use these templates to cut out your felt pieces.
Freezer paper adheres really well to felt…. who knew?!
I used freezer paper. This was actually a bit of an experiment, because I thought that the freezer paper would not stick to felt more than once, due to the great amount of fluff that remains on the freezer paper once the felt is peeled away. But I got at least 4 re-uses out of each freezer paper template, and it would have been more, but I didn’t require any more felt hexagons.
Attaching the felt to the feature fabric:
Elmer’s glue works well to tack the felt shapes down, but use it sparingly.
To get the felt accurately attached to the feature fabric I used a very thin smear of Elmer’s school glue (available in Officeworks here in Australia) to position the pieces. Once the glue was tacky enough that the pieces couldn’t shift, I flipped the project over and hot ironed from the back. This sets the glue hard so it cannot damage my sewing machine. However, if I want to re-position any pieces, they just gently peel off. Elmer’s glue is so fantastic!
Take care to use just a little so it doesn’t soak through to the front of the felt, especially if you are using a highly transparent top fabric…. but if it does, Elmer’s glue washes out, so as long as you can wash your project, it shouldn’t matter.
Once the pieces are securely attached and ironed dry, layer your work over the quilt batting and backing (optional for cushions). Then layer the top fabric (cotton lawn) over the top of everything else.
Cotton lawn laid over my felt shapes glued to my feature fabric, and the quilt batting.
Secure all layers with your favourite basting method (in my case, quilting pins).
Dandelion Shadows trapunto pin-basted
Felt Shadow Trapunto Cushion Project: quilting
Now it is time to quilt. I chose to quilt around the trapunto with a pebble, spiral and feathers design I saw on Karen Miller’s work posted in the Free Motion Quilting Frenzy facebook group (if you are into FMQ – join this group!!). There was no particular reason to use this FMQ design, except that I really wanted to try it. Any dense fill you like will do.
I densely quilted the background around the trapunto to help the feature fabric show throughClose-up of the FMQThe pebble quilting is easier to see from the back
I finished off the quilting by adding some stems and leaves to the trapunto flowers and dandelion clock. These are quilted in a very pale grey-green. The idea is that they don’t detract from the trapunto and are only really noticeable if you are closely looking at the piece. Ghost details, if you wish.
Felt Shadow Trapunto Cushion Project: finishing off the cushion cover construction
Once I was happy with my trapunto piece, I squared up the sides. I cut the remaining piece of my feature fabric in half and hemmed one long edge on both pieces. I then sewed these pieces to the sides of the trapunto sample.
Dandelion Shadows trapunto with fabric attached for cushion envelope.
I then folded the flaps over the trapunto piece, right sides together, so that the cushion backing pieces overlapped by 3-4 inches. I then sewed up the top and bottom of the quilt cover and trimmed the excess from the seams.
Envelope Cushion cover ready to sew.
Here is the back once it was turned right sides out and filled with a pillow form.
And the finished cushion 🙂
I hope these instructions are clear enough. If you have been following my blog lately, you’ll know that I am writing things in a bigger hurry than usual. If you have any questions, please ask and I’ll endeavour to answer and/or edit to clear things up.
Shadow trapunto with felt is a lot faster and less stressful than the more traditional kind. No risk of accidentally snipping fabric or stitches. But it does give a different effect, so it’s not a replacement for stuffed trapunto. I really like the effect this gives. I will be doing this again, for sure.
What do you think? Are you going to give this a go? Have you already done trapunto using this method? I’d love to know what you made.
Now, I’m going to have to love and leave you….. we have a family day in between all the work we are doing here in Vanuatu. Going to see an active volcano!!!!!! I am hoping tomorrow’s “everyday” quilt inspiration slot will be anything but! xx
From the Sewing Room: free-motion Bugs in my Garden quilting motif
Welcome back! Today we are looking at bug and garden free-motion quilt motifs you can use to quilt a relaxed and friendly child’s quilt. You can use these motifs in almost endless combinations to personalise all sorts of projects. It will be fun! 🙂
At our house, we like bugs and slugs, and most things creepy crawly. Not actually in our house…. outside, thanks! However, we do have half a dozen buggy residents who are welcome in our house. (If you hate insects, look away now!! Please don’t unfollow…. I’m not likely to post them again!) Otherwise, if you’re game, meet “the girls”…..
This is one of our Spiny Leaf Insects. They are Australian natives and very low care pets. This old girl is well past her expected life span and is mum or aunty to all our other girls. She is about 15 cm long, stretched out.One of our half-grown Spinys. She’s proof-reading my blog while I clean her cage. 🙂
Insects and other garden dwellers are a regular feature in family discussions around here. Accordingly, I have quilted bugs on quite a few projects in the last few years. So when I received a colourful bug and flower-themed quilt sandwich to quilt for a charity group, for once I knew exactly what to do with it!
Bugs in my Garden FMQ
I only quilt friendly bugs. Nothing that bites, and no spiders to date. And I always quilt the bugs a place to live. So my go-to “Bugs in my Garden” free-motion set consists of caterpillars, snails, dragonflies, butterflies, leaves, flowers and suns. I have also added hearts to this particular quilt. All the motifs are linked with a simple loop-de-loop. This collection is fast to quilt, and results in a nice amount of quilting that leaves the quilt snuggly soft. It is also fun for children to hunt the motifs on their quilts. After the formal trapunto project with feathers and micro stippling last week, quilting Bugs in my Garden felt like dancing!
Here is the finished quilt. Now it goes off to another charity quilter to be bound.
Simple and cheerful. I wanted it to stay that way after quilting.
More about the Bugs in my Garden FMQ motifs
Here are some close-ups of the quilting:
Bugs in my Garden: sun, dragonfly and heart shapesBugs in my Garden: snail and leaves
Here are some even closer views of the critters in my garden:
CaterpillarDragonflySnailButterfly
And some of the garden motifs too:
Daisy FlowerSunshine
Want to try “Bugs in the Garden”?
FMQ pdf download
I’m hoping you like Bugs in my Garden and can think of someone who would like to explore a quilt covered in these fun motifs. If you would like to try them yourself, I have put them all the motifs together in a 4-page pdf you can download for free. You don’t have to follow my blog or sell me your soul. Just promise me you’ll pay it forward a little. 🙂
Download here: Bugs in my Garden motifs
This pdf contains line drawings of the motifs with travelling directions marked so you can see how each motif is constructed.
I hope you have caught the quilting bug!
Sorry! My daughter has been learning about puns at school this week 🙂
P.P.P.S. I always always have other stuff I am busting to tell you….. for instance, yesterday I was looking through my Pinterest feed and I found a very cool hexagon ladybird quilt. And, then when I visited the source page, it turns out the post was written for one of Amy’s early Quilt Blogger Festivals in 2010! If you want to see the quilt I stumbled on, visit this archive of Personalized Sketches and Sentiments. I have to say I was a little amazed at the coincidence, being in the process of writing a buggy post for Amy’s festival in 2017 and all! For more amazing and weirdly relevant quilt finds on the internet be sure to follow the clever chameleon where ever she goes…… soon I’ll be posting from Vanuatu!
Colour Inspiration Tuesday – Weekly Inspiration and Colour Happiness for your Quilting Mental Fitness!
Hi! Welcome back to Tuesday! Doesn’t it roll around quickly!? Today we are going to exercise the little grey cells and treat them to some beautiful colours along the way.
Mental exercise is good for your mind. Luckily for us, mental exercise can be waaaaay more fun than the physical sort! Keeping your mind active can be as fun as learning a new sewing technique. Resizing a quilt pattern. Or exploring new colour combinations. Anything that takes you out of your mental comfort zone and requires you to do some actual thinking rather than just consuming information or watching TV.
This week I have been stretching my mind by learning new techniques (playing with trapunto), and thinking about what to explore next for Colour Inspiration Tuesday. I finally settled on some strawberry flowers. These flowers remind me of the time when I was a country teen and had a huge patch of strawberry plants that I grew from a few runners my maternal grandmother gave me. I used to water them, mulch them and even feed them with cow dung that I collected and pre-soaked in buckets of water! And the little fruits were ohhhhh soooo sweet. Accessing happy memories is good for your mental health too!
Colour Inspiration Tuesday – Strawberry Vines
In honour of happy memories and mental exercise, today we have the “Strawberry Vines” colour scheme and an accompanying free-motion quilting motif to try. “Strawberry Vines” is a green, yellow and pale grey-blue colour palette. The blue is so subtle it looks white unless there is real white up against it. Go on, have another look at the photo. The main colour captured on the strawberry flower is not really pure white is it?
Anyway, I decided against designing us another quilt idea this week. The truth is that there are many good ideas floating around in Colour Inspiration Tuesday already. And I would like to have an honest go at some of them. Without the weight of new ideas to cause drag or distraction. But I did want to still give you something…… I am ever so grateful to you my readers and especially to my growing list of regular followers for coming by.
So, this week’s idea for personalising your quilts is….
Looking at the strawberry flower picture and remembering my garden with the hundreds of plants and gently tending the runners until the new plants had roots and planting them too, made me think of quilting strawberries, strawberry leaves and flowers on a continuous line. Strawberry Vines. Wouldn’t this be a lovely finishing touch for a quilt in summer colours or pastel tones? Or on reds, pinks and greens on a girl’s quilt? Do you remember the Strawberry Shortcake character from the 1980’s? A quilt in her colours!
Strawberry Shortcake…. 35 years old(ish) and still scented! This little darling now belongs to my daughter.
Strawberry Vines Quilting Motif
So I started doodling on paper and came up with my first go at such a design. Followed by a quick experiment on a fat quarter left over from Jewel Tone Diamonds and some waste cotton batting.
The three elements I used were leaf triplet, a small flower with the characteristic star in the centre between the petals, and of course, strawberries. As you can see, I tried the strawberries with and without seeds.
Strawberry Vines quilting motif
One of the things I like about my new impromptu design is that any gaps that get missed or are too hard to fill in with continuous quilting can be filled in with a curly “strawberry runner”. How good is that?!?
On my next try, I think I will round out the leaves a bit more. I know that strawberry leaves also have zigzagged edges, but that level of detail doesn’t interest me for quilting. The flowers were a bit tricky, I went through several methods to try to quilt them neatly. Here is the path that worked best for me. Start by travelling into the flower centre, and add the petals second:
A strawberry flower quilting path. Note, I have added gaps where lines would normally touch or overlay each other, so that you can easily see the pathway.
Don’t worry if you need to place more than 5 petals around the centre to finish the flower. Strawberry flowers can have 5, 6 or 7 petals. It’s the flat shape of the petals with the triangle gaps between them that make them so distinctive.
The other important thing to remember is to round off the tops of your strawberries where they meet the leaves. And don’t make the berries too symmetrical…. otherwise they look like acorns with the wrong caps instead. Or maybe persimmons. At least to me.
Next time I play with this motif I want to add flower buds as well. I have a UFO in colours not unlike “Lily Pad Glow” that might look nice quilted with this motif. What would you use it on?
Don’t need strawberry vines quilting motifs this week?
“Strawberries! How dull. Wake me up when you are quilting something interesting… like flies! Flies are cool!”
Today’s photo of strawberry flowers is from Unsplash.com. Unsplash is a collection of free, high resolution, “do what you want with” photos. Credit is not required, but I’m sure you’d love to know who is being so generous with their talent. Accordingly, this photo was provided by John-Mark Kuznietsov. Be sure to check out his collection of photos on Unsplash. John-Mark Kuznietsov
I hope you have fun trying out this strawberry vines quilting motif. See you next time for more quilting fun!
P.S. If you would like to use John-Mark’s photo or another Colour Inspiration Tuesday photo for your own projects, you can easily find all the Unsplash photos from Colour Inspiration Tuesday in one place for free in my Colour Inspiration Collection.
You are invited too. Come and see what lots of craft-loving people are sharing on the net this week!! Here’s one of my favourites from the parties so far: Project Sew a Jellyroll by Patchwork Sampler
If you have been following for a little while, you may remember that I have been attending monthly local Handiquilter group meetings at the Adelaide Sewing Centre. I really like these meetings because they expose me to different techniques and give me a semi-hard-deadline to try them before the next meeting. This past two months we have been looking at trapunto.
The meeting before last, Heather talked about trapunto in general. Then last month she upped the ante by talking about shadow trapunto. This is fantastic, because I first discovered shadow trapunto on the internet years ago, and put it on my to-do list. Where it sadly stayed ever since. Until now.
I was pretty pleased that the next month or two’s worth of homework is something I have always wanted to try. But of course, time slips away and the next meeting is looming very large, so today and yesterday I have been madly going trapunto! 🙂
Researching my Trapunto Homework
A few months ago, I also discovered an amazing quilting blog by Geta Grama. If you are not familiar with this blog, you are definitely missing out. I highly recommend that you check it out (Hey, not just yet! – when you are finished here!! ;)).
What’s more, I discovered Geta Grama about the same time Heather announced that we were going to be looking at trapunto for the next few months. And, guess what Geta does a lot of? That’s right! Trapunto! So ever since, I have had one of Geta’s tutorials earmarked. Now I am having a crack at it, and here’s how it went….
After downloading Geta’s “Dream Big” file, I printed the pdf (4 pages) and stuck them together…. this went without a hitch. Now, here’s where I started to deviate from the script. I don’t currently own a working wash-out marking pen, and they make me nervous anyway. So, I traced the lettering onto greaseproof paper and layered this over white cotton quilting fabric and 200gsm (30mm) polyester wadding. I immediately wished I had opted for the thinner polyester batting, as the fat wadding didn’t fit very well under my sewing machine foot. It probably wouldn’t have been such an issue if I had just marked the fabric rather than trying to use baking paper, so perhaps I shall have to remember to buy a washout pen next time I am shopping.
Anyway, with a little care, I managed to sew around the lettering without losing the baking paper. I used soluble thread on the top and ordinary bobbin thread underneath.
“Dream Big” sewn onto fabric and polyester batting“Dream Big” sewn into polyester batting (from the back)
Then came the bit that has always put me off trapunto. The cutting away of the excess polyester batting. I hate the thought of nicking the top fabric or the stitching holding it all together. Just to cut out this little project took me an hour, and I did accidentally cut the stitching once. It promptly started coming undone quite badly, so I re-sewed the loose part straight away. Thankfully I didn’t nick the top fabric at any point. At this point I was pretty sure that trapunto is not for me. Too stressful for a hobby!!!
“Dream Big” trapunto cut away from excess batting.
I will note here that I should have read Geta’s tutorial more thoroughly before I started. She says starching your fabric really stiff helps keep the fabric from getting accidentally snipped. I’ll have to try that next time. If there is a next time….. see, I am warming to the idea.
Putting the Quilt Together
Once I had the trapunto prepared, I layered it over another two layers of bamboo/cotton blend batting (that’s what I had at hand) and put white fabric on the back. I used two layers because I read on Karen’s quilt blog that this will give you better quilting definition and more texture. I wanted to give this a go, and there’s nothing like killing two birds with one stone.
Then I traced the innermost heart shape onto more greaseproof paper and positioned it over the quilt sandwich using the lettering as a guide to placement. I stitched the outline of the heart in white thread and removed the paper.
Marking the boundary of the innermost heart with stitching.
Then I filled in the heart around the lettering with micro stippling and finished off the letters and heart outlines by going around them twice. I used variegated Wonderfill cotton thread for the micro stippling and Robison-Anton rayon for the outlines. The Robison-Anton shreds too easily in my Sweet 16, although I never had any problems with it in my domestic machine. I personally prefer Madeira rayon in my Sweet 16. However, the colour was the decider from the threads I had on hand, so I just persisted through the inevitable broken thread episodes.
Micro-stippling allows the trapunto to really pop out.
Quilting the background
The original pattern from Geta Grama was finished off with some simple echo quilting. But never one to stick to a pattern, I had to mess with it. Besides, I am always looking for ways to increase my quilting practice without increasing my number of projects. So, I drew up a slightly altered echo quilting plan and filled in the first concentric heart with half feathers. By this stage I was having fun. There will probably be a next time after all.
“Dream Big” trapunto with echo quilting.
Then I decided to complete the feathers rather than repeating the half feathers and alternate the feathers with other designs. I started with pebbles, but my bobbin ran out. Which was fortuitous because I decided I didn’t like the pebbles after all and ripped them out.
Here are the pebbles I started before ripping them out.
In the end, I decided to fill in the gaps between the feathers with micro-stippling. It seemed better to keep the number of design elements to a minimum.
Micro-stippling combined with feathers between the echo quilting.
Finally I decided that I liked the extra white space left at this point, so I actually didn’t fill in the last few sections with dense quilting. So the project finally ended up looking like this:
Would you like some gecko shapes for appliqué? Here are the six that I traced today. They are small so I could fit them all on one pdf page, but you can enlarge them as you need. Download my barking gecko silhouettes pdf here: Barking Geckos
Dandelion Shadows: How to Shadow Trapunto with Felt.
From the Sewing Room: free-motion Bugs in my Garden quilting motif
I hope you have caught the quilting bug!
Don’t worry kitty! We are looking at quilting bugs later on this week. 
Doing My Handiquilter Group Trapunto Homework
