Wild Thing(s), You Make My Heart Sing!
Ok, so that line’s been done before… Even for this exact fabric collection, by at least one other Island Batik Ambassador. But my quilt is covered in Whimsical Wild Things and this project does truly make me happy. So I’m subjecting to you to the obvious earworm anyway!
Wild Thing! Bah da da da dah! You make my heart sing! Bah da da da dah! You make eeeeverything Grooooooo-veeeey!
But I’m not just here to torture you with old rock tunes. I promised you a progress update and a look at some of my new Australian Tangram designs on my “Whimsical and Wonky” Island Batik ambassador quilt for December. So let’s go!
Wild Thing! I think I loooove you…….. But I wanna know for sure!
I’m going to sneak a sleep in, just to confirm it. Yup, Wild Thing, Bah da da da dah! You make my heart sing! Bah da da da dah! Wild Thing! Don’t you dare moooooove me!
See, it’s not just me. Mr Mew is currently obsessed with the Wild Things quilt too. I’m pretty sure it is because I am using a wool blend batting from MiniJumbuk and it smells a little sheepy. I know wool smell is not for everyone, but I quite like it, having grown up earning pocket money in shearing sheds. Anyway, Sneaky here pulled the wool over my eyes on this one….. I was actually sitting right next to this quilt, having paused working on it to fill in a form for my daughter. And I turned around to see this. I had no idea he was there, or when he arrived, but clearly he’d been there for a while! The purple quilt in the background is where he knows he is supposed to supervise from……
Good news for my son though… he’s always complaining that the cat prefers my daughter’s bed to his.
What’s under the cat?
Actually, I have made some good progress on my quilt this week. I have a flimsy which is now layered over my wool/polyester batting and pinned. And I have started stitching the appliqués.
I like to do my appliqué through the batting layer without a backing. It means I don’t need to use a stabiliser, and it joins the top to the batting. And it also means, come quilting time, I only have two layers to keep in check… the top/batting combo and the backing. But not all battings are suitable for this – I got a bit caught when I last used an unfamiliar batting because it was too soft and fragile and had no scrim. It started to fall apart from all the handling in the appliqué process.
In the end it worked out ok and the quilt was lovely, but I am a little wiser now. And wary of no-scrim battings for quilts made in this style.
As it turns out, this wool/polyester blend from MiniJumbuk works great though. It’s a 60% wool/40% polyester blended wadding called Nu-Wool I won at our State Quilt Guild show in July. And although it has no scrim, the polyester content means that it is tough and has not suffered any visible wear during my appliqué process so far.
It is the same wadding I have in my Log Cabin challenge quilt – Tired Teddy Labyrinth, as I was lucky enough to score two bags of this product at the show. It’s all used up now :(.
Adding the appliqués
Did you notice last post that I had my appliqués pre-formed on baking paper (Multix brand).
It is a coated paper that only holds fusible adhesive temporarily. Because it is a baking product available from the supermarket, it is cheap and easily obtainable. It’s like an ironing sheet, but it doesn’t matter if you destroy it.
Cheap and disposable means that I can cut around my shapes like so….
Which helps me find the right position for them on my quilt more easily. And then I can pin them in place until I am ready to do the transfer.
Obviously I can’t treat my proper ironing sheet like this!
Anyway, here are some more of my Australian animal tangrams up close as promised. I have started stitching the darker pieces.
What is a cassowary, I hear you ask? It’s a dinosaur without teeth. Bony head crest – check. Fine feathers useless for flight – check. Human killing talons – check. Bad attitude – check, check, check. Officially a flightless bird a bit smaller than an emu, but most definitely a dinosaur hiding in plain sight.
There are 18 tangrams in my Australian collection now…. I’ve added one more since my last post. On the list in that post I had swapped the traditional dog/dingo shape out for the fairy penguin. But my son wanted both, and since I had just enough fabrics for one last shape, I squeezed the dingo back in. Here’s the penguin for good measure.
Well, that’s all from me for this week….. I hope you have a great weekend!
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I remember tanagrams. What a unique idea. Also learned about some other creatures from “Down Under”. Thanks for the photo references.
Thanks for the practical info about applique with batting that has no scrim. Another new possible technique to test.
This is such a fun quilt! I love all the animals you are creating. Cassowary, my birder daughter and I have talked about them often, and watched videos of encounters with them (yikes). Your baking paper is, I think, what we call freezer paper over here. Great idea to use it for your applique pieces!
I love your Wild Things quilt!! Please show us all of your animals!! Such an awesome idea! Your “baking paper”…does it have a waxy side to it like our freezer paper or are both sides the same (no wax) like our parchment paper? I’m assuming it is more on the parchment paper line that you can actually use in baking. Also, are you fusing your your applique on to your quilt before you sew them down or are you using something else to hold your pieces in place while you sew them?
I love the Wild Things Quilt and can hardly wait for the pattern. I’m so sorry I wasn’t able to participate in the pattern testing but life got away from me. Do you have a pattern for the wonky houses? I love what you do and thanks for sharing.
What a fun quilt this is! Now I am singing it again – good thing I’m going to Lessons & Carols later – it will remove the earworm. I do love that fabric line.
I love your quilt!
Ok, so now I have THAT song going through my head!! LOL Seriously, though I LOVE your wild tangram animals – especially the koala!! And the penguin, and…well all of them!! Very cute. Interesting technique quilting the applique to the top and batting. I may have to give that a try on a small quilt.
Very clever Dione and now I know what an tangram is!
I can feel the hum in your post. Busy!. The tangram post is informative for me, a few of the birds or animals are new to me. I have a set of these shapes, must see if I can figure out any Canadian animals . Definitely a fun quilt for your son.
Thanks, Dione. Now I’ve got that song stuck in my head. haha. Tangrams. Cool idea for a quilt.
It certainly is like a painting, one person sees one thing and another sees another. It is something that you could stare at for hours, very creative for sure.