Up Close and Personal!- WIP, Part 1.

I thought I might share with you my current project. Really, it's a long overdue project, that I've allowed to jump the queue, in the line up for the frame. I did this as a technique class, a couple of years ago with Mariya Waters. She is an amazing quilter and has also won Best of Show at Paducah!! What's more, she is also a member of the quilt guild that Ash and I belong to. So, when she offered a workshop to learn her technique, Ash and I jumped at the chance. As you will see by my ultra close photo's, my technique could do with some improvement. And seriously, when I made this in the class, did not envision I would be posting it on a blog for the world to see!! Never mind, we are all friends here, so you get to see it as it is. In the rough!

Firstly, I drew a square, just to get my edges and loaded it onto the frame.

I then outline stitched around all the applique. I used a new (to me) ruler to help guide the hopping foot around the pieces. Sort of got the hang of it a little by the end of it. Then I decided to give a nice texture to the negative space, I would pebble stitch it. The results are great, but boy, is it tedious to do.

Inner negative space pebbled, and I'm starting to think about what's going to be happening outside that scalloped green border. As per usual, a lot of my quilting sort of just happens on the fly. No pre-design at this point.

I thought an arch sort of division might give all that cream fabric something extra. Let's face it, it's pretty boring otherwise. The method I'm using is a very 'loose' interpretation of Lisa Calle's divide and design technique.

As much as I really dislike the intensity of pebbling, eye strain being the number one side effect, I love the textural look it gives to the surface. I did start at this point, to think about the next phase of quilting for this piece. I had marked areas and even stitched one, but weren't overly impressed with it, so will frog a small section tomorrow and re-design! I also used a function on my machine called Quilt Glide. It enabled me to do all those smaller pebbles with a little more finesse. What I won't tell you is where I used it and where I didn't, as I only thought about using it after I had been pebbling already for about 2 hours!!

That's it for now, so until the next time, happy quilting.-Julie