Rhonda Bracey: At Random

I spent some time on the dragonfly quilt yesterday, mostly learning how to work with monofilament and metallic threads!

HINT: If your metallic thread just doesn’t want to spend time in the eye of the needle, put it in the bobbin, then turn the fabric over and sew on the back! Experiment a bit first and make sure you know where the edges of your applique pieces are. I did this by stitching down the raw edge fused applique pieces with mononfilament thread in the top and a contrasting thread in the bobbin. When I turned over the top, I could see the outlines of each appliqued piece.

So here’s the progress so far… First picture is of the quilt top before arranging the applique pieces and fusing them on. Note the innovative use of the sliding glass door and window as a light box!

Next came the placement of the dragonfly pieces (again, note the innovative use of magic tape!):

Oops! Forgot one step—I used silver metallic thread on the wings to create a sort of lace effect the other day. Here’s the result:

I then stitched down the applique pieces with monofilament thread in the top and a contrasting thread in the bobbin. For the dark body pieces, I used grey monofilament with black in the bobbin; and for the wings, clear monofilament with blue in the bobbin. This gave me stitching ‘boundaries’ on the back of the top.

I was on a roll, so next I tried putting the silver metallic thread in the bobbin case and sewing from the back. When I’d sewn with the silver thread earlier (on the wings), it had continually ‘stripped’ in the eye of the needle, so I tried the bobbin technique and it worked like a dream! I had to adjust the tension a bit, so experiment on scraps first. Here’s the test piece to see how it looked:

Once I had the hang of doing free motion embroidery with the feature thread hidden (!), I went ahead and added silver highlighting to both sides of the dragonfly’s body parts.

Here’s the back of the quilt top showing the outlines I stitched within—well, sorta stitched within! I know that the edges of the dragonfly’s body will be covered with a bias tape, so I wasn’t too concerned about being 100% accurate and within the lines.

Then I cut out and sewed a pale blue tulle over each wing to add to the lace effect, and to soften the brightness of the blues, pinks and purples.

And the last steps I did before the heat and humidity stopped me working was to start placing and fusing some of the 70+ grape leaves to the background:

I’ve decided to only place the grape leaves in the lower part of the quilt. Two reasons: To create a feeling of leaf litter, and to let the dragonfly ‘fly’ and rise from the leaf litter.

Next immediate tasks:

• Add gold metallic thread to the leaves I’ve already fused, emulating leaf veins
• Place and fuse more leaves over the top of the existing ones

I might get some of this done today—it’s MUCH cooler than yesterday, and even though we’re going out for a couple of hours, I’m sure I’ll get some of this done. If I can, I’ll use the gold metallic thread as the top thread so I avoid having to outline each leaf in monofilament (70+ leaves outlined in monofilament = a lot of sewing!). Hopefully this will work—the gold metallic thread I have is thinner and less knobbly than the silver. Based on my last experience with the gold thread, I’ll have to experiment with the tension but that shouldn’t take too long to get right. And this time I’m not quilting through many layers of fabric either, so it should be a lot easier.

Links to all posts about this quilt

• Evolution of a quilt: 1
• Evolution of a quilt: 2
• Evolution of a quilt: 3
• Evolution of a quilt: 4
• Evolution of a quilt: 5
• Evolution of a quilt: 6 (this one)
• Evolution of a quilt: 7
• Evolution of a quilt: 8
• Evolution of a quilt: 9
• Evolution of a quilt: 10
• Evolution of a quilt: 11

The last step before I finished yesterday evening was to use the remaining fusible web to create the dragonfly body and wing parts. I didn’t have enough fusible (back to the fabric shop tomorrow!) so was only able to get the wings completed, and a couple of small body parts. In the picture below, I’ve laid them out on top of the muslin which I won’t use now, but you can get a sense of how the dragonfly is coming together.

Still to do, but not in order…:

• Finish applying fusible web to the remaining dragonfly parts
• Position the dragonfly parts on to the background
• Add some grape leaves (as required)
• Possibly add some bunches of grapes,
• Fuse applique all parts
• Stitch the appliqued pieces down with monofilament thread so they don’t go anywhere!
• Free motion embroider veins in the leaves and lace effect on the wings; if add grapes, free motion embroider light highlights (gold, silver metallic thread?)
• Get some thin bias tape (gold, silver and black) and outline the dragonfly and other relevant bits with it
• Add a border
• Add batting and backing, and a hanging sleeve
• Quilt the quilt
• Add binding
• Continue documenting the process!

Links to all posts about this quilt

• Evolution of a quilt: 1
• Evolution of a quilt: 2
• Evolution of a quilt: 3
• Evolution of a quilt: 4
• Evolution of a quilt: 5 (this one)
• Evolution of a quilt: 6
• Evolution of a quilt: 7
• Evolution of a quilt: 8
• Evolution of a quilt: 9
• Evolution of a quilt: 10
• Evolution of a quilt: 11

Major setback: When I scattered the leaves over the muslin, there was a LOT of white poking through. Without creating hundreds more leaves, this wasn’t going to work. And even if I did create hundreds more leaves, I think the background would’ve been TOO busy and swamp the dragonfly (‘scuse the pun!).

So back to the drawing board… More thoughts, ideas, and possibilities later (and some more hours…) and I decided to use the remaining green fabrics and create a green gradient background for the dragonfly.

Some of the green fabrics laid out in a possible order:

The next step was deciding what to do with these fabrics. I thought of putting large patches of green over the muslin, then laying some leaves on it, but that looked weird. Next thought was to look at how I could cut the green fabrics in wavy lines so that I could get the effect of undulation (a la Ricky Tims). But I couldn’t figure out how to do that successfully! (Fortunately, I tested on small fabric scraps before cutting ANY of the green fabric!)

I then thought I could make uneven lines in the greens getting a geometric effect with long thin triangular shapes, but I tried that on four strips and it just didn’t look right, so I unpicked all those stitches and decided to go for very boring strip piecing of these 5 and 6″ strips…

Next: Create the dragonfly body and wing parts

Links to all posts about this quilt

• Evolution of a quilt: 1
• Evolution of a quilt: 2
• Evolution of a quilt: 3
• Evolution of a quilt: 4 (this one)
• Evolution of a quilt: 5
• Evolution of a quilt: 6
• Evolution of a quilt: 7
• Evolution of a quilt: 8
• Evolution of a quilt: 9
• Evolution of a quilt: 10
• Evolution of a quilt: 11

In the previous two steps, I’ve got my inspiration and created the grape leaves for the background. Now to create the dragonfly…

I found some pictures, traced the essential outlines so that you could tell it’s a dragonfly not a butterfly, assembled the pieces of paper, taped them to the window, overlaid them with quilter’s muslin, traced the design on to the muslin in pencil, rearranged everything and retraced the design on to the muslin in permanent marker.

The reason I traced the lines in permanent fabric marker was so I could position the leaves on the muslin and applique them on without going too far into the area where the dragonfly would overlay the leaves—I needed to see where the dragonfly was going to go.

Next: The background dilemma

Links to all posts about this quilt

• Evolution of a quilt: 1
• Evolution of a quilt: 2
• Evolution of a quilt: 3 (this one)
• Evolution of a quilt: 4
• Evolution of a quilt: 5
• Evolution of a quilt: 6
• Evolution of a quilt: 7
• Evolution of a quilt: 8
• Evolution of a quilt: 9
• Evolution of a quilt: 10
• Evolution of a quilt: 11

Grape leaves as a background! I like the idea… So off to the internet again to get some simple images of grape leaves that I can trace to get my outline. Not just one grape leaf either—I have to have a few variations of shape and size.

The first stage is finding suitable images (do you know how many pictures of dolmades there are???). Next, printing them off. Then I used the window as a light box and traced the outline of the photos on a sheet of paper with a black marker. Next, I photocopied these outline sheets at various increased and reduced sizes.

Then it was off to the fabric store (bliss!) to find suitable fabrics for vine leaves, and dragonfly wings, and to get some fusible web to trace the leaves on to in preparation for appliquing them on to the background. That all sounds so quick and easy, but believe me it wasn’t!

Here’s the fabric I chose sitting on top of the fusible web showing the outlines of some 70+ grape leaves that I’d traced, hoping that I’d have enough:

And here are some of the traced outlines making the best use of the available space:

So now I have the fabric and the outlines traced on to fusible web. The next step is to cut out the tracings into individual leaves, then hot iron the fusible on to the backs of the various fabrics, then cut out each individual fabric leaf. Again, this took some hours…

At the end, I had some 70+ leaves, about a third of which I had cut in half and joined together to get colour variation.

Next step: Create the dragonfly.

Links to all posts about this quilt

• Evolution of a quilt: 1
• Evolution of a quilt: 2 (this one)
• Evolution of a quilt: 3
• Evolution of a quilt: 4
• Evolution of a quilt: 5
• Evolution of a quilt: 6
• Evolution of a quilt: 7
• Evolution of a quilt: 8
• Evolution of a quilt: 9
• Evolution of a quilt: 10
• Evolution of a quilt: 11

Since moving down south, we’ve discovered the delightful Scotts Brook wines, and I’ve been quite taken by the dragonfly logo. An idea for a quilt/wall hanging using the dragonfly has been brewing in my head for a few weeks now. With some time off over the Christmas break and with only a few social activities to attend, that idea has now started to come to fruition.

But I’m finding that without a pattern or instructions, the original idea has changed a lot since inception. That’s what this series of posts is about—how I’m going from an original idea to a finished product. It’s not finished yet, and may not be for quite a while, but I wanted to document the process, as even at this early stage, it’s changed a lot.

My original thought was to make a wall hanging using the dragonfly logo on the Scotts Brook wines, and sticking pretty much to that design. However, my husband—who’s much more artistic than me—suggested that making something that was almost all white wouldn’t be a good idea as it would look very bland. Between us we searched the internet for dragonfly quilts made in a stained glass style, and expanded the search to stained glass patterns, and images of dragonflies in all their forms.

After looking at all sorts of variations, we agreed that the dragonfly should be colourful and on an angle, and that some leaves should be in the background. However, we didn’t want the strappy leaves we saw in some designs we found as they aren’t in keeping with the local area. So I had a brainwave of creating a background of grape leaves! More in the next episode…

Original inspiration:

Some of the other inspirations:

Links to all posts about this quilt

• Evolution of a quilt: 1 (this one)
• Evolution of a quilt: 2
• Evolution of a quilt: 3
• Evolution of a quilt: 4
• Evolution of a quilt: 5
• Evolution of a quilt: 6
• Evolution of a quilt: 7
• Evolution of a quilt: 8
• Evolution of a quilt: 9
• Evolution of a quilt: 10
• Evolution of a quilt: 11

When you make a quilt, you always end up with bits of fabric left over, none of which seem to be much good for anything. But being a pack rat, you don’t want to throw the leftover bits out, and so you keep them for “Justin” (that’s “Justin” as in “Justin Case”… just in case). And that’s where a scrappy quilt comes in handy.

I saw a picture of the “Road to California” block and thought it would be a good candidate for some of my scraps—and so it was. I made the block, then yesterday I quilted it and made it into a 20″ cushion cover. I had to buy the fabric for the back, but the rest of the quilt was made from scraps. Now my scrap stash is a little less!

More photos…

Eyeballing a quarter inch is still a bit of a black art for me. When I’m using my standard sewing machine foot, it’s easy as the foot is exactly a quarter inch from the outside edge to the central needle position. But when I’m using my ancient Bernina’s walking foot, the measurement is 3/8, not 1/4… as I found out yesterday. Fortunately, I noticed the seam allowance seemed a little wider than usual before I’d stitched too far.

I solved the problem with some painter’s tape, laying it so the left edge was exactly at the quarter inch width from the central needle position (see the picture below). Another solution is to use a small pad of sticky notes so that you get a little ridge and can’t move the fabric so that it has more than a quarter inch seam allowance. But that doesn’t work for my walking foot as the foot would be up on the ridge and thus lopsided.

Back in June, I attended a foundation piecing workshop run by my friend Bobbie, the QuiltMouse. Not being one for flowers and pastels, I decided on some bright fabrics, including some blacks and chilli patterns. After making the sample blocks, I decided to go for broke and make a lap quilt for the chilly (chilli!) nights we get here in Bridgetown. You know, the sort of quilt you wrap around your legs when you’re on the sofa watching TV or reading a book.

So some months later it’s finished! Bobbie created the block pattern; I chose the fabrics, did the design/layout, and pieced the top; Judy quilted it all together using her big long arm commercial quilting machine; then I finished it off with the binding. I deliberately used a wool batting for warmth come next winter.

I’ve called it “South of the Border” as it has all the elements of the New Mexico/Arizona region we love (yes, I *know* that’s not south of the US border, but some I’m using some artistic license here!).There are lots of fabrics with chillis, capsicum (peppers for the US-ians), horses, cacti, etc., as well as the bright reds, yellows, and purples reminiscent of Santa Fe and other places in that region. The red backing and sashing fabric actually has a slightly Japanese feel to it, with some stylised calligraphy and very faint reeds in the pattern. But I thought it worked well with the other colours. While it may look like a jumble of blocks, there *is* a pattern in there—the purple cross in the centre, surrounded by the yellow, orange, and red toned blocks, followed by the black.

It’s already been hung at the local “Hanging by a Thread” quilt exhibition last Saturday and I’m putting it in the local show (along with the other quilts I’ve made this year) at the end of this month.

More photos of this quilt (including close-ups)…