Seashells on the Seashore - WIP

My beach quilt is in its final phase - quilting. I had the process planned from the very beginning and expected it to be tedious, but it is turning out harder than I thought, so I'm taking a little break to stand back and consider.

The idea is to make the sea creatures pop up from the surface, so I used the trapunto technique: first added a layer of batting to the top and stitched around the edges in the FMQ mode, then trimmed the excess batting around the appliqué shapes very carefully with sharp little scissors (though I did snip a couple of stitching threads in the process, I managed not to cut the top fabric...phewww).

I also added a few quilting lines on shells and turtles to add more interest to the large shapes.

Then I put together the sandwich with really fun fabric I chose for the back, basted and prepared to quilt. The obvious choice of quilting design was pebbles, but I also decided to strew around some seashells. Here is a little sample I made to try it out:

The hard thing with trapunto is that you have to stitch around the appliqué shapes yet again, at the same time trying to keep the pebbles looking natural in the small spaces between tentacles, legs and tails )))

Here is how it's going at the moment:

Not perfect, but thanks to the thread color which blends with the darkest spots in the background, the mistakes are less obvious than in the sampler above ;))

Linking up with Off the Wall Friday and Free Motion Mavericks - and off to do some cutting and piecing to relax))

From Ireland with Love - a Picture-Postcard Quilt

As if I don't have enough WIPs, I decided to put them all aside for couple of days and make a mini quilt to enter to the EQA challenge on the topic of "Greetings from..." (Ireland in this case), to be exhibited at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham in August 2016.

I chose the most obvious Irish picture postcard image - green rolling hills and a ruined tower - too obvious for the locals, I guess, but I still feel kind of a tourist here))).

Here are a few glimpses of the process.

First comes the draft:

The background is machined-pieced and ready for the fun to start:

Now, I didn't actually shoot the fun, because it happened after dark)), but the idea was to cut out the "stones", pin them to the tower shape, add a piece of batting underneath and sew/quilt the tower. After the tower was ready I put the batting and backing in place as usual and quilted the hills and sky. It's the trapunto principle that used to make the tower really pop up from the background. I'm not sure the pictures really render that, but it does look 3D to the naked eye ))).

The rules called for "no visible binding" and for a national stamp to be used in the design, so here it goes. The stamp was painted on a piece of fabric, fused and stitched in place.

The final size is supposed to be 25 by 35 cm, but in reality it turned out a bit less, because I hadn't done quilt facing in a while and didn't factor in the way the edge gets turned under (((. Still, there is not much chance for it to get selected for the Festival, maybe it will get to be exhibited locally, which will still be great! Now I have to fill in the form, but I still can't decide on a name for it...

Upd: I've just joined a creative link-up "Off the Wall Friday" at Creations by Nina-Marie. Check out all the beautiful projects there as well as Nina-Marie's own art quilts. I'm awed to be in such a company!

Follow my blog with Bloglovin