Quilt ADD in therapy

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Colorado, United States
Other than my family, the passion of my life is quilting. An eclectic, I love a wide variety of styles and techniques encompassing both machine and hand work. I am a longarm quilter who can work for you. I enjoy any style, from pantographs to all-over to full custom, ranging from traditional to modern. I love bringing vintage tops to life and am willing to work with a challenging quilt top. Instagram: lyncc_quilts

Friday, February 24, 2017

Finish Report - "Who, What, Where" Raccoons, anyone? :)

Whoop! Whoop! It's a finish! 
And that means I really am back now.



These little guys are just so adorable. This is a mini quilt designed by Toni Whitney. It's just over 15 x 26 inches, and when I saw it in the quilt shop when I took my machine in for servicing after The Great Wedding Job, I couldn't resist buying the kit. I decided it would make the perfect project to overcome my dread of sitting at the machines again, particularly since it'd be the perfect Valentine's gift for my husband. I knew he would really love a new mini quilt for his office. 

And it did just the trick. I've got my quilting mojo back and am looking forward to finishing the next line-up of UFOs. 


(By the way, I'm sharing on this other post the things that I've learned are essential for a happy free-motion experience with fusible quilts.)


The 3-D leaves are a lot of fun

This is a fusibles quilt. It had so many more pieces to trace and carefully cut out, that it took much longer to make and quilt up than I anticipated. Nothing like being 10 days late with your gift! But Scott's very happy with it, so it's all good.

I really love the effect of the fusible-stiff bark stripes quilted down. The fusible sits stiff and flat so that the background tree fabric puffs right out, making a very dimensional bark effect. Maybe you can kind of see that here:



Speaking of dimensionality, I've done up enough art quilts to know ahead of time that with all the layers of fused fabric, the large amount of stitching required on the raccoon faces would flatten them down terribly during the quilting stage. So I used a trapunto approach. I put the flimsy down on a strip of polyester batting and stitched most of the raccoons' pieces to that using free-motion quilting approach, but with no backing at this stage. Because these fusible pieces all needed to be stitched down, anyway, I did NOT use water-soluble thread in the bobbin as I would for other trapunto projects. I just used regular cotton thread in appropriate colors.

I really wanted to overcome the fusible's stubbornness a little more, since the detailed stitching needed had flattened the batting quite a bit. So I reserved the outlines of the muzzle/mid-nose sections and the eyebrows to do with a second layer of the polyester batting. It turned out to be the perfect approach.

Once that second layer was finished, I carefully trimmed both layers close to the stitching.


Trying, anyway, to show the dimensionality of the trapunto work.

Then I sandwiched everything like normal - cotton batting and backing - so I could do the main quilting. I used Superior monofilament to simply outline the raccoons, letting the trapunto work puff out nicely. I did also outline the eyes to form the dimension of the faces, and I couldn't be happier with the result of that strategic double layer at the muzzle/brow area. The faces would have been stiffly underfilled without it.

I know these guys are going to cheer a lot of patients up. Scott periodically tells me folks make comments about my mini quilts there.



By the way, he tested up in Taekwondo last weekend, so now he's Bodan2 with Marissa and I.  :D   I sure love my Honey - he's so good and patient with the drawn-out process I have to work through when a Lupus flare hits.  




~*~*~
Linking up at:

Muv's Free Motion Mavericks

Sarah's Whoop, Whoop Linkup

TGIFF, hosted by Anja this week

WIPs Be Gone!

7 comments:

  1. I'm not a fan of raccoons. They are such pests here, and we live near a river. Ugh. But yours are so cute, I think I could change my mine. Great job, Lyn and thanks so much for the process. So much to learn there. And thanks for linking to WIPs Be Gone. It's so good to have you back. Hope you're going to tell us about the wedding.

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  2. Love your raccoons! My daughter was attached to one as a stuffed animal and was familiar with the book Rascal, about a pet racoon. Maybe I will have to get the pattern?

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  3. Adorable. We have lots of raccoons out here in the country. We used to have one that visited with my cat at the window about midnight. He would scratch until the kitty came to the window. Of course, it was right by my bed...grin.

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  4. Wow! So darned cute! And you are so skilled at constructing it just right! XO

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  5. Your raccoons are so cute! You are obviously one talented lady! Hope you're feeling better! Glad I found you on A Quilting Reader's Garden! Thank you for sharing!

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  6. Love your Racoons they are gorgeous! I have Lupus too, so I know how you feel :(

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  7. Hello Lynette,

    The raccoons' faces have so much expression in them! There are so many processes in the quilt, and the result is wonderful. What a wonderful Valentine's gift for your husband!

    Thank you for linking up with Free Motion Mavericks.

    Love, Muv

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Thank you for stopping by! I answer each comment via email. Sometimes, though, the system fails to notify me that a comment has been left, and if you are a "No-Reply" commentor, I cannot respond. Also, I apologize for having to block anonymous users - too much uncivil spam was coming through to leave the comments completely open.