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Sunday, August 2, 2020

BOMs Away - Beachwalk Trapunto cont.


Welcome to the link-up for BOMs Away Mondays!
Where we share what we're doing on a BOM-type project 
so they don't stall out in UFO-land!
(Linky at the bottom.)


Hello!  

It's been a low-key weekend for me. I'd intended to trace out the fusible pieces for the koi pond block on my Wind in the Whiskers BOM, but I was in the groove for recording and editing some chapters for LibriVox audiobooks. Since I was spending several hours on those, I didn't want to pull out a mess that wouldn't get finished before the weekend was over. So I'll do those next weekend.  :)

What my screen looks like while I'm doing that.



But my "Beachwalk" BOM is what hets all my priority quilt making time during thw week these day, and I did get all the trapunto work finished for the hollyhocks and hummingbird panel this week. . . 



You won't see the effect of the trapunto work on the front side until it is quilted - then it really makes a very nice difference, particularly on these McKenna Ryan quilts. The multiple layers of fusible pieces tend to stiffen too much to yield dimension during normal quilting.




. . . and I finished the jellyfish panel. 

Can you see the iridescence of some of the tentacles? 
It's so pretty in real life!


I hate how dulling this task has to be on my little 4-inch Gingher curved-tip serrated embroidery scissors - - my all-time favs for applique work - - but there really is no other tool that is good for this finicky job.
 


It is a long and painstaking process, as I really don't want to snip the fabric when I'm trimming away the excess batting. Each of those sections took 13-14 hours to get the pieces stitched down, the tails all tied and tucked through, and then the batting trimmed.

Quite often, I use dense quilting around focal points to get the effect of trapunto, but that doesn't work when you don't don't want dense background quilting. 

Plus, the layered fusible on this one (we're talking 8 or 9 layers in places!) would never puff up without real trapunto, no matter how dense you quilted around them. So, I do this step before quilting my McKenna projects. 

I'll be working on the bicycle/lighthouse panel next. 


Evening stitching time has gotten me 4 alt-colored corners and 2 full sides of binding stitched down on Heather's Graduation Dahlia that I did as a Technique of the Month last year. I'm eager to be able to do a finish report photo op for this quilt!!




~*~*~

How about you? Has any BOM type work been happening there?
Sure would love to see!

Kate over at Katie Mae Quilts has joined me in hosting this meet-up, 
and linking up from either end puts you on the party at both sides.


You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

2 comments:

  1. I'm looking forward to seeing the finished Dahlia, your quilting looks so nice! I don't understand all the technical details of your work on McKenna's design but the jellyfish look exactly like they're floating! Happy stitching!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I have admired McKenna Ryan's designs for years but never attempted one. Your Beach Walk quilt is going to be magnificent! That trapunto work is fascinating; I've never seen it done with such small, intricate shapes before and I appreciate your explanation of why it's needed with the layers of fused applique.

    ReplyDelete

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