Wednesday 13 March 2013

"Rå kylling"

Rå kylling means raw (or bad ass) chicken and this quilt is the sister of “Chicks rule”. The plan was to make two prizes for my giveaway, but due to a little ironing mishap, this little chick has to stay at home.

I thought I could share a few progress pictures from making my chick quilts, some of which aren’t quite finished yet. For my backgrounds I have used solid fabrics onto which I have fused leftover “holes” from cutting circles with the AccuQuilt Go. They add a bit of colour and texture – and besides that I was happy to use some of the scraps.

The chickens are raw edged; some with selvages, others with ripped edges. The patterned chests are made with fabric confetti – little snips of fabric with fusible on the back. Mine were leftovers from cutting the colour wheel panties. If you are new around here, I can assure you these are totally non-private, non-creepy delicates; you can see them here. If you’re going to do this at home, I highly recommend using a parchment paper or something similar when you fuse them in place. No matter how hard you try, you’ll never get all those little snips the right way.

For the striped vegetation and suns, I made fabric from my other bag of Fargerike leftovers, narrow strips from cutting rectangles.

I simply cut a piece of fusible the same width as the length of my strips, and fused them in place with a little overlap. Happy colours!

The shapes are free form cut with scissors.

The feet and beaks are rectangles cut diagonally-ish in half. The tulle is what I call silver bridal tulle. It is very fine and barely noticeable unless it catches the light from an angle. I don’t use basting spray, just a few pins here and there to keep the layers together while free motion quilting.

Some of you who have taken my Quilta Figurer free motion quilting class may recognize the snakes pattern. It takes a while, but I like the effect and the almost meditative motions.

I did try to quilt feathers as well, yellow stitches on white. Hated it!

It was during the process of ripping those offending quilting stitches out that the destiny of my little chick took a little detour. There was no way to fix the melted tulle, so I just left it there. Not to worry, she hangs proudly at our house, not even a little bit self conscious about her little imperfections. We’re kind of kindred spirits that way the two of us.

I also thought I would share the backing fabric of the two unfinished chick quilts. I bought this curtain fabric years ago to share with friends from afar, and a couple of panels have been just sitting here. The total crash between the traditional Norwegian motifs and funky chicks amuses me. What can I say, I get easily amused.

Thanks for stopping by!

7 comments:

  1. Thanks so much for the insight into your process - these chicks are terrific!

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  2. Wow! I like what you do with fabric scraps. I'm visiting from Pam's blog and loved the comment you left there about an assistant to do all those cleaning up tasks that 'we creative types' find quite tiresome! lol

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  3. Ahhhh, I love both of your chicks quilts. So funky with lots of attitude. The addition of the strips with the holes cut out adds so much texture--great idea.)

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  4. I love the bright colours :-)

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  5. I really love it when you show the "how" of your creative process. Because of you I have begun to explore the world of bits & bobs, tule & fusing, layers and 'leftovers'. It's definitely a fun route to travel. Thanks to you.

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  6. Such great work. This is what make you an artist!! All that work and creativity that goes into every thing you create!!! I love that chicken!!!!!

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