What's Under the Needle?

March Week Three continued

Posted by on 26 March 2019 | 1 Comments
This content belongs to Arbee Designs.

Tags: challenge, quilting, art quilt

If you missed reading about Emma's challenge, you can do so on the previous page.

Now it's my turn to show you what I did. It's so different than Emma's! I started with the curved piecing and the ocean - two of my words. I layered the strips of fabric in the order I wanted them and overlapped them about 1"

Strips overlapped

Then I used the rotary cutter to cut the curves....

curves cut

and after pinning the ends and middles together, sewed each seam using less than a 1/4" seam. Using a smaller seam means I less likely need to nip and trim the seam allowance.

sewing curved seams

I pressed each seam as I worked.

creating my ocean

As I was doing this, I noticed a sample of some applique I'd done for one of my workshops and it happened to be the right colors for my night sky so decided to use that rather than to create a new one. The pieces were raw edges and stitched through batting and backing. There are some extra quilting lines but that's okay.

I added my ocean to it and extended the backing fabric to fit as that was a bit short on the original piece.

pre-made sky added

I thought I might use the remnants left from the cut curved strips over the top of the ocean to bring the two sections together better. 

remnants from curved strips

I lay the remnants on top and found this broke up the big sections creating more movement in the ocean.

remnants added to ocean section

Once the pieces were to my liking, I stitched them down with free-motion and some of the threads I'd collected last week. 

For some reason, at this point, I had this strong urge to cut this up in some way. Instead, I thought it might be better to use a sheer fabric over the top to create additional layers. I figured this would help create my reflection too and make the ocean simmer. I discovered it also darkened the sky which made it perfect for my night sky.

the sheer effect over part of my background

Before fully committing to this idea of the sheer fabric (currently only pinned in place), I thought it was time to play with some applique shapes. I needed an island with palm trees. I sketched what I thought would be a good size and then reversed them to create a reflection too. I placed the reflection pieces under the sheer fabric to see how they looked and the island and trees on top...

island and palms added on top with reflection under sheer 

I liked what I was seeing so continued on by stitching on top of the sheer, horizontally over the reflections extending the stitches over the raw edges to soften them and make them appear as if they were moving in the water.

stitching over reflection

The island and trees I stitched only on top of the actual shapes to keep them crisp and sharp. I gave the palm leaves shape by stitching out from their centers. I'm really liking how it is coming together but not finished yet! 

stitching on applique

To add more movement in the water, I decided to cut away some of the sheer fabric. This is a technique I use in my Layered Machine Applique workshop. I start by stitching twice around the area I want to cut out....

stitching for cutwork

 Then using sharp pointed scissors, trim away the sheer fabric within the stitched area.

sheer fabric cut away

I also added some lighter thread to make the ocean shimmer even more.

applique finished and more stitching added

With the quilting underneath the sheer fabric in the sky section, I haven't decided whether to do more or not. I'll think on that next week when I finish up and add some beads. I am quite pleased as to how it is looking so far so perhaps fireworks is all that is needed now.

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