Jackie's Art Quilts: guest post

I would LOVE to introduce you to my dear and super talented friend Snoodles! She is smart, sweet and as you can see, a super crazy genius with 3D embellishing! To celebrate her fantastic tutorial, I am offering 2 giveaways of my hand dyed fabric. If you sign up to follow (ie. a new follower) leave me a comment telling me. If you are one of my super awesome regular followers, tell me that. I will have 2 draws to celebrate the old and new followers with a stack of my hand dyed fabric=)

Hi everybody! This is Snoodles, from Lilypadquilting! I'm so excited to be here at Jackie's Art Quilts! When Jackie asked me to prepare a guest post, I had a lot of conflicting emotions --- I was happy, but I was also intimidated! I think she is an awesome art quilter, and I love seeing her creations here on the blog!

Jackie, Sunni (from Love Affair with my Brother) and I had all posted tutorials at the Lilypad, for 3D embellishments for tote bags and other projects that needed a little WOW! added to them. (If you would like to check them out, you can click on the Tutorial page over at the Lilypad.) We had a ball, and I was still thinking along those lines when I came up with the idea for my project for you today. I call this wallhanging "Spring Dreams" and I like how it turned out!

If you would like to create your own Spring Dreams just hang on tight, because the directions are below! Usually when I get ready for a tutorial, I make sure we have a little something to eat and drink. You may wonder why? My tutorials are usually fairly detailed, and picture-heavy --- I'm a visual learner, so I come at it from that angle! So, let's make sure you are prepared for this tute . . .
Would you prefer tea or coffee? Me? Oh, I have plenty of adrenaline pumping right now . . . I'll stick with my herbal tea. But here's a cuppa for you.

And here is a light, airy, calorie-removed, no-fat goodie for you, too! (I'm spoiling you, I know. Grin)

OK, now settle back in your chair, and away we go!

I see so many people that are doing "wonky" right now. It's really creative, and to me, it's artsy. I have created my own larger pieces of fabric before, from small scraps, so I thought, "How hard can it be?" Since then, my patooty has been a little sore from my kicking myself there. It was harder than I thought!
You see, I have been sewing matchy-matchy projects for a long time. You know the drill --- line up the pieces, get perfect corners if you can, etc. It was a real stretch to start with this:

and get this:

and cut it like so:

and to stitch that down onto a muslin foundation with a blanket stitch:

and then make this part:

And then put the "yellow" fabric and the "green" fabric together . .

But then I had a background for my wallhanging. Some people would have whizzed through this process and never looked back. Some might have thought of this as "pushing the edge of the envelope" of creativity, but to me it seemed as if I were climbing out of a sealed envelope! Whew!

Well, I looked at that for several days and made friends with it, and then started on some flowers. After all, it's the flowers and buds and greenery that make spring so awesome, right? I drew a small pattern and cut into some (out of print) fat quarters that had been lolling on my shelf, daring me to cut into them for some time. Those cheeky buggers finally got what they deserved.

You can see that I chose some fabrics that had a pretty good bit of contrast --- I was thinking inner and outer surfaces of petals. At this point we begin the saga of "A Tale of Two Flowers" . . . it was the best of plans, it was the worst of plans . . . kinda takes you back to college literature class, doesn't it? (Grin)

Anyway, you will see as we travel along, that the best of plans can go awry and be changed. Now, I took the two petals and laid them right sides together, and stitched along the curved edge. (My sewing area floor had to be worked on, so this was all hand-work. (Imagine my AAAUUUGGGGHHHH!!! sounding exactly like Charlie Brown when he is frustrated by Lucy's antics.)

See how they look now? Next I ran a line of gathering stitches around that long curve, and pulled in just a little. I was thinking fluted edge here. The fabric was not thinking along the same lines.

When I pulled it just a little, I wasn't happy with the result. When I pulled it in a lot, it looked kinda like a yo-yo, and that was not what I envisioned. So, I changed the plan!

I took some rickrack and sewed it around the edge, and flipped the petals around. (You know, the outside became the inside and vice versa. Work with me here.) Here is what I got:

A contrasting button sewed in the middle finished it off. Hmmm, kinda like that one; now let's see what else we can do with these petals . . .

On these petals, I ran a gathering thread along the bottom of the petals and pulled. Hard. They kinda ended up looking like cute little mouse ears, didn't they?

Then I took all five of the ~~mouse ears~~, er, petals, and ran a thread through the base and pulled them all together into a flower. (Forgive the poor lighting on this one.)

Blah. Uninspiring. I could swear that in the fine print, Jackie had asked for something better than that for this blog post. (Drumming fingers on sewing table.)

Eureka! Remembering my botany class in eons past, I fashioned the "innards" of the flower using a huge button and some tiny rickrack. Voila! Any self-respecting bee would be proud to stop and visit this beauty!

Now those other petals were calling to me, ready for their chance to wow the audience. I took a couple of stitches in the top of the petals, to pull them almost closed.
See?

Next, I gathered up the bottom edge of that petal . . .

Then I took some of that tiny rickrack and made a little bundle, like so:

Bet you are wondering what that is for, right? Well, lookee here:

Isn't it sweet? After I admired its cuteness, I wrapped a short length of green, grograin ribbon around it's base, and finished all five of the other flowers the same way. (Sorry about the blurry picture, but I think you can make out what it looks like.)

At this point, I had all of the ingredients for this wallhanging recipe. I used my grosgrain ribbon to make stems, and leaves, too. I just looped the ribbon to make leaves that stood out from the fabric. I think you can see that in this picture:

I added stems for the large flowers, and made loopy leaves for them, as well.

I wasn't finished yet, though! I stitched some little butterflies in the open areas, just because I like butterflies! (Giggle) Can you see this little guy?

So, my wallhanging was done. I was exhausted from "stretching my boundaries" but doing something new is a very good thing, I decided. At least once in a while.

Thanks for inviting me to post on your blog, Jackie! I had a ball making this project, and I hope that you and your followers like it! (And in the words of the immortal Mae West . . . "Come up and see me sometime!"

Love,

Does Snoodles not just rock? Her blog is crazy fun too, if you don't trust me, check her out! And if you want to win some super scrumptious fabric, be sure to tell me if you are a 'new' or good ol 'regular' follower.