Fire Festival and Fun with Franka

It’s been quiet in Lundaland for a couple of weeks. Creatively speaking, that is. I’ve had a lot going on both at work and at home. And I’ve been to Ostrobothnia to visit my folks. I chose last weekend, because that was the time of the Venetian festival that is celebrated in my home area by the end of August every year as a farewell to summer.

Fire and fireworks

Today, however, I’ve been back with a vengeance, and took a great leap forward with the Franka quilt. I’m very happy to reveal that I’ve cut and fused the background (water) to the black base fabric today. That’s one of the scariest stages finished. I’ll walk you through my day with some photographs.

I started by cutting out the upper right hand corner. I was quite relieved to discover that this corner formed a separate piece, as it reduced the size of the main piece, and gave me a chance to practise a bit before I had to tackle the main piece.

I knew that cutting out the pieces, as well as positioning them, was going to be tricky. To help me with the positioning, I used the master paper pattern for the background, a touch screen pen and a pair of tweezers. I laid down the pattern on the black fabric, pressed the touch screen pen to the pattern at certain points to make temporary marks on the fabric, lifted a corner of the pattern, positioned the background fabric piece on the base fabric, aligning it with the markings that I’d made, repositioned the pattern and used my fingers and the tweezers to make sure that everything was properly lined up before I ironed everything down.

To cut out the pieces, I used a combination of scissors and a craft knife. Note the old baby sheet that is placed under the fabric. It’s there for a reason. After I’d cut out the first background piece, I felt a bit sweaty about the next piece, and I must admit that, for a few seconds, I wondered what I’d gotten myself into. Then a solution came to me. If I placed the piece to be cut on another piece of fabric, I would be able to turn the whole piece around easily while cutting, without having to let anything dangle freely with the risk of things getting tangled up and tearing. I only needed to lift the area where I was working, and the rest could rest undisturbed on the sheet while I was turning the fabric around. It worked like a charm. (And probably saved my sanity.)

As for cutting technique, it’s a good idea to start with the small interior areas, and save the big areas for last.

The main background piece is completely cut out. The next step is to position it on the base fabric.

Speaking of sanity, you have to be a bit mad to wanna do this. :D

The background is fused to the base fabric. This silhouette is so cool that I’m tempted to leave it like this. But, no, I’ll save the silhouette idea for another quilt. I’m really excited about this quilt right now, and I’m annoyed that I have to go to work tomorrow. My day job is severely trespassing on my quilting time. :P

 

PS. Those of you who are waiting for the instructions for the needle-felted hearts that I promised to provide: I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, but I haven’t forgotten. I will post them soon.