Hope Springs Eternal
Ever since I sent off my SAQA donation piece last week, I’ve been itching to try another hand-dyed wool/organza/cut-work piece. But I couldn’t even start before finding more hand-dyed wool.
I had a lovely visit with the uber creative dyer/quilter/surface designer Linda Waddle and I came home with this mini-stash of some of her gorgeous hand-dyed wool.
I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do, but I needed to dig into my design files and books and other resources to hone in on my plan. I was thinking this was one piece where things should go smoothly (hence the title to this post!).
I dug into my stash of books and these are some of my most loved titles. One of my all time favorite books is “Fusing Fabric”-it’s all about fusing with heat, not fusible web. There are about 80 different ideas I want to try from it!
I am really restricted in the size of the piece I can make. I have some beautiful silk organza that I dyed in a class with Linda Waddle but it’s only 21″x26″. I had to lay it out carefully so as to maximize what I could use. I spray basted the organza to the wool using Patsy Thompson‘s system shown in this You Tube. BTW, this is the only way to spray baste in my opinion-so much easier than laying it down horizontally.
I decided that the easiest way to approach this was to draft my pattern onto Sharon Schamber‘s freezer paper, iron it onto my project and stitch through the paper. Easy peasy, right?
Not! All you paper piecers out there already knew this was going to be a mess and it was! I know I could have soaked the paper off but I didn’t think I needed to do that. I thought I was smart and instead I scored and ripped the paper off. Bad idea. Those loops are from pulling the paper off, not from my thread tension!
Obviously I need another plan. I think I will stitch next to the existing line, then go back and rip out the loopy stitches-that’s a pretty good plan I think. I can’t wait to get started on the meat of this project!
I don’t have a name for this piece yet and it really bugs me. When I think of it in my little head, I think of it as the “second hand-dyed wool and organza piece with cut-work”. That’s way too lengthy-I need a name for this one pronto! I’ll post more as I make progress.
I can’t wait to see where you go with this. What a great direction to try!
Thanks Bobbi-I’m excited about this! As you can see, I have a few issues to work through first.
Oh dear, the old freezer paper won’t tear mess. I love freezer paper for its many uses, but stitch-through paper piecing isn’t one of them. There are $9 patterns that tell sewers to sew through freezer paper. I know because a friend almost ruined a miniature quilt trying to remove the freezer paper she had stitched through. Perhaps inexpensive tracing paper or cheap children’s drawing tablet paper would have come off more easily. I haven’t tried it, but possibly such paper could have been stuck on your main fabric with temporary basting spray (the kind used for applique.)
Yes Joanna, think I have learned this lesson about freezer paper! As soon as I began to have trouble, my memory all of a sudden flooded with horror stories about removing the paper. I thought about using my Golden Threads paper, but decided against it as it would not adhere very well to the fuzzy wool. I should have tried that though-sigh!
Do-wop! Dyed Wool Organza Piece. Don’t ask where the first ‘o’ comes from.
Excellent-love it Helen! Thank you!
Can’t wait to see it! Yummy colors!
I hope the rest goes smoothly….
Hola he recibido un video en el que se muestra la colocación de las 3 capas pegándolas con adhesivo 505. Mi pregunta es ¿cómo se sujetan en verticalpara que no se caiga?
Gracias
I think you are asking how do you keep it on the wall while you spray it? I just stuck pins directly into the wall and covered the surrounding wall with newspaper. Hope that helps!
I love your willingness to share the ‘good, bad and the ugly.’ We all learn so much! I’ll stay tuned for the usual incredible outcome!
Franki if I only posted the good I would not post very often:-/ I do hope the outcome is good. It just takes one errant snip through the sheer organza….