Craft Napa donation quilt – 2019

Craft Napa is coming up next week and I can’t wait! Among the preparations were creating donation piece(s) for Pokey Bolton’s fundraiser, Stay Pawsitive which this year is raising funds for Wags and Whispers, an organization that is helping the pets from the Camp Fire in Northern California. Pokey had asked for postcards, which I fully intended to make. But when it came time to make my pieces, I was not feeling it, so I dug into my stash for some inspiration.

I stumbled upon this gorgeous wool hand-dyed by Linda Waddle and decided to start there. I wanted to do a cut-work piece, backed by white silk organza. I didn’t take photos of this part of the process but I Misty Fused two layers of white silk organza for the back of the quilt, laid the wool atop and free motion quilted my design onto the piece from the organza side.

I sketched my design on packing paper so that I could make it to size, around 14″ x 18″. I start here and then add the embellishments. It is important to NOT overfill the piece. You can see the edge of the previous attempt on the right of the photo. It turned out overfilled and would not have been successful. Cutwork requires a lot open space to be successful.

Once I was happy with my design, I used a blue wash out pen to transfer it to my organza layer. Organza is translucent so I had no problem transferring the design.

I then free motion quilted the design from the marked back organza side and this is the view from the front before the cutwork.

I carefully cut the top layer of wool to reveal the organza layer. I felt it was a little flat and began to add the little row of beads on the inner border. I took this photo to show how it did make a difference, as I had only completed about half of the beading. It was definitely a good choice to add the beads!

The completed piece is currently unnamed. I intended for the border to end as a simple straight line but was not feeling that, so I added the scallops as an afterthought. Again, definitely a good decision to add that!

It’s a soft piece and truly is better in person. There is no yellow at all, just a beautiful gray and white. I’m pleased with the outcome and hope it receives a generous bid at Craft Napa.

Even if you’re not going to Craft Napa, be sure to come to the Friday Night Artist’s Market. There are going to be some fabulous vendors with unique product, and, lots of donation pieces to bid on for the Stay Pawsitive fundraiser.

I will have a table to vend from and I will have my book as well as some unique and/or necessary free motion quilting notions. If you want to buy my book or have your current book signed, come on down!

I link up with Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday each week so go see who else joined the party!