I am starting in the middle a bit with things here. This is the second quilt in a series, and I have yet to blog about the first, but I am aware that it has been a while since I posted anything and this is easier to photograph than the first piece.
This is one of those quilts that started off as a quick demonstration piece of an improvised quilt made with the leftovers of a previous piece. Then, of course, I decided to make it a bit more interesting and to put some appliqué on it. As I have recently rediscovered a love of hand appliqué, that’s what it had to be. In this instance, because the pieces – the rabbits – were so large, I decided to user the freezer paper method. With this method you iron the freezer paper shape onto the top of the fabric and push the turning under with your needle. Then you pull the completed shape off the top. I prefer this to trying to get the paper out from under the shape when you use it underneath, particularly when you have something as tricky as rabbit’s ears. This probably sounds like badly translated instructions if you are not a quilter. If you aren’t and you want to see what I am talking about there are dozens of examples of the technique on You Tube.
I got the rabbit design from a clipping from a magazine that I kept because it appealed to me and I knew that it would come in useful at some point. Unusually for me, I didn’t keep a note of who the original designer was. All I know is that it was on a ceramic:
It was quite easy to stitch. I thought that I would be clever and just cut the shape of the chin and the legs and arms and then turn the edges back. But, of course, this requires a turning on both edges so you end up with a very large gap. I made a test piece and decided that I would have to do the outline with embroidery:
I am rather glad that I did do the test – the piece on the right, before cutting the whole thing out. I usually cut first and make samples and major mistakes later. In this case the little bit of extra time was well spent.
After I had finished the piece looked a bit empty. I thought briefly about doing some lettuces and carrots for a rabbits’ picnic, but my sketches were really a bit too twee. I fell back on good old flowers.
These needed a lot of surface embroidery but they worked reasonably well in the end. I like the fact that they look a bit vintage, which is one of the aims of the piece. The flower centres, which are raised, are suffolk puffs sewn on backwards. The outline embroidery on the rabbits is whipped backstitch which I find a lot easier than stem stitch, particularly with a chunky thread. The surface embroidery here is all done with three strands of embroidery cotton:
I love using seeding as a quilting stitch even though it takes forever. I haven’t done it for a while but I think the red here complements the big stitch on the body of the rabbit.
The quilt as a whole is a bit jumbled. The outlines are not always clear, particularly the leaves and some of the petals on several of the flowers, but in this case, I rather like the effect. It gives it a lived in, vaguely faded feel, even though almost all the fabric is brand new.
As a bit of a trailer, this piece also illustrates another project that I am working on which is about working with ugly or old-fashioned fabric, the sort of thing that you find in your stash which you bought years ago which is good but essentially out of date. The rabbits are done in this fabric and the backing, which I will show in a subsequent post, is truly horrible and I genuinely do not know how it got into my stash. More on this project as I go along.
