Four-In-Art: That's a Wrap

 It was an amazing run.  5 years of creating Mini Art Quilts.  Each quarter or so a different theme.  Elizabeth at Occasional Piece Quilt got us started those years ago.  I was just happy to play along.  We had some change overs of various members, but all have had fabulous contributions along the way.

This post is to recap those years and quilts.  I do not love them all. (what do I do with them!!??)  Some I had actually forgotten about until I was gathering pictures for this post.  

The first year: Nature: 2012-2013

Queen Anne's Lace

 Trees: If Napolean Was a Tree

Fire: Sun Fire

Owl

Year 2:Urban:  2013-2014 This year we did Five, to make our year match the calendar

Maps: In Your Neighborhood

Urban Structures: Wisconsin Gas Building

Urban Landmarks: Central Park

Contrasts

Urban Lights: Milwaukee Lights

Year 3: 2015 The Overall theme this year was Literature, and we all did our own things.  I ended up doing children's stories.

Red

Cinderella

Princess & The Pea

The Brave Little Tailor

Year 4: 2016 Color 
This year we decided that the quilts didn't have to be 12" x 12"

Microscopic

Music: Violin Study

Purple Passion

I've Got The Blues: Efficiency (The Fish in the Sea)

Year 5: 2017 Light

Shimmer

Light in the Darkness: Triquetra

Stained Glass "Shadows"

Illumination

It was really great to be a part of this group.

It is really great to be moving on to other things.

2018 is going to be a sabbatical year of sorts for me.  I've finished up pretty much all of my committee obligations for various activities.  I am only going to participate in one quilting thing next year. (Gridsters, yay!).  With the 5 kids being very involved in many activities and none old enough to drive yet, I am main taxi driver.  I also have things "around the house" I want to get done.  (I shampooed carpets last week.  That makes me happier than you will ever know)

And selfish sewing.  Things that I WANT to do, not the things I feel like I HAVE to do. 

Thanks for reading this blog of mine.  I'm hoping to be a little more regular with it.  I also really need to do some maintenance on it!

A Grand Entrance: The Hobbit House

This is a good picture to start with.  It shows my finished Hobbit House quilt and the rules that surrounded the making of it.

As soon as I heard the subject, way before I saw the fabrics, I knew I wanted to do something like a hobbit house. 

This one is in the children's area at our local Renaissance Faire.

Just a couple of the gazillion ideas I sketched out.

 And some progress shots.

 I did draw it out full size on a piece of paper.  I used it as a sort of a pattern. Loosely.

 Everything is raw edge applique with Wonder Under 805.  Yes, I do buy it by the bolt.

 I was cutting out flowers while the kids played at a park.

 Above, mostly ready for the quilting.  You'll see a there are a few more flowers in the final piece.

 Busy back to use up fabric and hide messy stitches.  Also I put the label right in the backing so when the quilting was done, the label would be done.  I put the two required fabrics as part of the label.

 All done and ready for the show. 
This quilt did not win a ribbon, there were some very lovely and well made quilts that it was up against.  The judge noted in the comments that it "lost it's perspective" I assume she meant depth perception, and I rather agree.  But it was fun to put together and will soon go to its happy permanent home.

Illumination: The Making of a Reverse Applique Quilt

 As I was editing the pictures today, I realized that I don't have pictures of exactly EVERY step, but I think you all are smart enough, that you'll figure things out.  You can find my reveal post *here* which also includes the links from the other participants in Four-In-Art.

Reverse applique, instead of cutting out and applying a bunch of small individual pieces of fabric, you cut out one large piece of fabric and lay it over another piece of fabric and applique it down.  In this case I laid it over many smaller pieces of fabric.  You'll see.

First I found my image and printed it out.  Bigger than a standard 8.5" x 11" paper, so some cutting and piecing going on here.

Then using a light box I trace the image, IN REVERSE, onto the paper side of Wonder Under 805.  Next I fused the whole thing to a piece of black fabric.

TIP #1  I used a black batik fabric. Hoffman batiks, raven.  Why? Because a batik is more tightly woven and less prone to fraying when used for raw edge applique.

Now we are cutting out the pieces that I want to "show through" i.e. not be black.

 You want to use very sharp scissors for this.  Scissors that are sharp all the way to the point. I used my little stork Gingher brand scissors. 

 TIP #2.  Leave the large pieces that will be cut to the end.  This helps stabalize the whole piece while you are cutting out the little fussy pieces.

 TIP #3.  I actually debated about sharing this, but thought maybe there are people who would like to know.  To begin cutting inside of an area, I fold the fabric and make a cut across the fold.  Then begin the cutting from there. I do not cut on the line, or it won't be straight and I do not punch holes with the tips of my scissors.

 Above you can see the cut slit in the shape next to the moon.

 Once everything is cut out, you can start trying out the fabrics in the "windows".  I knew that I would be using the gold lame somewhere, ultimately I used it in the letter itself.

 Then I started rough cutting fabric shapes to fill up each window area, trimming to fit.  This was rather fiddly in smaller areas.

 Even though there was Wonder Under on the back, I couldn't stop and iron all the time, so I ended up using stick glue to hold the fabric pieces in place.

Once all the fabric was line up, trimmed and glued in place, I fused the whole thing together on top of a piece of fusible fleece.  You could probably use any fusible batting, that it what I happened to have immediately available.

 I used clear Poly in a zig-zag around the edges of the R, since they were much larger pieces.  The rest of the black was also the clear poly in random FMQ.  In hindsight, I probably could have quilted in black, but then the mistakes would be more apparent, too. 

And of course, the back.  A completely unrelated piece of fabric, but I do love using things I already have.  Unfortunately, I was in such a hurry to finish, I never even thought to put a sleeve or pockets in, and I definitely thing this one will get hung for a while.  This was one of the latest quilts for Four-In-Art that I ever finished, staying up very late to be done.  Really pretty happy with it.

Now to get all of them out, photographed, labeled and I'll write up a review post of these last five years.