Saturday, May 26, 2012

Quilt a motif

I’d like to share how I got a quilting stencil onto a felt Kindle cover that I recently made from items in my stash.  I love when everything I need to create and finish an item is located in my already-on-hand sewing supplies!
First thing you have to have is a motif.  You can trace them, you can draw them or can get one my favorite way – from Electric Quilt’s QuiltMaker Stencils.  I have Volume 3, a stand-alone program. You don’t have to have a version of Electric Quilt to use it.  But, if you have a version of Electric Quilt, you can position the motif in EQ on a drawing of your creation.
Even though I am not making a quilt, I made a “quilt layout” in EQ the size of the area that I had to put the motif in.
2115aWhen I need to place a motif in a certain area, I like to work on  a “grid”, makes it much easier to center.  In the Block Worktable, I drew a 7.5” x 5” grid and placed it in Layer 1(in the Quilt Worktable) and placed the butterfly in Layer 2.  I could size the butterfly and move it all around that area until I was pleased with the placement.  It was easy to get the placement on the actual article cuz I had that grid to reference to.
That is one of the butterflies from the “Animals & Bugs” section. 
I determined that I needed a butterfly motif that was 4” x 3” and that is what I printed out from EQ.  I traced that image onto some “Stitch & Ditch Stabilizer by ThreadPro”.  It is heavier than tissue paper, very pliable and the back of the paper is soft & grippy so it doesn’t slide around the fabric.
2116 Looks like a lot of pins. There are pins to mark horizontal and vertical centers and pins to hold the stabilizer in place.  I also drew lines on the stabilizer, for the horizontal & vertical centers – and matched those to the pins marking the horizontal & vertical centers of the fabric.  I then stitched the butterfly thru the stabilizer & fabric.  Tore the stabilizer away when stitching was complete.
The fabric is a textured felt square that I found at Joann’s a couple of years ago.
2118 And here’s the finished Kindle Cover --
2122I decided to have the seam allowances on the outside of the Kindle Cover.  It was easy to construct that way and then found out it gave extra protection to the edges of the Kindle.
2124I had to make the inside of regular felt, cuz I had made 2 other Kindle Covers and ran out of the Brown Textured Felt.  Maybe one day I’ll make a more durable cover, but, I think this one will last a long time and I like it.

2 comments:

Sky Bird said...

Hi there. Nice blog. You have shared useful information. Keep up the good work! This blog is really interesting and gives good details. stabilizers, stabilizer.

Pat said...

Thank you for the nice comments, SkyBird! I shall be posting again, one of these days.