Slow progress

My favorite way to prep a quilt for stitching is to spray baste. It really holds everything in place and then I always wash the quilt before I use it. Why? Because it fluffs up the quilt, gets rid of the ‘sticky’ and makes me feel better about using gluey chemicals. However, when it’s an art quilt, I don’t like to use the spray glue. It’s not really rational, because I use paint and fusibles and don’t worry about washing the art quilt. But if I use spray glue, the item must be washed.

So…that leaves me with hand basting my Tumbling Leaves project, because it really cannot be washed. I’ve used all kinds of threads in the embroidery and of course I never test them for colorfastness!

I really hate to hand baste. I don’t think it holds things in place well enough, but I hate it so much I won’t put in enough stitching to really try to hold things!

In any event, I got the stitching started. While sewing, I have time to think and I began to plan what I wanted for the border…not straight edges, but leafy and pointy and uneven. And how best to accomplish that…hmmmm…

Drawing out the leafy edge that I wanted seemed like the solution, but I’m not good at drawing. Tracing on tissue paper would have worked, but then I’d have to pin or stitch the tissue paper leaves in place. Light bulb!!! Freezer paper and my thermofax maple leaf screen to the rescue! Screened leaves onto the freezer paper, with a light color and then simply ironed them in place.

Simple, then to stitch them in place for an outline for both the quilting and the edge finish!

The freezer paper actually was easier to remove than thinner papers that I have used.

In this one area, I went ahead and continued with my pebble quilting, right over the leaf papers.

Here’s my tip to you…don’t do that! All those extra paper parts with stitching have to have the paper removed! Not hard, but a little tedious.

The leaf outline is enough.

And here’s where I’m at. All the paper is removed and I can finish up the quilting. I may get some time to do that tomorrow. But I’m anxious to get to the border finish now, because I like the challenge of creating those uneven edges!