Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Strips and Stacking

If only I was a supreme being, think of all the exotic flowers I could make.

Well, I kind of am. I can make my flowers anyway I want, any color I want, any shape I want and any size I want. They can have all kinds of do da’s and extra stuff on them.

But I digress. Let’s just talk about the Tulips and Daffodils from the other days post.

To make the Tulips and Daffodils for the class Trumpeting Spring that I taught last week in Saginaw, I use a few simple tricks of “fusibility” (I made that word up) to help make it easy and efficient to make my flowers. 

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To create the tulips on my quilt “Tulips” I make the design down the middle first.
  1. Remove the release paper from two fused fabrics, one light one darker for the tulip flower head.
  2. Cut from each fabric color 1 rectangle that is 1” x 3”
  3. Cut on the long edge of the darker colored fabric using a wavy decorative blade in your rotary cutter.
  4. Place the darker fabric about 1/8'” over the lighter fabric on a piece of release paper and tack fuse together.
    Tack fusing is using a hot iron for just a few seconds on the top to hold the two layers together.
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  6. Trace the shape of your tulip onto a piece of release paper using a mechanical pencil.
  7. Place the pencil side of the paper against the fused side of the combined rectangle and press with a hot dry iron to transfer the shape to the back of the fused fabric.
  8. Remove the paper and cut out with a small rotary cutter or very sharp scissors.
  9. 11onetulip_fa

Creating designs this way is so easy. And it makes designing fun, like a game.

Check out these leaves in my Darling Dandelion quilt from my book Fun Fast Fusies.
New Dandelion for upcoming Book Fun Fast Fusing with Frieda

The ones behind the Dandelion are made the exact same way as the tulips.

First cutting out two rectangles of different colored fabrics and then fusing them together to make a base unit and finally cutting out the leaf shape from the base unit.

Making the flowers on the Daffodil’s quilt is really simple.

Use the same technique for transferring a pattern as I did for the tulips.

For each flower place the release paper over the pattern and stack the different sections one on top of the other, matching them up according to the pattern.
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Designing can be liberating and very creative. You just have to let yourself go and enjoy the ride.

5 comments:

Barb said...

I love fusible and your design.

Shawn said...

Thanks for sharing- looks like fun!

Anonymous said...

It definitely looks easy and fun! What if you are using a very dark fabric that the pencil or Sharpie mark won't show up on? How do you transfer the pattern onto it using this method?

Frieda Anderson said...

If I am using a very dark fabric, I will use a white chalk pencil to trace the design and this will transfer to the back of the fused fabric too.

Anonymous said...

Thanks, Frieda! I will give that a try.

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