All That Glitters

Front on top; back on the bottom (with little bits of tissue paper)

Cutting that nifty shiny thread fabric has resulted in lots of glitter:  all over my clothes, the cutting mat, the floor and in my laptop keyboard.  Damn.  At least it's pretty.

I pulled threads from the leftover cuttings and made another piece of thread fabric.  Using a fabric backing had pros and cons.  It's stable and opaque, but bulky, can't be easily appended together, it's not reversible and some of the fabric edges fray when cut).  I understand why some tutorials instruct using water soluble stabilizer on both sides.  I will do that next time.

I didn't have much left stabilizer left, so I tried a tissue paper backing.  The tissue didn't all disintegrate or pull out, but I like this result better that the fabric backing.  It's a bit thinner.  I can easily sew small pieces together to make a bigger piece.  This was a dense chunk, but I considered what a looser "weave" would look like.  You'd be able to see the fabric it's appliqued to through the gaps.  Oh!  So many ways to play with this!

I have laid out my main project - have the colors picked, the hearts all cut, it's ready to piece.  Raw edge applique seemed the way to go with this.  I've never done that before - I don't like how messy it looks.  But these pieces are messy!  I felt a clean edge would clash with the rest of the hearts.  As I pondered how to applique it, I also thought about how to quilt it on the new machine.  So many things new things I've not attempted before - did I want to risk trying them out on this quilt?

I stopped my work to make a smaller version with the extra pieces.

A practice run was the thing to do!  The hearts seemed so thick when I cut them out, but they flattened as I stitched them to the fabric.  They spread out a little, too.  I'll need to keep that in mind for my "real" project. 

I picked a quilting pattern for the mini quilt but couldn't imagining what it would look like even after I doodled it several times over.  I've seen people use dry erase markers with plexiglass to help visualize their quilting.  Turns out I had a bunch of old clear report covers (I use the spines as chew-guards in the guinea pig cage) that worked great for this.  I need to buy a fine-tip dry erase marker, but I some dry erase crayons did the trick for now.  I drew the waves side-to-side, but the up-and-down orientation makes me think of confetti.  We'll see if I like it as much when I stitch it.

Once I finish with the little one I'll be ready to tackle the real thing.  I'm loving how it looks.

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