Join a Stay-at-Home Round Robin

If you have followed QuiltFabrication over the past year, you've probably discovered I love to participate in Round Robins. You know, that quilting activity which starts with a center made by the quilt's owner, then the quilt is passed to the next quilter for each round or border addition, and so on, until the top is done. 

Being stuck at home but not letting that get me down, Gail of Quilting Gail has started a Stay at Home Round Robin - I am sooo in!!

                                              

My last experience with a round robin produced two quilts made with the same rules - the Round Robin Rooster, made by my fellow guild members,

and Who Rules the Roost?, my own round robin.

Though I'm a bit late in sharing this activity, there's still time to join. Here's some details: check out Gail's post on how the Stay at Home Round Robin will work, and then the post for round one with piano keys, which includes the announcement of round two - pinwheels. 

Each Friday she'll give the theme for the next round, and host a linky party to share our progress. I've gotten my center done, using leftover blocks, 

adding other leftovers and scraps to the center to make a focal point.

Then making sure I had enough scraps for the piano keys border idea,

with corners finished with a fun frog print because it coordinated nicely. 

Not sure if frogs will become this quilt's theme, but I do envision the center as a pond with a spraying water feature. Am I stretching the imagination?

Now I need to figure the pinwheels - what size, how many, where, etc, etc. I'm challenging myself to stick with scraps, though there may come a time when yardage is needed. It's going to be interesting to see where this goes! 

I hope you join Gail and the rest of us for a fun project to keep you occupied while staying at home - the resulting quilt will certainly have quite the story to go with it!

Happy Quilting!

How to Make a Picture Frame Border

Today let's learn how to make a picture frame border, just like the one used on The Second Life of Quilts.

I was shown this technique in Noriko Endo's class in Houston last year, and thankfully remember how to do it. It's made from two pieces of fabric, with no seams showing in the corners, and is more suited for mini and small quilts.

The only stitching visible is the straight line stitching along the inside edge of the frame, giving the piece a great finished look.

So how do we do this? First, cut two pieces of fabric the same size as the mini quilt, placing right sides together.

I'm using the solid backside of this piece of fabric as my right side - I'm not to fond of the print for my border. The point is to choose what side you want showing in your border, and make it the right side.

Next, determine the width of the border. I chose 2" for mine, and I would suggest nothing over 3" unless you plan to quilt in it. I marked in 2" from the edge all around.

Stitch on the drawn line, then cut out the center 1/4" away from the stitched line.

For turning purposes, make a small clip in the inside corners.

Press, and turn both wrong sides of one border edge up. Press the seam to one side. This helps to create a crisp seam.

Turn the piece that's on the inside over on top of the other, matching border edges. Carefully press at the seam.

Continue around the border, repeating the steps for each side. When done, place border frame on top of the mini quilt, pinning in place.

Stitch a straight line 1/8" from the inside edge of the border.

Prepare binding, pinning to the outside edge. Stitch both the binding and the outside edge of the border down at once. Finish the binding as usual, and ta-da, you have a picture frame border on your mini quilt!

Happy Quilting!

Thanks for following!

Midweek Makers #220

Welcome to the Midweek Makers linky party! It's a throwback day, revisiting my Hold It Together wall hanging - how fitting is this for making it through today's global crisis???

Of course, I may need to make it's companion piece,

as this seems to be the only way we're going to beat this thing.
Stay home, wash your hands, and if you feel sick, get tested. We all need life to return to normal ASAP.

On a happier note, I received postcards from the SM County Fair with info on important dates for this year's fair (if it goes on as planned). Turning the card over, what do I see? 

Not one but two of my quilts featured - Ladybug Dance and Hold It Together! There's lots of squealing and dancing at my house!

Ok, I'll calm down now to look at last week's Midweek Makers. There were 3 lovely brown/beige quilts to see, like this one from Time 4 Stitchn,

                                 

or this beauty from Gretchen's Little Corner,

                                 

and this one from For the Love of Geese, with varying value placements for a different look in each block.

                                   

And I can't leave out these two tutorials, one for a binding technique using an edge stitcher foot shown by Donnaleeq,

                           

and an interesting faux trapunto technique shown by Jayne of Twiggy and Opal.

                                   

Be sure to visit to learn more!

What are you sharing this week?

• Please link directly to your specific post..
• Visit the other guests, and leave a comments.
• Use the Midweek Makers badge or link to www.QuiltFabrication.com in your post.

Have fun at the party!

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Using TAP or Transfer Artist Paper on Fabric

I'll admit, I'm pretty impressed with TAP or Transfer Artist Paper (affiliate link), used to create my super fun The Second Life of Quilts project!

Images are crisp, clear, and vibrant, better than printing directly on fabric, and even on paper. Transferring was easy too - just had to make sure I reversed images and ironed long enough. But yet to be tested is it's colorfastness and crinkling properties when washed. Once I do that, then I can really be a huge fan.

So, here's a few tips I learned before running TAP through the ink jet printer, and transferring to fabric. Some are highlights from two videos,
How to Use TAP Transfer Artist Paper,
How to Use TAP Transfer Artist Paper with Fabric, 
and others are my own observations. I totally recommend watching the videos to make sure of how the printing and transfer the process works. Certainly don't want to misprint or goof up a fused image and waste this product!

Here's a couple things I learned:

for image processing,

• make images and lettering in reverse
• fit as much as possible onto the page before printing
• think about what color/print of fabric the image will look best on as TAP is transparent, allowing the background to come through on the image

TAP itself,

• trim away as much blank space of TAP as possible before transferring to avoid image-free excess TAP from discoloring the background
• protect the transferred TAP image with a piece of fabric or silicon sheet from the hot iron
• be sure to press, with a hot, hot iron, for the required amount of time for complete image transfer
• if the image doesn't completely transfer, keep ironing till it does
• excess clear TAP can be removed by ironing over with a scrap fabric piece or a silicon sheet
• TAP images can be ironed over as long as there is fabric or a silicon sheet covering the transferred image 
• a matte finish is achieved by removing the paper while still very warm. A glossy finish happens when peeling the paper from a cold image.

Let's talk about image processing. For The Second Life of Quilts, the three black sports icon images were reworked in Photoshop to all have patchwork in their sails. I'm not a pro at image manipulation, and it took a few Photoshop video lessons to achieve what I wanted, but I got there. 

Once the images were done, I moved into Word, creating the lettering and testing out different fonts (there are 2). Then resizing everything to get it all to fit on one piece of paper, with a couple of print tests to check image size and such. 

The above is the normal printing orientation, so that I could do a test run of the quilt layout. 

Once I was happy with that, I made sure to reverse all images and double check, because TAP requires all lettering to be in reverse so that when it's transferred (ironed on), the words read correctly.

When that sheet came out of the ink jet printer, I was super impressed with the print quality on TAP - wow! And with that, I planned my attack.

First, I wanted the sail colors to stay vibrant and not get muted by the blue background. So, I cut the images apart, trimming away excess white TAP, and leaving just enough to keep some pieces connected.

The colorful sail portions were transferred onto white fabric, 

then a 1/4" of fusible was applied to the backside edges, with the front image protected by another piece of fabric. 

Once cut out, they were fused, again with a piece of fabric on top of the image so that it didn't transfer to the iron.

There was a bit of stickiness peeling away the fabric, but the image remained intact. Adding in the black images required covering the fused image, 

and lots of hot iron pressing,

for a great transfer!

The final result is a transfer with a slight sheen to it, and up close, it looks like it's been inked into the fabric. The hand is soft, though the appliqued sails, which are double fabric, are stiffer. And it was well worth cutting away as much excess TAP as possible, as there is a very slight value change on the background. If you look really hard, you can see a line between this guy's knees, though it's barely noticeable. So far, two thumbs up for TAP!

Someday I'll dream up another project using TAP, with the plan to wash the item. I'm curious to see how images hold up - I'll keep you posted!

Happy Quilting!