Gaggle of Geese Quilting Stitches

Here are some close up shots showing the quilting stitches in this piece.

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Shaped by Fiber III

I have a few fiber art pieces in an exhibit running the months of July and August. The exhibit is called "Shaped by Fiber III" and it is put on by Beyond the Edge Fiber Artists. You can see it at the Cerritos Library, in Cerritos, California - 18025 Bloomfield Avenue, Cerritos, CA (562-916-1350). It is a wonderful display of three dimensional fiber art pieces. I hope you have a chance to see it.

Flying Geese in the Background

Linda Friedman asked if the geese in the background were made from transparent fabric, and they were not. I used a blue fabric that I had painted fabric, and then custom painted it to be close to the background fabric. Thanks for asking Linda!

Gaggle of Geese - Some Details

I wanted to share a few more things on this piece:

There are seven geese flying across the top of the quilt. I cut out each piece and painted them individually to blend with the background they are near. I wanted them to be a subtle addition, and not detract from the Gaggle walking. Here they are pinned in place.





Close up showing variation in color of the geese:
















A section of Flying Geese units were inserted here just below one of the flying geese. I thought that looked cool!



Grounding the Geese:

A put a section of "land" under the feet of the geese so that it didn't look like they were floating on air. It also looked a little like a shadow.




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A "Clean" Raw Edge Pieced Background

Gaggle of Geese

I wanted to give a little information about how I made the background for this piece. Originally I planned to use a brown and tan background, but when I made a background with those colors, the geese did not stand out from it sufficiently, in my opinion. 

Here you see what I mean:

The goose just did not "pop" from those colors.

So,  I needed to figure out something different. I pulled fabrics out from my stash. I saw that blues looked very good next to the geese and started to throw the blue fabrics on the floor in a haphazard manner. Well that unplanned layout of blues looked really good, so I took a quick photo of it and used that as my design guideline.

I cut out the various rectangles of blues and laid them out. For the most part, I did not want to worry about turning edges under, so once I got them where I wanted them and pinned them down to a background fabric.

After positioning and pinning, I straight stitched them in place using my machine. I stitched close to the edge of the rectangles to do this. 

I did not want to have a lot of fraying on the edges, so after the sewing was done I carefully clipped the edges of each rectangle, and then used a brush to lightly apply a watered down solution of thread end glue to just the edge of the fabric.

 

This is the glue. I had an almost empty bottle of it and added a little water, shook it vigorously, and got a slightly tacky solution. I used an old small sparse brush to apply it. I dragged the brush along the edge of the fabric piece only, in the direction that made the threads lay down.  I was careful to avoid getting any of this solution on the top of the rectangle to avoid a "shiny" area of dried glue. This worked well to eliminate frays, and I would use it again. 

And that is my tip for doing a clean, raw edge pieced background. Thanks for visiting my blog!