Hey Everyone, welcome back to Technique Tuesday.

Today is Tuesday, where do the days disappear to because it was just Friday and now it is Tuesday and Tuesday means a new technique. This technique may or may not be new to you but it is certainly one that is a lot of fun.

Last week I showed you all the crazy dense quilting I did on the background and this post is all about creating the dandelions.

How did I make the dandelion puffs on my tissue box art quilt?

I used…..

Yarn for couching…..

a skein of yarn on the colourful background

Yummy yarn in the perfect colours

Some wool roving….

wool roving in yellow, pink, blue, green and mauve

Wool roving in delicious colours

And a felting needle….

Felting needles

Along with a foam block…..

Foam block

To create the dandelion puffs.

By only needle felting about an inch on one end of the roving I made a solid section that I could then sew into place on the background between the couched yarn sections.

blue roving on foam block with a felting needle in the roving

An inch or so felted at one end

Originally I thought the couching would be enough to create the dandelion but it looked really plain and I had to add the roving for the wispiness to create the illusion of puffs.

wispy wool roving on the green & turquoise fabric

Mauve roving between couched yarn pieces

Since the image on the tissue box had circles at the ends of the lines I added tiny buttons to the distal end of each couched yarn piece. It’s a good thing I have a huge button supply with enough mauve buttons to outfit more than one art piece. The buttons added more dimension and definition to the puff.

buttons on each end of couched yard amongst the roving

Mauve buttons added

I tried several different colours of roving and auditioned them and I liked the look of the mauve the best so mauve dandelions it would be.

Dandelion yellow but it blended into the background too much.

yellow wisps of roving being auditioned on background

Yellow roving

And the blue was too blah. Here you can see the couched yarn pieces and as you can see there was just too much space between each section to leave blank.