Frostie's green eyes

Hey Everyone, welcome back to Coffee Talk Saturday.

I had the pleasure of being part of David Taylor’s Pictorial Quilts workshop in Waterloo last weekend. What fun we had in this intensive 3 day class.

Day one starts with transferring the photo selected onto tracing paper. My photo is of Frostie, my cat who passed away last year. The bigger you work the easier it is. My piece is going to be 40 x 44 inches when finished.

image of a cat with tracing paper over top and pencil on image

Tracing photo onto tracing paper

Another view of the tracing.

An line image of a cat

A few more lines needed

The next step is to make a huge mess with your fabrics. Now this was very hard for me because I don’t work in a mess very well. In fact I did clean up a couple of times and start over when I needed to change colours. This wasn’t even my worst mess.

Fabrics scattered on table in a mess

Mess of fabric

I started with the eyes because well that just made sense to give her a personality right away and so she could look around the room and keep an eye on all the fabric. Frostie loved fabric – she had to approve each and every piece that came into my studio. Then I added her nose.

Eyes and nose in place with fabric

Facial features in place

Now this pic looks like the quilt has been quilted but the truth is I have the tracing paper still lying on top of the grey scale photograph so it looks like stitching. I think it looks awesome and am considering doing a whole cloth piece with just the eyes added in colour. The rest would all be done in stitching.

But first I have to learn the technique that David teaches which is hand appliqué – oh boy, hand appliqué – not something I have ever done much of but if I am going to do Frostie justice then I think she has to be done with David’s method of construction from start to finish.

More pieces added – not a fast process considering I did this over 2 days. I need more greys and whites and more peaches and tans and more and more and more. Frostie didn’t have a black ear but the way the photograph was it looks black and we are making a pictorial quilt but I am thinking I might change the fabrics to dark grey since her ear was grey and not black.

Fabrics slowly being added to the chin and ear

More fabrics in place

Here are some of the other pieces that were started in class.

Audrey’s little puppy.

Eyes, hair and a bow

Love the pink bow

Sylvia’s puppy.

puppy dog eyes

Cute as a button

Audrey’s leaf which is one of David’s new leaf patterns soon to be released. Audrey unfortunately left her piece at home Sunday morning – she grabbed the wrong roll and came with a blank piece of tracing paper. Fortunate for her though David had a pattern and I had a whole stack of green fabric.

Maple leaf in multiple greens

A maple leaf

And finally Tina’s sand piper.

A bird with long beak

Sand piper

They are all so different and are all going to be fabulous.

A great class and David is an awesome teacher who shares all kinds of tips and tricks along the way about fabric selection, hand stitching, thread, quilting and of course the all important fabric positioning.

I look forward to finishing my quilt of Frostie – hopefully by 2020.

Happy Quilting!

Jen Transparent Signature

Subscribe