Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Meeting The Wall

With the surface of the quilt I'm working on now fully covered, I feel impatient to get to heat setting everything down and sewing. But I know I can't rush things and there are areas of the quilt that tell me they need to be altered. I feel some resistance arise at the thought of redoing, looking further and working more. In fact, last night I had to leave it alone because I felt overwhelmed and the answers weren't forthcoming. However, today when I do look, I see shapes that don't point to the center focal point that need replacing and the upper right corner needs more variety of shape, while the left corner feels messy. Suddenly I can see that the tiny pieces near the center that I added to make it seem less 'wreath-like' are actually too dark a value. Since I assumed the center of the piece is 'done' I actually had fused it down already, because I don't want pieces falling off and then to not know where they were formerly placed. So this led me to something else I've been wondering about. I haven't made a fused quilt before, and I wonder if every piece actually needs to be sewn around it's edge in addition to quilting. How durable is fusing? Will it stand the test of years to come? I did some reading and found that different quilters have different approaches. Some do not sew edges and others do. I don't want to create alot of fragmented lines with sewing, but I could use invisable thread. If I just quilt, I'm sure lines of stitch will touch every piece at least once if not more, so they wouldn't fall off. I decided to test the center pieces since I want to remove them anyhow - and - with a little effort they came off nicely. So a fusible quilt would probably stay together, but can also come easily apart. Hmmm. I will continue to stay with this quilt as it's evolving and to do the best that I can to make it all it can be.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

HI Yvonne
I'm hardly an expert but I've noticed that fusibles really vary. Steam a seam 2 bonds very firmly, mistyfuse less so. I'm sure that your piece would be well enough secured with your all over quilting plan. Invisible thread can be problematic with most machines and if you try it get the good stuff. It comes in 2 colours and you can see the darker version on light fabrics - experience talking here... Enjoy your opening this weekend and I look forward to attending the show sometime soon.

Yvonne said...

Thanks for remembering about the show opening - I am looking forward to it. I know what you mean about variability between fusibles - I had some I found at a garage sale - it was Stitch Witchery I think - and once fused to fabric pieces, it is kind of hard and the pieces do not stick to a background as they do with Steam a Seam. Also, I used it on a previous quilt underneath organza and it made it more opaque then with mistyfuse - which was not what I wanted. Never again! With invisable thread - I bought some very fine coloured and so called 'invisable' thread at last year's sewing show because I wasn't able to find any of the regular kind, but fortunately I tested it out first because it definitely was visible. Since then I have bought and used YLI and have had no problems. I haven't tried it with the Pfaff yet, though.