Someone give me a Forward Shove....PLEASE

The Miami Valley Art Quilt Network was so pleased with how their last series of co-operative "slice" quilts turned out, they decided to commit to another.  I signed up for one piece...and think I need to be committed. Once again, Ronnie Doyal went out and took photographs of buildings and scenes around Dayton.  I opted NOT to lead this time, but turned it over to Ronnie and Carroll.  They chose the images and sliced them, randomly assigning the slices to members.  Totally random....as in you put your name in and you got a piece.

Mine is the towers of St. Mary's Church  in Dayton.  I love the colors and I love the way the light is striking the towers and the crosses in the upper windows are glowing.  But....I am having a really hard time getting into it.

In fact...I've been procrastinating...plus I've been busy.....and I've started a new chemo which has left me extremely fatigued.  I thought that I would quickly complete this piece last week and this week.  Instead, from Sat. night until Tuesday, I spent the days in bed....as well as the night too.  Not exactly the way to get my derriere going.

This is my section of the photo.  Rather than hand us the photos and have us make the drawings and patterns,  Ronnie and Carroll did this for us...primarily because although for the first series we said that the sketches we made should be blow up so that all of them were 42" long.....many of our members had problems with this.  Even the resultant quilts were not the same length.  One poor member who did indeed make hers 42" long had to shorten hers three times in order to make it match the others.

So....rather than have this issue again, Ronnie and Carroll supplied it.

Here is a section of what I got, a black and white print...I have a little difficulty because I have no idea what size the bricks should be.....but there's also another difficulty.

See the little tiny fragment of the second tower to the right? I have to match mine to the other side..completing these little whiskers of the tower.  It would have been better if it had been sliced not in the exact center, but to one side...just a smide to the left.  I would have to pick up the arch on the window surround, but the tiny little bits of the cupola would have all been on my partners slice.

I did paint my background fabric and then started to select fabrics.  Chris Landis had some brick fabric left from her slice which also included a brick building and it is the right shade for the light struck side of my tower.  I will mess around with it to shade it for the dark side.

For the glowing parts of the white, my rust dyes will work well.

I will use the back side and the top side of the upper right neutral, plus some linen, and a frosted cream on the left.  The blue is a shaded batik which I will use for the domes of the cupola as well as the slate roof, but I will add some threadwork for the darker part for the slate, and make sure the lighter parts of the batik fall for the domes.

Usually, I trace over my sketches with a sheet of clear vinyl, the kind people buy to put over their dining room tablecloths on top to prevent spills....or what is still on the furniture in the house my husband lived in in Cuba in the 1960s...  I use a sharpie, then I can make sure that I get the pieces in the right spot...but last time, the vinyl stretched and I had to fiddle with it to make it match it's partners, so this time I opted to put my painted background on my light box and trace directly onto the fabric.  I will also probably take a piece of tracing paper and make another full size piece to put over the top to double check.  Tracing paper tears, but it usually doesn't stretch.  I have made the background wider and taller as I know that it will shrink when I quilt it as I probably will put quite a lot of detail quilting in....if I don't, I will trim off the excess once my partner's section is done and reading to face (however, I will use an "escape hatch" finish on mine.

I like to use Mistyfuse as it is soooo thin.  I know that some people are put off by the fact it doesn't have paper on it....but I use it like this.  I lay a piece of baking parchment (I use the Reynolds brand which is readily available in the grocery store) and lay it over the top of the photocopied blow up (or sketch if I was doing this all from scratch).  I then take a soft pencil if the fabric is light enough to see a pencil line on it, a light colored Prismacolor pencil if it is dark, and trice directly over the RIGHT side of the drawing. No having to think about reversing...it is a direct trace.

I then take the fabric I have previously fused with Mistyfuse (or you can do it in one step if you like) and place the tracing PENCIL SIDE DOWN on the Mistyfused side of the fabric.  I then iron over the top of it...Because nothing likes to stick to the treated Parchment Paper and Mistyfuse likes to stick to EVERYTHING.....it pulls the pencil lines off onto the back side of the fused fabric.  I then can use my micro-serrated scissors and cut the piece out, looking at the lines left on the fabric.

See? No switching out scissors...no flipping things around...it's just there and ready to go.

Now if only I can get myself ready to roll.  I'll show you what I am able to accomplish as we go along.....

I'm going to join Nina-Marie Sayer's Off the Wall Friday Fiber posts....I've been remiss and haven't participated....largely because I have been so bushed, or off the wall busy...

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