Autumn Leaf Warm-up

I used this wonderful tutorial for an oak leaf and acorn to warm up.








It's available at: http://theinboxjaunt.com/2014/10/14/the-oak-leaf-and-acorn-free-motion-quilt-tutorial/

  And the finished motif with an additional line of quilting around the leaves.  I used a piece of my own hand-dyed cotton sateen, a wool batt, and a bit of decor-bond to stabilize the back. I think it would be nice as part of a bag.  

Monochromatic 2 Challenge - Construction

In the previous post I showed the finished piece.  Following is the sequence of construction.

I drew the outline, some of the spots, and the eye on this commercial batik with a washaway marker.

The inks I used are lined up and you can see a tiny sample of each color on the side of the fabric next to the bottles of inks.

Using temporary adhesive spray I attached a piece of wool batting to the wrong side and stitched around the outline with a medium orange thread.

After the initial stitching, I inked in the eye, spots, and shadow.

I arranged all the threads I might want to use in order of value.

This is a closer view of the inked portion before I added more thread. 

I used straight stitching on the eye with four different threads.  I used a couple of different weights because I wanted a lot of color and texture variation.  I used a free motion zig zag stitch to give the rest of the gecko the appearance of scales, using brown thread on the spots and orange for the rest. The blue ink was rinsed away after this.

The back before I cut away the excess batting.

Then it was layered with another piece of wool batt and DecorBond, then quilted.

This is my model in repose in another shot. She is actually more gold/yellow and black.  I used my artistic license to make her orange and brown for the challenge.