Despite the fact that the background is fused / raw edged, I wanted turned under edges on the koi. Several posts ago, I showed quilting the fish individually. After that, I carefully trimmed the backing fabric and excess batting away from the underside of the fish. The fish on the top shows the fish, trimmed… it looks lighter where the stitching is because (a) that’s where he is painted (that thin wash of metallic paint) and (b) because the green mat is now shadowing through the seam allowance. Those two tiny black things you see are his pupils, done in thread.

As with all appliques, you clip the curves. Unlike most typical applique, I decided to fuse-baste the wide seam allowances in place (faster than thread!). The lower fish shows the seam allowances fused down. Each fish is about 20-22 inches long (that’s ummm… how many cm’s? 55-60 cm? 39 inches to a metre, so a bit more than half) , maybe the width of four knuckles across at the widest point.

The last photo shows one of the quilted fish pinned to the background (so I could mark placement). Obviously, this fish needs fins and a tail. That’s tomorrow’s post! But let’s just say I’m happy!

The front is now as complete as it is going to be before I begin quilting. Here it is a step or two farther along than the last time I blogged about it:

And here it is ready to square up:

Usually I don’t finalize the edges of a quilt until it is nearly done… assembly completed, quilted, and ready to finish the edges. Many times that is because I don’t know what shape I want it to be in the end… I tend to resist proper rectangles and straight edges. However, this quilt needs to be done (and in record time!), so I made a decision before I began that this one would have straight edges, 90 degree corners, and no curvy outsides or other peskiness (at least of that sort!).

The dark line you see is some fuzzy yarn I was using to mark the edges on the design wall and make sure everything looked good, the angles were correct, etc., before marking with chalk and then trimming.

Tomorrow I’ll show what I did next with the koi…..

Hmm…wonder what unsuspecting visitors will arrive via Google searches for koi ponds based on that title? As all my great regular readers know, I’m working on a koi quilt. The good news is that it is going well (bless fusibles!). Over the past four or five days, I have managed to make good headway on the background for the front of the quilt.

Here’s a tease…the fused fabrics laid out and draped over my big-board:

At first, I had planned to cut gently curving strips as I did for my journal quilt, from last year (this one is still touring with the 2006 Journals exhibit … not sure where it is due to go next, but they usually “come home” in about September):

Then I decided that I wanted to get that rippled-y look from a gentle breeze skimming over the surface of the water. I remembered Pauline Burbidge‘s water pieces, and snagged her book off my shelf, but it didn’t quite have what I wanted. So, I taped two long strips of paper together, since they were almost as wide as my desired size (I m shooting for a finished piece 40 inches wide…if it is 39, I can’t enter it in Paducah!). Then, I sketched “ripples” in pencil. When I had them more or less where I wanted, I used a black felt tip to make them easier to see, then colored in every other one to keep from getting too confused during construction. Here it is with just the outlines:

Then I started with the cloth. I fused up a whole bunch of cloth … either 12 or 18 inch full width pieces (picture at the top of this post). I picked the one I wanted to be a dominant color, one of my hand-dyes with little visual “busy-ness” (in the center of the board). Instead of making a whole bunch of pattern pieces (can you say boring and tedious?), I placed the fused cloth on my work table, put Saral Transfer paper on top of that, then the big pattern piece on top of that. Using a plain old pencil, I traced over the outlines of the section I wanted, which transfers a chalk-like substance from the Saral to the cloth (it brushes off easily). Then, out comes my trusty 18mm rotary cutter (the little one, with the blade the size of a dime…maybe 1 cm. across the whole thing for those of you not in the US) to cut along the lines on the top edge, and just below the lines on the bottom edge.

Here are the first few pieces cut and up on the wall–at the very bottom of the photo, you’ll see the big pattern draped over the edge of the table where I’m doing the tracings:

As you can see, I started from the middle and worked up and down from there. In the next photo, I’ve added some more pieces:

Then I decided I’d better test the whole thing by placing the koi on it and making sure this idea for rippled water would “work”:

Thankfully, it does! So, back to more cutting. In the photo at the top, you’ll notice two of the batiks are more multicolored than monochromatic. I had intended to use them to accent the rippled edges, but once I got things going, I decided that they would be “too much.” So they won’t be on the front. The back, maybe…. stay tuned. I still don’t know what’s going to happen entirely on the back (that’s a tease!).

The next post about the quilt will be in a few days…also want to post a book review AND get a whole bunch of work done. So, off to the studio.

I just discovered that Larkin Van Horn, beader and quilter extraordinaire, has just tagged me to play in the Seven Random Facts game and so did my bestest friend Marie… but I already answered that a while back (May 7th I think it was?), so I’m going to count that as having answered and in turn tagged seven others LOL! Here’s a link to Larkin’s blog which I have just added to my series of links over on the right…., and Marie is here: Marie’s blog.

Now, fish scales. Sure hope you guys agree, cuz I’m NOT picking out all that stitching! But first things first. Initially I was going to make some of the fish mottled / splotchy (that yellow/gray hand-dyed), including by using white and black NeoColor II artsticks (sort of a combo of crayon and pastel and OK to use on fabric…Jane Davila used them in an article in Quilting Arts Mag. a few issues ago). First I decided the yellow didn’t work (see photo of design wall in the previous post)…too distracting, and wanted the quilt to be orange/turquoise (complementary colors). That also meant a “nope” for the black. Here’s my test strip:

Making the koi multicolored, as so many are, was just too jarring. BUT, the washes of sparkly paints worked. In looking at techniques, and my box of paints, I spied the Setacolor “Nacre” or pearlescent paint (a white) and a Stewart Gill Alchemy paint in a color called something like AfterGlow (they used to be for sale at eQuilter, Friends Fabric Art has some of them now– they are expensive, but probably worth splurging for a bottle or two as a special treat, and this site I’ve never seen before has the entire line: Puffinalia.com ) The test strip has the Pearl in the center (between the two stronger white dots) and the AfterGlow above the black blotch.

The photo at the top of this post shows all three fish (plus the head and tail that will be coming into and going out of the quilt) batted and ready to stitch… if you click on the photo you should be able to see it larger, and then see what is painted and what isn’t). I REALLY thinned the paint so that it was just an irridescent wash, which seemed perfect for fish scales. Here’s a closer view of the head / tail:

I couldn’t decide which I preferred: the simplicity of a single line of stitching or a double line:

I tested on the edge, and tried out several colors of orange, a variegated (nice on the orange, but wouldn’t work for controlling the appearance of the scales), and even better when I combined two colors of thread.

The emphasis and subtle color variation by adding a second line of stitching in a slightly lighter shade of the same color, inside the original fish scales worked for me. Here is the fish head in progress (please note the color on these photos is a bit off…)

Well, I decided I liked the doubles…..the singles look good, until I get them up on the wall and step back, at which point I MUCH prefer the double-thread look. Am I insane? Here’s a close-up of one of the big fish, with the two colors of thread used. I quilted first in the slightly darker one, then went back and echoed with the lighter one, on the right.

As for construction, you might wonder what the heck I’m doing quilting fish, and not a quilt. I’m saving time! I’m quilting the tops of the fishies separately, (meaning I don’t have to bury all those thread tails, or have that distracting line of “carried” thread along the sides) and they will then be appliqued to the surface of the quilt and the fins and tails added there….. More anon.

Well, I really should be working on my book. Instead I am indulging myself seriously and trying to finish (!!!!) a 40×60 ish quilt in 6 weeks! The idea is fully formed in my head, I have the fabrics and the beads, and in the past couple of days since finishing the chapter banner, have sketched out the picture in the head into three koi.

Here is the glorious color:

And here is day 1: (sigh…please tilt head to left…it’s a vertical)

Stay tuned for updates…..

And thanks to all for the kind comments on the Chapter Banner. Many of the comments have come through as “No reply.blogger” so I can’t reply to you directly to say thanks for writing, so… Thanks for taking the time to surf in and write! Now… back to the usual morning routine / chaos!