This project has been a labour of love. I am really enjoying bringing the artwork to life and experimenting with the best way to do that. The fact that the artwork is my son’s is a bonus.
The procedure was labour intensive. Gabe sent me the drawing, I enlarged it via my opaque projector, then outlined and filled it in with Sharpie markers. Then I traced it on Steam a Seam 2, numbered and coded all the pieces, cut them out roughly, ironed them onto the backside of the fabrics, and then carefully cut them out.
Then I made a pounce pattern of my original enlarged copy, pounced the pattern on the background, placed all those little pieces and pressed them on. The background we chose was a double dip black cotton I found at http://www.hamelsfabrics.com/. The black is wonderfully deep, but boy, is it hard to get anything to stick to it for long. I assume all that dye and processing is responsible for that.
After that I sewed each individual piece to the background, bringing all the thread ends to the back and tying them off.
Using black batting and a great black/grey/white fabric I found at Connecting Threads for the backing, I loaded in onto my longarm and quilted horizontal lines every 1.5 inches.
Then I spent approximately 15 hours burying threads.
I sewed an invisible binding and two sleeves (one at the top for the hanger and another smaller one at the bottom to house a weight to help it hangs's straight) and now it is packed and ready to be mailed to Gabe who lives in Toronto. He has a place of honor all ready for it to reside in his lovely downtown apartment and I can’t wait to see it hung!
