Raggedy Ruff Designs

Transcription

1 Raggedy Ruff Designs Raggedy Ruff Designs Owl Wall Hanging Finished size 8 by 12 1

2 You will need: Background fabric: Please see the follow page for details. Wadding: 14 by 10. I like Hobbs heirloom which is a 80% polycotton mix as it is easy to hand quilt. Stabiliser: 12 by 8 piece There are lots of types of stabilisers. For this project, I used a papery tear away stabiliser so that I could remove the stabiliser afterwards to make it more suitable for hand quilting. If you don t mind the extra stiffness or are happy to cut away the remainder, then you can use a medium weight cut away stabiliser. I don t like the soluble ones as I find they stick a bit on the machine and don t move as easily but that is a personal choice. Thread: I used the following. Mid/dark brown for outlining. (I prefer this to black as black is very harsh.) Variegated cream for downy feathers and teasel details. Variegated tan for branch and leaf veins. Variegated green for blackberry tops and leaf veins. Dark brown for eye detail and claws. Cream for outlining the eye Variegated grey/cream for feather details. Dark beige for the talons Variegated dark brown tree branch detail. A copper rayon for the eye and little touch of orange variegated thread. Variegated yellowy brown for legs and beak. The only other thing to note here is that is if you switch between brands of cotton like I do, then you may need to keep adjusting your tension as you sew. Some of the quilting threads I use are quite thick and I have to turn my tension wheel to half of what I normally do so that I don t get the bottom thread coming up. Tension problems show up a lot more when you free motion than normal sewing, so if you get loops on the bottom either your upper tension is probably too loose or it isn t threaded correctly. If you can see the bottom thread or your upper thread snaps, then your upper tension is too tight. I actually find I can tell when my lower bobbin thread is nearly empty as I find that I have to keep upping my upper tension to match the bottom one. So be aware! Fabric: You can use any fabric you like but I would heartily recommend batiks for raw edge applique. The thread count is higher so they stay together while you are sewing and don t fray nearly as quickly. I like to use hand dyed batiks with no printed pattern. They give a lovely water colour effect. I use the Kota batiks by Moda and Sew Simple Batiks most of the time. For this embroidery I used the following: purple for the blackberries various greens for the blackberry leaves Grey brown for the head and tail feathers Mid brown for the wing. Dark cream for the chest and face. Light cream for the downy feathers Dark brown for the branch. Freezer paper: Freezer paper is ideal to trace the pattern pieces and then you can iron them (warm iron) onto your fabric and then cut them out and carefully peel away the paper. 2

3 Bottom bobbin threads: Just a note here to say that I am lazy so I only ever use either a dark brown or cream thread on my bottom bobbin. I adjust my tension to make sure you don t get any noticeable thread colour coming up from underneath. Free motion foot and ability to either drop or cover up your feed dogs: Everyone s machine is different and I m not going to try and explain all the different types of free motion sewing foot. But you are going to need one. And to know how to use it! This one is mine. I have a Pfaff Creative 2056 (which is getting on a bit.) I used to have the proper free motion foot for it but I broke it so I am back to the darning foot the machine came with, but to be honest it works just as well so I haven t bothered changing it. Patchwork Instructions Fabric Requirements The template for the patchwork is below and you need to cut the following pieces. The fabric is labelled and sorted in order of brightness. G1: Lightest grey, one 3.5 square and one 1.5 square G2: Light grey, one 6.5 by 5.5 rectangle G3: Mid grey, one 2.5 square G4: Mid blue/grey, one 2.5 square G5: Darker blue/grey, four 1 and 7/8 th HST triangles. B1: Dark blue, Four right angled triangles 3.5 by 1.5 B2: Cool mid blue, One Isosceles triangle, 3.5 by 3.5 B3: Mid blue, one 1.5 square B4: Light blue, one 3.5 square B5: Light blue/green, one 3.5 square N1: Mid brown, one 1.5 square 3

4 N2: Mid blue/brown one 2.5 square N3: Light patterned cream, four 1 and 7/8 th HST triangles P1: Dark purple, one 1.5 square P2: Mid purple, one isosceles triangle, 3.5 by 3.5 P3: Light purple, one 1.5 square Patchwork instructions All the patchwork seams are constructed using a ¼ inch seam. First piece the small HST triangles (G5 and N3) using a ¼ inch seam. Press the seams flat towards the darker fabric. Sew the two pieced blocks together following the pattern and repeat for the remaining 2, to make 2 sets of star points. Sew one set of star points to the 2.5 square O1 block. On the other star points, sew the C5 1.5 square following the layout to get the square in the correct position. Sew the two strips together to make the partial star, press and put to one side. Sew G1 (1.5 square) to B3 (1.5 square) and press Sew G1/B3 to G3 (2.5 ) square and press. Stitch this block to your star block and to B5 (3.5 square). Press and put to one side. Stitch two of your two right angled triangles (B1) to the isosceles triangle (B2) and press. Stitch your triangle block to B4 (3.5 ) square. Press. Stitch the B4/B1/B2 block to the large G2 (5.5 by 6.5 rectangle) and press. Stitch to your star strip and press. Construct the P2/B1 triangle block in the same way as above and put to one side. Stitch N1 (1.5 ) square to P1(1.5 ) square and press. Stitch N1/P1 to N2 and press. Stitch this block to your triangle block and G1 (3.5 square.) Sew this strip to the rest of the panel and give it all a good press. 4

5 Applique Instructions At the back of the instructions there is a set of outline drawings. Let s get going. Put your stabiliser underneath and make sure it is at least as big as your panel. Next trace out the design with freezer paper. Cut out each of the shapes and have fun choosing your fabrics. Please make sure on the owl you cut the whole shape out in dark cream chest fabric. Next draw around both the downy feathers and the tail and cut out of the light cream. Then draw around just the tail feathers and cut those out of a grey/brown fabric. You can also draw around the dark feather areas on the head and cut out the grey/brown fabric. Lastly cut the wing out of the mid brown fabric. It makes it much easier to position and you don t find that your tail has wandered off while you were sewing and you have a big gap in the middle. (She says from experience!) The blackberries are cut from a mid purple. The branch from a dark brown. The leaves are cut from several shades of green. The teasels are cut from a cream. Lay out your pieces and admire. Make sure you leave a gap between the bottom of the owl and the branch so you have room to embroidery his feet! Thread your machine with the mid/dark brown. Take a deep breath and with all the free motion settings engaged correctly on your machine, position your needle about a millimetre from the edge of your bird and start sewing. A few stitches on top of each other fastens your end for you. Each time you get to the end and want to cut off your thread remember do a few stitches to lock the thread so it doesn t undo. With free motion sewing there is no need to stop and turn around, you can 5

6 sew in all directions. After a few stitches I find it helpful to cut off the upper thread end so I don t keep sewing over it. Go all the way around the bird just sewing in from the edge. If you miss a bit don t go back over what you have done, just get back into position as quickly as you can and keep going. If you feel a bit panicky then you can always just sew up and down on the same spot a bit or stop for a second! You want to stitch twice around all of the bird except for around the face and neck and the downy feathers at the bottom. The dark thread will stand out too much there so we will secure them later. On the first trip around concentrate on securing the edges, and on the second time around you can exaggerate the feather dips and zig zags and catch down anywhere you missed the first time. (It happens. A lot.) Switch over to a grey thread. I used a variegated thread. (You knew I was going to say that.) Secure the fabric around the face by zig zagging back and forth. You can carry on and go around the rest of the owl with this thread to add more details to the feathers. At this point I switched over to another shade of cotton and added more feather details around the face. Pop your mid brown on again and let s stitch in that eye and beak. Try not to worry too much about the placement. I ve deliberately drawn him with his head to one side so we don t have two eyes to balance so if he ends up with his eye a bit further back or lower down, it doesn t matter too much. There are all sorts of owls out there. As the fabric is light coloured you might find it helpful to pencil in a very light line to follow. Don t shade the eye in until you are happen with it. For now we are concentrating on getting a couple of lines so we can then put the rest of the shading around. So if you notice you have got it in the wrong position, just stop, re position the needle and carry on going and we can hide the first eye with thread later. I often reshape my initial eye through the later shading. 6

7 Once you are happy with the position change to a variegated cream thread and add some stitching around the eye. You can cover up incorrect stitching here if you need to as we will be outlining in a darker thread later on. Next we want to colour in the eye. I used a copper rayon thread first and coloured in the whole eye. Next I switched to a darker orange and did some stitching around the outside. Next I picked a cream and stitch an oval in the centre, and finally I switched over to black and carefully stitch the central pupil slit and outlined the eye again. This is hard work. Lot sof colour changes and you need to stitch very carefully because as the layers build up, the thickness can cause your free motion foot to loosen, so keep checking it is properly attached still. Once you are happy with the eye, switch over a darker beige and colour in the beak. You can see I ve only filled in some of the area, you don t need to worry about making it too uniform. With the dark beige thread we are going to concentrate on the lower half of the owl next. Stitch around the outside of the chest area and as you reach the bottom you can add in the parting for the legs. Following around you can add some feather details in the tail and wings. Change over to a cream thread and catch down the edges of the cream fabric and some soft textural feathers in. Stitch down the branch with a dark brown, and stitch the leaf next to the branch. You can add some bark detail with a brown/grey thread. Once that is all done change over to the thread you used for the beak and shade in the feet and talons. Start thin and work your way fatter so you don t end up with the bird equivalent of chunky ankles Once you are happy, outline in a dark brown to define. The talons are quite pronounced for an owl so extend past the end of the cream thread into an exaggerated claw. 7

8 I actually missed a bit of the cream downy feathers out when I was tracing the bird outline, so I took the opportunity the stitch in some embroidered ones. Oops. With the owl finished, we can get on with the teasels and blackberry leaves. They are a lot easier than the owl! Stitch around each of the leaves, teasel heads and blackberries with the mid brown thread. Change over to a beige thread and add in the spikes for the teasels and the stem details. The blackberry stems are embroidered with a tan thread and 8

9 remember to do little spikes as you go for the thorns. I used a red/green thread for the leaf veins to give them a different look to normal. Extend the brambles so they curve around the edges of the panel. Flip your work to the back and start neating up those ends. I don t trim too short but on light coloured backgrounds you can sometimes see dark threads through so best to get rid of as much as you can. If you are hand quilting now is the time to rip as much of the stabiliser out. If not, then free free to leave it in. It is much easier.give your work a press and then trim down to 8 by 12 Finishing Cut wadding and backing to 10 by 14 and layer with fabric on the bottom, wadding in the middle and your embroidered panel on top. Secure the layers together using your favourite basting method. I prefer a basting gun. Quilt your panel in your favourite way. I like to hand quilt my pieces and I quilted mine with straight lines arranged in rays in a light blue thread. To finish off your panel you need to bind the edges, everyone has their preferred method and there are a lot of tutorials out there which can explain in better detail than I can. I always cut strips long enough to cover each edge that are 2.5 wide. I press them in half and then stitch them to the front of the panel through all the layers using a quarter of an inch seam. Press flat then fold over to the back and whip stitch in place. On the corners, you can either bind them straight or mitre them. I am a wimp and never do mitred corners. Pop a hanger on the back and you are finished. 9

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