Fall Farm Stand, Part 5

Detail shot of quilting, just started

I’m just about to call it a day, so here’s a progress report on Fall Farm Stand. Today I painted and melted Tyvek pieces and added them to the orange pumpkins. I hand appliqued all the gourds and pumpkins to the black background. I painted a few areas on the background (and may do more after I do some stitching). 

I did some threadsketching on the orange pumpkins, while I was stitching down the Tyvek pieces. But I didn't do too much; I want the bumps on these pumpkins to be very dimensional, so I’m going to do most of this detail work in the quilting stage. 

After cutting batting pieces to go under the three gourds in the foreground (the big orange one, the gray one and the speckled black/reddish one), I pinned these pieces to the back of the quilt top. I am hoping that this extra layer of batting will make them come forward from the background a bit more. Then I placed the quilt top on top of the batting and backing fabric and basted it with quilters’ safety pins. 

Then – finally! – I got to do some free-motion machine quilting. This is always an exciting part of each piece I do, because it is when it starts to come alive with the detail and dimension that the thread adds. 

I also don’t think I mentioned the size of this piece. It is about 24" x 36", which is bigger than a lot of the pieces I’ve done lately.

Time spent today: 6.5 hours. Total hours: 18.75

Fall Farm Stand, Part 4

Here’s what my latest piece, Fall Farm Stand, looked like before I went to bed last night. I cut out all the pumpkins and gourds from the white fabric on which I painted them, and positioned them on the background fabric. The white around each one will be turned under when I hand applique them to the background. The piece is based on this photo:

I am going to do some painting on the background, and add some melted Tyvek pieces to the  bright orange pumpkins today. Then I’ll do the applique and some thread sketching before I quilt everything with the batting and backing fabric. 

Time spent today: 4 hours. Total hours: 12.25