Amy at Park City Girl blog is sponsoring the First Annual Blogger’s Quilt Festival (click on her name to get to her blog). If you go to her blog you will see a lot of listings – everyone with a number by their name is participating by putting a picture of one of their favorite quilts that they have made on their blog with how they made it. Go to her blog and visit as many sites as you wish to look at all the quilts. On her right side bar are names of the sponsors and you can go visit their sites too to see what they have to offer.
One of my favorite quilts that I made was back in 2003. It is called “Stain Glass Dragon”. The pattern is from the “Three Swans Studio”. Below are photo’s of the process that I took to make the quilted wall hanging and a photo of the finished quilt. This is not made with the iron on bias strips that you can use for making stain glass quilts. This a whole cloth technique.
Step 1: Trace your pattern onto freezer paper – a large piece of freezer paper! Then cut out with an exacto knife (I think that is the name – a razor blade with a handle) all the pieces that will be color – this leaves a lacy like pattern which will be the stain glass.
Step 2: Place a piece of black cloth the correct size – in this case it was about 6 feet long by 3 feet wide I believe or something like that. Anyhow place the cloth on to your workspace. Gently place the lacy pattern on top of the black cloth and iron your freezer paper pattern onto the black cloth.
Step 3: Very carefully cut one section of black out at a time where your color fabric will be. As you cut each piece out use fabric glue and glue your seam allowance over the paper creating your stain glass lead. This is a process that takes awhile for a project this size – do not be in a rush!! The paper stays in the quilt – never wash it 
Step 4: After you have all of your black cut out and all of your “lead’ in place it will look
like this. In the previous steps you are working from the reverse side. Now you will be working from the front. When you get done with step 3 the glue will have had time to “harden” and nothing should come apart – this is still all one piece of cloth remember.
Step 5: Now you start to add your color. In some areas the same color will be used so you can work with large to small pieces. Make sure that the stain glass lead will cover the seam lines – glue the lead down to the color pieces of fabric. This is what the dragon eventually looked like.
Now at this point I let it set for a day to make sure all the glue was dried. Then I kind of rolled it up and I hand stitched all the lead down. I hand stitched because that is what I like to do – you can use your sewing machine at this point and sew all of the lead down with a double needle if you have one for your machine, or by doing it with whatever method you chose. When all the lead is sewed in place and all of the color pieces are attached it is ready to quilt. I hand quilted the quilt – it can be machine quilted of course if that is the method you like.
The finished quilt. And where it hangs in the house — my sewing room.
I made this quilt in 2003. I did not have a large space big enough to work on it so my husband got a piece of plywood and cut it a little larger than I needed. We put all of the leaves in the kitchen table and the wood went on top of it. It stayed there in the dining area for six weeks until I was finished glueing everything in place!! It was well worth it. We both love this wall hanging. We had first seen this quilt pattern in a quilt shop in Canmore, Alberta, Canada in August of 2001. My husband loved it and asked if I thought I could make it. Of course I said sure thing it sat put aside for quite awhile while I worked on other projects and would take the instructions out to look at to figure out how to do it. Then came time to start collecting the fabrics to make it. I would say that this wall hanging is my most unique and fun project I did. It was very challenging. A close up of the hand quilting on the Dragon:
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
