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Friday, December 30, 2016

Old Boy

I have a friend who has 5 dogs and a big heart. She was not looking for another dog - lord knows 5 dogs can be a lot of work and money for a single middle aged woman although we all know they give back 10 fold with so much love and joy. But when she stopped by the local shelter and met Old Boy, well then there were 6

Old Boy had been at the shelter for a very long time. He's 12 and senior dogs are extremely hard to adopt. People don't want them. But Old Boy deserves a life outside a cage to enjoy his last few years. This was taken last Friday - look at that happy boy go! He is loving life!

To run and play .......... To be a dog.

I just had to make a quilt of Old Boy

 

This one I tried a different approach than my usual reverse drawing with fusible and freezer paper. I did use freezer paper but traced each piece on the freezer paper then ironed that onto the right side of the fabrics. I left all the edges raw but did make sure the adjoining pieces all had enough overlap to the piece beside it to cover well. I then took a thin piece of fusible interfacing, laid it over my drawing for a map of where to place all my old boy puzzle pieces.

After laying all of it out looking at the original photo and my "map" for guidance - all was then ironed to fuse in place using parchment paper as a pressing cloth. Then the excess interfacing was cut away before putting on a background.

 

Since he was all one chunk at this point I was able audition lots of backgrounds.

Once laid in place on the background he was glued in place by using a very thin line of Elmer's all the way around. And then each individual piece was also glued the same way. This prevents the fabric from getting caught in the hopping foot or flipped the wrong way while free motion quilting. Susan Carlson uses this technique on her amazing quilts. Have you seen her crocodile quilt? Omg, amazing! You can read about how and why she uses glue here.


Then he was quilted - a lot.

I gave him to Old Boy's mom and neglected to take a photo of him completed but at least you can see the process. He was a joy to create and I may use this raw edge collage method again. Lots of glueing but you end up with less glue in your project than fusible and a lot easier than turned under applique.

 

6 comments:

  1. Hi. What a lovely quilt of Old Boy (and a great gift for his mom). We've had two older rescue dogs - they are great!

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  2. What a beautiful gift! It's a lovely quilt.

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  3. Of course I love the quilt...but I LOVE the story. Your friend is a doggy angel and YOU have the Spirit of love.
    Happy New Year.

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  4. What a great quilt. I love it. And you make me strongly desire to sew again!

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  5. Pushed send too soon......kudos to the friend who took an old dog home. He will be a great friend!

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