My design wall is full of patches cut from baby clothes. I have a commission for a throw quilt and a pillow top. It’s very odd and interesting to go through the clothes of a child you’ve never met. I’m the mom of one son, so these girly clothes were pretty foreign to me. One problem was that someone had already begun to trace and cut patches from these clothes before turning them over to me.
Nearly all of these are knit fabrics, so I backed them all with fusible interfacing before I cut, the way one does for T shirt quilts. I worked mostly with Pellon sheer weight fusible, which cut, pressed, handled very well. When I ran out, I used a bargain, packaged, store brand interfacing to finish. Not so good. It was difficult to tell which side was fusible. Even when I got that right, it wanted to deform and melt with the hot iron and kind of stick to it. Yuck. I muddled through. Unfortunately, once the fabrics were interfaced, they completely refused to stick to my design wall, so they are all pinned and hanging off.
A number of these dresses were handcrafted batiks, so I tried to make the most of them. I’ve ordered some batik yardage for the backing, and I think it will look great.
Here’s the finished top for the pillow cover. I soaked poor Winnie in Oxiclean, but he’s still a little grungy. If he doesn’t come cleaner when I wash these, I’m going to add a few extra gold glitter hearts to cover up the spots.
What are you working on?
I’m linking up to Wednesday WIP at Freshly Pieced.
June 19, 2013 at 8:43 PM
That’s really special! I love it! Congrats on making it this far, even with the frustrations. It will be lovely in the end. I think the gold hearts are a great idea, even if it does come clean! 🙂