Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Hurray.......

There is something that I forgot to show you........so I thought while I was at it, I'd sorta fill in the blanks on how to make it.  I did post the directions for something similar a year or two ago, but everyone needs a re-fresher every once and awhile.  Do you remember my crayon quilts?  YOU will love this!!!  Soooooo fun and easy and they turn out almost like a watercolor picture.  This one I did as a mug rug.  I think it was about 8 inches square.  (I'd measure it, but I already gave it to a friend to hang in her house as a spring decor.)

Spring Flower

First of all, I want you to get a solid piece of paper and draw a flower.  Try to make the petals go off the outside of your square.  (Or you could make the square bigger to start and trim it later, it really doesn't matter.)  Now, cut yourself a hunk of solid white fabric a bit bigger than the drawn flower and with a pencil, lightly trace the drawn flower onto your white fabric.  (Hint:  If you cannot see the image, darken your drawn flower with a sharpie marker, but wait until it's dry before tracing.)  After that is done, iron a piece of freezer paper (shiny side down) to the back of your white fabric.  This stiffens it enough so that you can color it without the fabric shifting.)  Get out your Crayola crayons and color to your hearts content!!  Note that I had plenty of white fabric on the side of the image to test colors, so you might want to consider cutting a bigger white piece of fabric than you would need.


When it is done to your liking, remove the freezer paper from the back, lay a piece of cheap muslin on the top of your flower and iron it until you smell the wax.  DO NOT BURN!!!  This seals the colors and protects your iron at the same time!!

Next, fuse the back of the flower with a piece of fusible fleece, or thin batting and pin to temporarily adhere.  Stitch around the flowers with white thread and remove pins.  Do any fancy stitching now like the french knots in the middle for effect.


Now for the tricky part.  Use a kids scissors with blunt ends and cut as close to the batting as possible.  Discard your cut pieces.  This procedure will make your flowers POP as they will now have two layers of batting.  Now, sandwich as you would for any other quilt.
Use a size 16 needle and #12 black thread and free motion quilt around each flower, burying the threads as necessary and quilt as desired for the remainder with desired thread.  Trim and bind as normal and do any additonal french knots at this time and wa-la!  You should have a darling flower mug rug!

Spring Flower

16 comments:

Annieofbluegables said...

I just LOVE your coloring tutorials and your quilts. You are so amazing. That makes me have spring fever. I can't wait for this wind to stop blowing, the snow to stop falling and for the flowers to pop! Mean while, I can make some flowers of my own POP! Thanks
~a

A.J. Dub. (Amy) said...

What a fun pretty project!
Thanks!

Coffeebean's Dailies said...

This was a lovely tutorial and surprise! Thank you and i shall be trying this technique very soon!!

Brenda said...

fun idea. I'm going to try a variation of that.

Teje Karjalainen said...

Thank you Carol! I wouldn't have thought that we can use those colours for fabric! Have you tried washing? I want to try that and will share your great idea in my next post!
x Teje

Quiet Quilter said...

I 'member....I made a wall hanging using this method. The double batting idea is new to me, however...time to get out the colors again...

Chris said...

Oh. I'm really surprised. It's darling! Gotta go try this :-)

Terry@ a quilting blog said...

What a fun project Carol...can't wait to pull out my crayons and start coloring!!! :o)
~Terry~

Merry Merry said...

What a great mug rug - and great tutorial. Do you speak at guilds? Do classes?

Annie said...

First I gotta go find me a kid that I can steal crayons and scissors from! LOL

Jana said...

This is absolutely cheerful. I love it. Thanks so much for sharing the how-to with us. Oh, the possibilities...

Susan said...

As always - very creative and very generous of you to share. Thankyou.

Jo said...

I followed your first pattern, and loved it, and this is certainly a nice addition.

TexPat said...

I've always intended to try a Crayola quilt. I even have a box of Crayons!! Your technique is so easy...and the results are wonderful. Thanks for the! tutorial!

Judy D in WA said...

Now I want to go in and play! Very cute!

Sandy said...

For a couple of weeks I've been fighting an urge to color on fabric because I have two quilts (for charities) I must finish before I play! Although I already had several boxes of Crayola crayons in the house, the tower of 120 crayons called to me during a sale in one of those major craft stores and so I had to buy it! Now I have the incentive to finish up those two quilts! Thanks for the tutorial!