I know I have been lax in keeping up my Blog. hopefully I will get back into the swing of things and Explore with you Textile Art----

My Scallop Quilt!

I had an idea for different colored rows of fabric cut in scallops.

I made a few quick sketches and then moved to Electric Quilt 6 to design it. I would have much rather used CorelDraw to do the job. I have used it for so long I can design things much faster in it. I find EQ6 not real user friendly, however the nice part about EQ6 is that it will give you all the fabric required and you can

easily adjust the quilt and border sizes as everything is done with a quilt in mind

I had bought the Polka Dot fabric a few years ago while visiting my sister in Charlotte, NC.

She took me to Mary Jo's. http://maryjos.com/

and that was all I needed to make it a must stop place when ever we are traveling south.

When the scallop idea came to me I thought the polka dot fabric would be perfect. I don't know why, but I also wanted to use rick rack.......Gosh I haven't used or thought of rick rack in probably 20+ years----

Isn't it funny how these ideas just pop into your head. I've been rereading Julia Cameron's book " The Artists Way" and she talks about how you can't just think ideas "up". You have to dig "down" into your well--deep inside you where all your creative ideas are flowing. And so my creative well gave birth to a scallop designed quilt with bright polka dot fabric and rick rack embellishments!!!

I wanted to take the polka dot fabric even further and looked around locally at quilt shops and on the Internet for white on white polka dot fabric. Plain white would just be to boring with all those dots!! I couldn't find any, but on a trip to Joanne's there is was----white on white polka dot fabric--- wow was I happy!!!!

So design, fabric and embellishments were all decided----now cut the fabric! Cutting the fabric from my paper templates seemed "old fashion" to me---

I have to use a rotary cutter or I'm not happy.

Well.............I could make my own plastic template..............How...............

I went to Home Depot and bought a piece of Plexiglass for under $4.00. The salesman said to cut it slowly because it wants to melt back together because of the heat the saw blade generates !!!! ok....I can do this...

So after having marked the patterns with permanent marker onto the piece of plexiglass I used my scroll saw and did a few practice cuts along the edge to just get a feel for it. Well 3 times I cut the same line and 3 times it melted behind where I had just cut......I did a search online for cutting plexiglass and found that you have to do something to cool the blade as it is cutting. Masking tape was mentioned, blowing air on the blade from a compressor, WD-40 or detergent.

I put masking tape on the underside of the cutting lines and then I thought maybe putting the plexiglass on 2 layers of cardboard would help...........sure enough-- it cut beautifully.

I was now able to use my rotary cutter and 2 new templates to cut both the colored and white fabric.

I now have all the blocks sewn together and the blocks sewn into strips.

I have them up on the design wall and am now deciding if I like the color placement of the strips. While the are still in strips I want to sew the rick rack to the scallops. After the strips are sewn together I think I'm going to sew another strip of rick rack down the back of the scallop.

That is my progress so far.

Happy Quilting!!

Take care,

Judy