Some time ago, I made a small wall hanging for a friend using some of my favorite techniques - the result worked well. Here's what I did....
One of my favorite techniques is printing on fabric. This technique is a perfect way to incorporate a favorite pet or memorabilia for a small project. Of course, if you want to make a full sized quilt of your pet, I can highly recommend Marilyn Lee's Pets with Personality online workshop.... but for small projects like the one I'm creating, printing on fabric works best. I actually teach this technique in a class but I also have an eBook available so you can learn too: Printing on Fabric e-book.
For this project, with the photo as the focal point, I wanted a frame that wouldn't distract but would instead enhance it. So, I chose one of my favorite foundation blocks.... "square in a square". With the photo in the central block, I created different sizes for more interest which give the perfect balance. I have instructions for foundation piecing on a previous blog here: Foundation Piecing know how (it includes a foundation pieced template for square in a square) or if you'd like to learn even more about foundation piecing, check out my Mariner's Compass workshop.... a very popular foundation pieced design.
Free-motion quilting is my most favorite technique. I use free-motion in lots of my projects and not just quilting but also applique. For this project though, I'll use it to stipple the background and quilt dog bones around the border. A find a lot of quilters seem to steer clear of free-motion.... do you? It is one of the techniques I teach in my machine quilting workshop, but that isn't just about free-motion, it covers all sorts of quilting styles for both straight quilting and free-motion: Machine Quilting class.
Here is a close up of this fun little quilt with the photo as the the spotlight. You can see the stipple quilting and the doggy bones I quilted..... I'm sure that's what Buddy is eyeing up.
Close up of buddy quilt showing bones quilted in the border
Do you have a favorite technique? I'd love the hear about it so leave a comment for me below.
