Egyptian Border

I’ve almost finished the first border on this quilt.  Check out my motif and the stylized straight feathers:

I still need a bit more quilting in my cornerstone design.  The gold areas have hieroglyphic quilting in them, quilted after this picture was taken.  You can see my chalk markings, I sketch my ideas right on the quilt top.

I’ll keep plugging away on this quilt.  It’s slow going because I quilt part time nowadays.  Plus I have a lot of straight line and stitch-in-the-ditch quilting to do.  This is called “ruler work,” and I like to take my time and do it right.

The motif in the pictures above was hand drawn by me, then  made into a stencil so I can replicate it on this quilt.  I have developed a new and easy technique for making your own stencils for quilting or other projects.   Hmmm…  guess I had better add that one to my book, right?   LOL!

Hugs, Carla

Stencil Tutorial

I mentioned last week that I was thinking of rug hooking one of my fish drawings.  I needed some way to transfer this to the cloth, so I decided to make my own stencil.  The added benefit is that I can also use it in my quilting, too.

For this project, you need a line art drawing of some sort, stencil plastic or mylar, an exacto knife or special stencil cutting knife with 2 blades, a permanent marker, and a cutting mat.  I just used a exacto knife since that is what I happened to have on hand.

Step 1: Decide on your art, then enlarge or reduce to the size you want:

and print out: 

Step 2: Trace the drawing onto the stencil plastic (or mylar) using the permanent marker.  Use your exacto blade to carefully cut out the black lines.  (Hint: I plan my connecting lines ahead of time so the stencil will stay together)

Last step: Use the stencil to mark where you wish.  You could use this to mark a quilt with chalk or- as in my example- I’ve marked a piece of burlap for a rug hooking project:

Easy Project!  I suggest this tutorial for all levels of experience.  Just be careful of that sharp exacto blade or stencil knife.  As with all my previous tutorials, please share what you create if you use this.

Regards, Carla