The Geometry of Flight

Welcome to my stop on Island Batik's Adventurous Applique blog hop!  This month's challenge is to make an applique quilt specifically using the edge painting technique created by 4th & 6th designs.  I was send the Geometric Symphony collection as well as 5 coordinating threads from Aurifil thread for the edge painting.

  Materials used in this project were given to me by Island Batik, Aurifil, Schmetz, Hobbs, and Oliso.

I enjoy applique and was excited to try a new applique technique. The edge painting technique was originally inspired by flowers, so that was my tentative plan.  But the Geometric Symphony fabric changed my plan.  While beautiful, the bold geometric patterns would not work well for smaller, delicate areas of flowers.  I needed something with larger pieces to show off the bold designs in the fabrics.  I played around with a few different ideas and eventually landed on butterflies.  I have the butterfly die for my Accuquilt Go and that would give me nice, big pieces to show off the fabric.  

 

All 20 fabrics from Geometric Symphony are in this quilt.  I used the 4 golden fabrics for the butterfly bodies, chose one the dark blue with magenta squares for the sashing (I had a 2-yard cut of that one), and used the other 15 fabrics for the butterfly wings. I cut both a top wing set and a bottom wing set from each of the wing fabric and mixed and matched.  

 

Butterfly bodies

I typically use fusible web in my applique but the original edge painting technique uses glue (specifically Roxanne's glue baste-it).  I didn't have any of that glue or any other fine applicator tip glue bottle.  Once my butterfly wings were cut I was inpatient to get started, so I used Elmer's Disappearing Purple glue sticks instead.  I love Elmer's disappearing Purple glue sticks, and I stock up each year in July/August during back-to-school sales. The glue sticks would not work as well if I had really small, delicate pieces, but for my larger pieces they worked great!  The butterfly bodies were small enough that I did decide to use fusible web for those. My Oliso iron worked wonders with all of the pieces.

I wanted my butterflies to look like they were flying, so I used a Blender from the always-available Foundations collection, Wavy Dots in Bluebird, as my background.  Once I had all the butterflies parts paired up and the edges glues down, I was ready for the applique!  You can see a demonstration of this technique by one of the creators here. There is also a newer video here that uses fusible web instead of glue. 

 

The stitching (& stabilizer) from the back

 

The videos I watched on the method said it is ok if it looks messy and goes outside the lines.  Which is good, because I did go outside the lines!  But I'm happy with how it looks, and once I got into the back-and-forth rhythm, I liked the method.  I did find that I needed a stabilizer on the back of my block during the applique, and I used the tear-away stabilizer I had on hand.  The Schmetz nonstick needles were perfect for all of the stitching, including the edge stitching.  

 

https://www.schmetzneedles.com/

I used the five beautiful threads Aurifil chose to coordinate with Geometric Symphony and simply chose the thread that I thought looked best with each fabric in the moment.  So the same fabric in one butterfly may have a different thread color in another butterfly.  I laid them all out as I finished and stitched together with simple sashing.

My finished top was 40" x 52".  I had a throw sized batting of Hobbs Silk Blend batting from their Tuscany Collection. I layered that with the top and used the 2-yard cut of a golden swirl fabric from the Geometric Symphony for the back.  I quilted with organic wavy lines and I love how it looks like the butterflies are flying.

Backing fabric also from Geometric Symphony

I named this The Geometry of Flight because I like the combination of the nod to the fabric collection and the natural flight of the butterflies.

Two other Ambassadors are playing with Geometic Symphony and applique today.  Be sure to visit both Preeti of Sew Preeti Quilts and Leah of Quilted Delights to see what they did with these fabrics!  It's always fun to see such different looks from the same fabric collection.

What's a blog hop without lots of giveaways?!  I cut a bunch of extra 5" squares of Geometric Symphony fabrics.  (Sorry, I didn't get a chance to take a photo in time, I had a family situation come up.)  Leave me a comment between now and September 21st and I'll pick a number randomly for a winner.  Any comment is fine, but if you need a prompt, tell me what applique method you like.  Edge painting?  Needle turn?  Fusible?  Raw Edge?  Something Else?  None of the Above? (Preeti & Leah also have giveaways, as do many of the ambassadors on this hop.  You can see the full schedule on my previous post. )