The Darling Dogwood: Silhouette (Dust Off a Quilt Book Blog Hop)

Wednesday, March 4, 2020

Silhouette (Dust Off a Quilt Book Blog Hop)

It's my day on the Dust Off a Quilt Book blog hop hosted by Bea of Beaquilter. Bea challenged us to find a quilt book on our shelves and make a project from or inspired by it. It turns out that the emphasis was on the oldest book we could find, but I missed that detail! I was focused on using a book I've had for a while and a project I wanted to do using that technique, but hadn't actually gotten around to making yet. Here is Silhouette.

The book I used is Fabric Silhouettes: Quilted Treasures From the Family Album by Louise Handley. The copyright date is 2006 but I've had it maybe 6 years? I got it when the library I was working for at the time discarded some books that weren't being checked out.

My plan since I bought the book was to make a silhouette quilt from one of our wedding pictures. First step was to pick a photo to use. I decided on this one. Our photos were taken by Wendy Waldron who runs the 1812 Hitching Post, a wedding venue about an hour from Charlotte in Harmony, North Carolina. (Can I just say how much I love that we were married in a town called Harmony?)


Inspiration photo. Credit Wendy Waldron.

Second step was to simplify the photo. You can see that I took our friend Mark, who was our officiant, straight out of the picture! I used my Crayola light box (birthday present from my husband and son and I love it!) to trace the silhouette. I orgiginally tried to trace the arbor as well, but it looked weird. My husband suggested that I instead use a frame of floral fabric to represent the arbor, and pointed to an example in the book that did something similar. He was, of course, both absolutely right and a genius.

Two of the three fabrics are Island Batik, the center is Coconut and the inner border, silhouette, and binding are Navy, both from the basics foundation collection. I wanted to use Island Batik for the floral border as well but didn't have anything with the colors that I hoped would capture the spirit of the arbor in the photo. I went to my local quilt shop, Quilt Patch Fabrics, which carries Island Batik. They had a few floral patterns but nothing with the color variety I was hoping for. And then I saw this print and knew it was probably as close to perfect as I was going to get. It's Painterly Petals from Robert Kaufman.

I chose to quilt it before adding the silhouette. I used a 1" cross-hatch design. I didn't want to use white thread because I didn't want it to be super visible on the navy, so I used Aurifil monofilament instead.

I didn't want to trace the image more than once so I used Heat 'n Bond EZ Print Lite sheets that can go in the printer. I use a dark blue Aurifil thread and a really short stitch length to trace as close to the edge of our silhouette as possible. I also stitched a line to give a little definition to my husband's arm. I'm not sure if you can see it in the photo but I think it helped.

My original plan was to frame it but at the last minute I decided to hang it above the fireplace mantle instead. My dad rigged this hanging system for me when I moved into the house. It's held the same wildflowers wallhanging (predates the blog) for the entire 10 years I've been in the house--time for a change! The bouquet of flowers on the mantle is from my wedding; I ordered felt flowers from Etsy. My grandmother bought those candlestick holders for her & my grandfather's apartment when they were newlyweds; she gave them to me years ago when they downsized into senior living. I really love how Silhouette looks hanging above the fireplace and this is essentially your view when you walk in my front door, though I intentionally framed the photo so that you don't see the toy storage below 🙂

Many thanks to Bea for hosting this blog hop and giving me the kick in the pants I needed to finally make this project! I absolutely love it! Make sure you check out the other quilters on the hop and Bea has giveaways, too.

March 2

Pieceful Thought of my Quilting Life

March 3

March 4

The Darling Dogwood -- That's me!

A Quilting Reader’s Garden

Becky’s Adventures