Friday, November 21, 2008

Layered Fusing Tutorial

A couple of days ago, blog reader Ursula posed the following question:

Q: Do you fuse all the circles on top of each? Are there about 5-6 layers on each square?

Isn't that great? Ursula is just the one for asking pertinent questions. So, I took some step-by-step pictures yesterday and have this tutorial:


Here is the first circle in my block.



And here is the fabric I want to fuse it to.




This surprising tool is a small sliver of bar soap that is left over after the bar is almost all used up. You know the stage: you can't use it anymore because it just breaks. That piece of soap, dried out, is an excellent marking tool.



It's a little hard to take a picture of something that usually takes two hands, but I use the soap to trace under the top piece so that I know where to cut out the bottom piece. I don't trace right at the edge, tho. The soap line would show. I trace a little in from the edge.




Now I have my circle traced onto my fabric.



And I cut that part out.



Then I can fuse the two together.



But in all but the overlap, it is essentially just one layer.



Then I continue on, building up the layers, removing the backs, until I get something like this:



But the back looks like this:




The reasons for doing it this way are
1: to save fabric. Those cut out pieces are being immediately recycled into the next block or blocks in this quilt. And,
2: to reduce bulk. The fusing becomes a little less reliable when there are so many layers sandwiched together, the quilt is heavier and harder to quilt.

And here is the current status:




BTW, all of these pictures were taken with my new camera. Woohoo!

9 comments:

Abril Mora said...

Amazing! I lov ur job! Thanx!

Melody Johnson said...

Fabulous description of the right way to fuse layers. I will refer people to this tutorial. Good work. And wowowowowow! Loving the new WIP.

Cindra said...

Here by way of Mel. As usual, I love your design! Your color sense is awesome! And I love me some polka dots!!!!

Exuberantcolor/Wanda S Hanson said...

That blue really makes it pop. I never have liked turquoise but have found it to be the spark that makes a lot of combinations work. Another reminder to use all of the crayons in the box.

Candied Fabrics said...

Wow, this is really neat! Can't wait to see what you do in those little rectangle empty spaces!

Nellie's Needles said...

Thanks for sharing your processes ... both in technique and composing. This piece is looking good!

Mai-Britt Axelsen said...

Wonderful stuff, thanks for sharing.

Kristin said...

Thanks for the fusing tutorial! I love the way your piece is coming along, especially the color arrangement.

Kristin in SC

Lisa Walton said...

This is great - thanks so much for taking the time to do this. So clear now.