How can we avoid shadowing in our quilts?  When it comes to patchwork, the first suggestion is often taught right in the beginner quilting class.

Press Seam Allowances toward the Darker Fabric
Quarter-inch seams in quilting patchwork are most often pressed to one side, rather than pressed open as in garment construction.  Where there is a choice, pressing those seam allowances towards the darker fabric will prevent shadowing near the seam.

This isn’t always possible, especially with butted seams.  Butted seams occur where two seam allowances meet at the same spot.  By pressing one seam allowance to the left and the other to the right, the bulk is evenly distributed in the new seam helping the intersection to line up perfectly and the patchwork to lay flat.  Butting two seam allowances may mean pressing towards the lighter fabric.

Butted seams pressed towards light fabric

Grade or Trim Seam Allowances
If pressing towards the lighter fabric creates shadowing, try removing a bit of the darker fabric in the seam allowance.  Trim the darker fabric by carefully cutting away a sliver of the ¼-inch seam allowance – just enough that the darker seam allowance is narrower than the lighter.  Or, grade the seam allowances by cutting them on an angle such that the darker ends up slightly narrower than the lighter.

Trimmed seam allowances

Even though it was an appliquéd seam, I encountered this situation with the dark purple fabric framing the blocks in Instruments of Praise.  Carefully trimming the dark fabric away from the seam allowance ensured that it didn’t shadow through the paler background fabric.

Shadowing is even more likely to occur with appliqué, when a light-colored patch is stitched on a dark background or overlaps an adjoining dark patch.  To avoid shadowing in my appliqué, I employ a different strategy.

Line Appliqué Patches
A second layer of fabric beneath a light-colored patch – a lining– will successfully prevent darker fabrics from showing through.  Plain white fabric or muslin works well for the second layer.  This lining can be added a number of ways, depending on the method of appliqué.

For fusible appliqué, the lining can be fused to the light-colored appliqué fabric first to create a bonded two-layer sandwich.  Then, the individual appliqué patches can be prepared as usual – although the wrong side of the appliqué fabric is now the lining fabric. 

Lining Fusible Applique

I used this approach with Stormy Seas: The Puffin to prevent the black body of the bird showing through the white face.

For needle-turn appliqué, the lining patch is prepared without a seam allowance.  It is then secured to the wrong side of the appliqué patch with a water-soluble glue stick, so that the raw edges of the lining match the marked stitching lines on the appliqué.  As the patch is stitched, the seam allowance of the appliqué patch covers the raw edge of the lining.

Lining needle-turn applique

This is how the white sails were lined in Stormy Seas: The Sailboat.

Well, take this fruit fabric as an example.  Suppose I wanted to use it as part of a quilt label. 

Instead of sewing a border onto my label, I could scan the fabric and print it all in one.

Or, I could apply an effect called transparency.  I could continue to lighten the fabric until text would be visible on it.

This effect works really well if you want to use the same fabric as the quilt backing for your label.

Once our fabric is scanned, we can apply image editing tricks to it as well.  Take this animal fabric, for instance.

We could isolate the chicken…

We could turn him to face in the other direction…

We could turn him pink!

We could make him tall and skinny…

Or short and squat…

And we could put them all together in a funky chicken nine-patch block!

And these are just a few ideas of what you could do.

I guess the first obvious conclusion is that you can use your computer to custom dye small quantities of fabric.  And it doesn’t have to be a solid color.  You could add a motif:

Or, you could add a pattern, just like a print fabric.

You could add texture and create fabric that looks like batik.

Here’s a block made with a real batik and this computer-generated textured fabric.

You could also gradate the color.  This example gradually changes color from white through to magenta.

And here’s a quilt block featuring the computer dyed fabric in the center patch.

Whatever you can create on your computer screen, you can print to fabric.  All of these examples were done using CorelDraw software.  But even if you don’t have this kind of software, there are lots of options available on the internet.

This is computer wallpaper, intended to be used as a background for your computer screen.  But I think it would make amazing fabric, don’t you?

This PowerPoint background would also make lovely fabric.

Here it is in a snowball block with other snowflake fabric.

These are just a few ideas of how you could use your ink-jet printer to custom dye small quantities of fabric.  Stay tuned for part 2 and more options for printing fabric.

1998

1999

Every year, I make a Christmas ornament.  Or, I suppose I should say, I make a bunch of them.  A different handmade ornament, every year.  Since 1998, the ornaments have been made of fabric, fused to a black felt background, and embellished with buttons, beads or embroidery.  They’re easy to make and they come in very handy.

Initially, I made them for my neices and nephews.  I fuse a piece of muslin on the back where I write their name and date with a Pigma pen.  I then attach the ornament to their Christmas gift, like a gift tag.  My thought was that they could collect them, year by year, and maybe one day I would make a quilt for them to hang on. 

2000

2001

2002

2003

Eventually, I realized these little ornaments had other uses.  They could be a little gift for teachers, newspaper boys, or house cleaners.  I could attach them to hostess gifts and gift cards.  Children of my friends started their own collections.  They were a simple way to add a personal touch to Christmas wishes.

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

This series of ornaments come from a pattern called Here Comes Santa by Art to Heart.  Each ornament was designed to attach to a wallhanging from buttons on the quilt.  I’m not sure whether I’ll ever make the accompanying quilt, but I sure have enjoyed making a new ornament every year.  This pattern is still available if you would like to start your own collection of annual handmade Christmas ornaments.

What ornament will I make this year?  I haven’t decided yet – and besides, I can’t spoil the surprise!

It works well.  After all, if a fabric designer – expert in her field – put those colors together, it’s a pretty safe bet that you can too.  But more importantly, if you like a piece of fabric enough to buy it, you probably like the colors that are in it.  And if you like the colors in the fabric, chances are you will like them in your quilt too.

This method of choosing fabric has served me well over the years.  Often, the focus fabric ends up as a border in the quilt – tying everything together perfectly.  In the quilt Comfort and Joy, the teddy bear print fabric set the palette for the bear paw blocks and the teddy bear sewflakes appliquéd on top.  In the same way, a fabric printed with spools of thread became the ideal border for Tools of the Trade.  An exquisite fabric covered with china teacups inspired not only the colour choices but the entire quilt Bridal Tea.

Other times, the focus fabric takes its place alongside the other fabrics in the quilt.  Such was the case in Fruitful, where the fruit-covered focus fabric ended up in the patchwork basket blocks.  And what better place to put a fabric with hearts, diamonds, spades, and clubs than in a Card Trick block!  This focus fabric also appears in the pieced border of King of Hearts.

It is only fairly recently, however, that I have used a focus fabric to select the fabrics for a quilt without any intention of using the focus fabric in the quilt.  I had a gorgeous print fabric in golds, yellows, pinks and plums – a color combination that intrigued me.  I carried the fabric around with me on shopping expeditions as I collected a variety of fabrics in that color scheme.  The result was Instruments of Praise.  I originally had only one meter of this focus fabric, but later came across it again while browsing the internet.  How fun would it be to purchase enough yardage to use the focus fabric as the backing of the quilt?  Only we know that it came first!