Color Escapes Black and White

 

Escape is now finished and off my FoF (Focus On Five) list. That’s the word prompt given by one of my art quilt groups. The size was to be 12X14 inches. I had another small quilt I made for another group’s challenge and I thought I could use it for this challenge, but it was larger. So back to the drawing board. I’d been playing with an idea for yo-yo’s and decided to develop it for Escape.

After The Rain a bias tape challenge

In the process of making this quilt without much forethought or planning I ran into a few rough spots. The rough spots have informed me and made me think of and realize better ways to work when I start a larger similar quilt and another improv quilt inspired by this small one. I’m not sure when they will be started (they have to wait for their turn on my FoF list). But I will be making some notes now, so I don’t forget when I do start them.

Escape 

Sewing through all the tightly stacked black and white yoyos plus the background fabric, batting, and backing fabric was a little difficult. I changed to a different needle and increased the stitch length, but it still was hard. I had originally tried to stitch them down by hand but quickly converted to machine sewing. Next time I think I will try and make the yoyo’s into fabric by themselves without the background fabric and batting.

After the first few yoyos I realized that I really wanted them to be as flat as possible but not as flat as I would get from a plain circle of fabric. Normally when I want a flat yoyo I will get it wet and then squeeze as much water out as possible and flatten it with my hand and then let it dry. This time I had so many to do that I decided to lay them on my ironing surface and then lay a wet pressing cloth over them. After that I could use my iron to flatten them. That worked great. Problem though was I had forgotten that some of the circles had been marked along the cutting/stitching line with a blue washout pen. Since I didn’t wet them and squeeze out the water then let them dry the blue marking became permanent and it you look close at some of the yoyos you can see the faint blue marks. I rarely mark the stitching line now as I’ve made so many of them my hand is trained to turn under the ¼ inch without needing a line. But I still have some older yoyos made when I used the marking, so I need to keep that in mind before using the iron to flatten them.

I was delighted when I found some fabric in my stash that was designed in such a way that I could cut out some circles for my yoyos that would give me ones that were half colorful and half black and white. These would work for the ones just beginning to escape.

My next challenge was encasing the black and white yoyos while letting the color ones go free. I wanted to do a facing finish on the color/white section and a black and white binding on the black/white side. I added the binding to the right edge and then wondered how I could do a combination facing and binding on the rest. My solution was to face the rest of the piece including where the black and white yoyos were at the top and bottom. I then did a faux binding over the black and white portion.

Back of Escape

Still working on the official title for this piece. It will be along the lines of thoughts escaping a black and white world.

Keep stitching and adding color to our world!

Rose