Garden Lady #7 - Part One

I got the inspiration for this Garden Lady from the French artist Gaëlle Boissonnard.  I loved the playfulness of her series on ladies in nature.  Her signature is skinny arms and legs, and exaggerated height and body dimensions.  I made a sketch that minimized the exaggerated height, but still kept the essence of the artist in mind.  The sketch was blown up to size at my favorite blue print shop in Portland.  

I found the perfect ombre background fabric at Sharon's Attic in Hillsboro, Oregon.  It is a lime green shade of Moda ombre bloom by Vanessa Christenson.

Usually, I sketch a few features, and on this one, I changed the face and hands.  I found a clothing advertisement with a face that I liked.  So I traced it and uploaded it to Adobe Photoshop; flipped the direction of the face and sized it to fit the art piece.  The original tracing was about 2", and the final size was about 4".

I wanted to try a few different techniques on the outfit, and the first thing that I thought about was doing some daisy-like trapunto on the pocket.  I sketched up a couple of daisies and imported them into Photoshop.  I copied and pasted it 3 times to fill up the sheet.

Here are the cut out the daisies that were placed over the pocket to get a layout.

I took a photo and used this to copy and transfer the picture to a dissolving stabilizer.  The stabilizer that I use is Ricky Tims Stable Stuff Poly ricky-tims-stable-stuff-poly and I buy it on a large roll.  It's pretty curly when it comes out of the tube.  (Note:  Ricky Tims no longer has a store,  but can clink on the link above and buy it from The Quilt Show store.)

I thought that I could just run it through the printer, but it totally jammed.

So, I cut another 8-1/2" x 11" piece and ironed it to freezer paper.  I covered it with my wool pressing mat and let it sit overnight to get flat.  Then, I ran that through the copier and was smart enough (just barely) to notice that there is a paper selection for thicker paper!  Anyway, that time it worked.

I didn't invent the process, but am so glad to pass it along!  I actually think that the first time I noticed it was on a quilt that  Philippa Naylor exhibited in Paducah, Kentucky called "Flower Power".  

Anyway, Ricky demonstrated this on one of his segments on The Quilt Show (#2606).  I picked the pocket fabric and placed the daisy pattern on the wrong side of the fabric.  Using dissolving thread, I traced the outline of the daisies.  

I flipped it to the right side and stitched the inside of the daisies with micro stippling.  Then, I layered it with batting on the backside and sewed around the daisies on the front side with a tight meandering stitch.  When the stitching was done, I cut away the excess batting, then the excess stabilizer.  

The whole thing was dunked into a sink of water and the stabilizers dissolved, leaving only the material, the batting, and the decorations done in thread.  These photos show the front and the backside of the finished pocket.

I hope you like it so far!