improv quilts

PQ Challenge 15.3

February 6, 2024

PQ Challenge 15.3 has the theme of “inside out” this week. I enjoy taking part in the Project Quilting challenges, but we are going to be gone this weekend, and I was a bit disappointed, thinking I wouldn’t have time to work on a challenge piece. That didn’t stop me from pondering what I would do for the inside out challenge, however.

The rule for the challenge – “some part of your project must thematically or literally be inside out”. So my thoughts turned to “if I turned some improv inside out, what would I do with it” and then to “do I have some orphan improv pieces I could use”? But to make what? And then an idea popped into my head, and off I went. Nothing else got done for the day, other than a quick lunch. I did warn BigJ that we were likely having pizza because I wasn’t going to stop to cook dinner!

I’ve been messing around with more face quilts, and playing with the idea of adding some 3D effects (more or less) to the faces. So I decided to use that idea for my PQ Challenge 15.3. Here he is – I’ve named him “ZZ”..

There are four ways this piece meets the PQ Inside Out challenge:

  • The background fabric is two pieces from a pair of hubs’ old jeans, inside out.
  • ZZ’s beard is improv strip pieces sewn together and added – inside out – to the face.
  • The face and hat are raw edge applique
  • The backing was added to the quilt, inside out.

I had just cut up the old pair of jeans while working on another face quilt, and I wondered what I would use the ripped leg for. I just had to use it for this quilt, just for fun.

Those jeans are pretty grungy (yes, I washed them, twice!). I like the faded effect, though. Admittedly, the ripped portion made the backing a little tricky to work with, but I managed.

It took me quite a while to get the face the way I wanted it to be. Had my week not been shortened, I would’ve spent more time on it, but on the other hand, there’s something fun about having to just get it done. Once I had the face as I wanted it, I lightly glue basted the pieces on starting with the face, nose and ears, then adding the glasses and the hat, with the mustache and beard being the last step. Once glued in place, I stitched around the raw edges of each piece with matching thread.

That done, I layered it with some green Grunge I had in my stash, and I placed the right side of the Grunge to the back side of the quilt top. I wanted the backing to show through the ripped area, so I chose not to add batting between the two layers. Plus, the denim was heavy enough that I didn’t feel it was needed. (That maybe disqualifies this as a quilt – not having batting?)

Hopefully in the photo you can see the Grunge fabric inside out as I quilted it. For the quilting, I did wavy lines with my AcuFeed foot. I didn’t quilt it too heavily, and the thread matched so well, you can’t see it. Here’s a peek at the green showing through the ripped portion.

For the mustache and beard, I stitched some strips together, varying the widths. Once I was happy with the placement of the beard on the face, I added the mustache, using a piece I had cut off of the beard. The last thing I did was cut through the strips to make the beard look more messy. When I stitched the beard onto the face, I did stitch down the beard a few inches just to secure it a bit more. I purposely left it long to add more of the 3D effect on the quilt.

Here’s a peek at the backing fabric. I used the same fabric for the binding as in the hat, and opted to machine bind rather than by hand.

While this was put together quickly, so not my best work, I had so much fun with this theme for PQ Challenge 15.3. ZZ is happily hangin’ out on my design wall, and the pizza just arrived!

Thanks Kim and Trish, for another fun challenge!

Wendy

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