I’m beginning to lay down my basic shapes of roughly cut fabric. My mini design wall consists of a piece of white terry cloth wrapped and taped around a large artist’s clipboard. It’s totally portable!
I’ll refer to my rough drawing as a placement guide.
Cutting out the base fabrics comes first: the blue sky fabric (the full size of the picture), the foreground path piece and a small blue patch of water. The second layer is the group of buildings. The third layer will be the foreground shrubs. The final pieces to cut will be the small embellishing shapes of doors, windows, flowers and other accents.
When cutting shapes, I don’t worry too much about sticking to the original sketch, so no tracing of templates is necessary. I like trying to make improvements as I go along. Choosing fabrics is a lengthy but fun process.
Gluing and fusing begins. All the pieces are almost in position, on the mini design wall. I’ve decided to use a fabric glue stick for all but the tiniest pieces, mainly because fusible web creates a stiffer-looking end result.
Next: Trimming the picture edges and considering border fabrics!
How are you fusing and attaching the pieces? zig zag? straight line- raw edge, turn under?? I am looking for a large size city landscape to make for a friend, do you know if a pattern or books or links??
Hi, I’m using fabric glue for the large pieces and fusible (Pellon) for the small or pointy pieces which tend to come loose quickly. Then I decided to use invisible thread and a little zig zag stitch to capture the raw edge threads.
There are several applique books out there to help with this process. Laura Wasilowski is a very creative art quilter you might google for more inspiration.
As to city patterns, I’ve not run across any, since I make my own. You might think about making your own pattern by adapting a city photo you like to simple shapes. (The number of shapes add up fast in larger quilts!) Good luck!
I’m a quilter who rarely finds time to quilt, so I LOVE seeing what others are doing – it motivates me. Your creativity is wonderful!
Paulette Millis
Author and Nutritional Consultant
http://www.eatawayillness.com
It’s beautiful! Thanks for sharing! I really like the choice of fabrics. It almost looks like a Van Gogh painting.
Thanks for your responses, and I really have to work in the time too! I think it helps to have small projects like this one… more manageable for sure!