Fusing experiment

It's been awhile since I worked on my Mosaic Quilt, now dubbed "Z's Under the Trees," due to travels, my garden, midday heat in the studio, and other distractions.  The main distraction was that I wanted to outline the details in black thread, but not being sure how it would look, I didn't want to ruin it without doing a test of the technique first.

To test it, of course I had to make another mosaic quilt.  This one is from a photo of flowers I took on the island of St. Thomas a couple years ago.  They were against a blue wall, but I took out the blue in Photoshop, because I didn't want to use up all my blue ink when printing.

After printing the photo (11x14), I taped a firm but translucent interfacing on top of the paper, leaving the details of the photo perfectly visible for fusing on my bits of randomly trimmed, hand-dyed fabrics.  I chose to trim curves on the pieces representing the petals and leaves.

Next step:  Stitching.  I took off the paper before doing any sewing.  I wanted the stitching lines to be loose, not exact.  Easy peasy, I can do that!  I used very thick thread I had on an old spool, and my Janome 6600 handled it just fine.  The interfacing was firm enough to work as a great stabilizer, and the tiny bit of puckering was easily pressed out.  I fused on thin batting and did echo quilting with monofilament, and zigzagged the edges - OK for an experiment, but definitely not great, as far as I am concerned.

Here is the finished test sample. I think I will dabble with adding a bit paint here and there.

As far as adding black stitching lines to the much larger Z's Under the Trees, I am going to go ahead with it, but with trepidation, especially on the face details.  Maybe will use a color other than black in those areas.