Fly Your Own Flag- Summer

Start with 3 pieces of wool blended felt from National Nonwovens, that have been cut to be 6×8″ on your mat with a ruler and your Havel’s rotary cutter.

I had a lot of scraps from a project that I worked on for Quilt Market in Pittsburgh. All of the fabrics have been fused with Mistyfuse. Fun and bright colors. And the rings, that were made on a Sizzix Big Shot die cutting machine. They are quite fun too.

I am going to throw caution to the wind and make all three at the same time! I decided that I would do a collage background, using a variety of greens for this one. Once I had it the way that I wanted, you know with color, pattern and balance, I ironed it into place.

So, now you can see where I am going with this. The cool green of nature in Summer, the red and orange heat of the weather, and the soothing purple of a day on the porch sipping iced tea and putting your feet up.

Yellow is also a happy color for Summer, so I cut small squares and placed them around each flag, and ironed them into place. I like the look and it adds a little spark to each one.

In making art quilts, I fuse all of my quilts this way. The edges can be messy, but I would suggest that you cut with your sharp scissors from the back, using the felt as your guide. It is way easier this way.

In my scraps, there were these great circles, that were the insides of the rings, that were cut on the Sizzix Big Shot die cutting machine. I think they are so fun to use. Right now, I am trying out the colors on the backgrounds and asking myself, which colors pop out when they come in contact with each other? Which colors kinda blend into the background? I don’t want them to blend in.

Enter the 6” rings. Now you know where this is going. I am trying these out too. I want to see what works, not only with the backgrounds, but with the circles too.

Now I am thinking that yellow would look great inside those circles. I am going to place them at different points on the background, instead of being so matchymatchy. I am liking how this looks. I am not going to press them into place, until I get the rings done.

Using my really sharp Havel’s Scissors, I am cutting out a portion of the inside of the rings, so there is a space between the inside circle and the outer ring. More like a contemporary sun.

I am pretty happy with how they all look. All of the fabrics have been pressed into place. I added the background wool blended felt – the same kind as the black, only in colors that complimented the quilt tops. You can see that they are rough cut, and I wanted them to be larger than the tops, because they will show on the sides at the end of this process.

Next part – free motion machine quilting. First step, just using the needle to make a spiral in the middle and then around the circles.

I am turning the prayer flag with my and as the needle echoes the circle on the background.

Yes, I made the arrow thing in my quilting, because it was rather fun. And really I think it adds some interest. You can see that my quilting lines are not perfect. I want to have fun doing this.

Here is the blazing sun one. I decided that I would change up the design in the yellow portion. This flag is the centerpiece of the three flags, and it was fun to make it different. I am gliding the needle around the circle.

Sew around each flag with a straight stitch. You can do it with a straight stitch foot, but for me who doesn’t want to change the foot, I am staying with the free motion foot.

Here’s the purple one, and you can see I am going with a totally different approach for free motion machine quilting around the circle. Sporatic, wacky and fun. Why not?

And then there is the loop-t-loop. This is really fun and a great way to practice free motion machine quilting.

After all of the prayer flags have been free motion machine quilted, now is the time to trim the background felt. Using a cutting mat (Havel’s pink), ruler and rotary cutter, make sure you leave some of the felt showing through to the front. This is a nice close up shot to see how much to leave.

Detail shot of the purple.

Detail shot of the red/orange.

Detail shot of green.