Lately I have been trying to figure out my place in the quilting world. I am not sure I need a definition, but I like to enter quilt shows and they want you to choose the category that best fits your quilt. I don’t like specific definitions because I don’t like to fit inside a box. I want to be unique.

Raccoon Creation

My latest creation is by far the most favorite I have done. The most exciting part of the project was that I loved every step. Most of the time, when I make something, there is a part that I dread or don’t enjoy. This one was different. I am not sure if it was due to my excitement around the subject or just that I got to really use my engineering/organization skills in my art too. I took my time with the process, but still had a deadline to make.

The Dallas Quilt Show Chair Theme for 2019 was Animals. Wow, way to leave all of the doors open – barn, zoo, car, pen, etc!!!! What animal should I make? I spent lots of time googling, searching pinterest and deviant art. I finally settled on an artist that made art I wanted to recreate in fabric. Elvira Clement (ElviraNL) has some mad skills. She had many animals that I was attracted to and I narrowed it down to my favorite animal, red panda, and my least favorite due to their destruction, raccoon. I really wish those dern things weren’t so cute. Her raccoon was incredible and nothing I had ever seen before. I jumped in. She sold me the rights to use for a nominal fee and I set about creating my process of creation.

First, I printed out the picture on photo paper to see it in its best form. I spent several weekends with that photo and a larger print of the picture deciding on what fabrics to use in the colored areas and how much simpler I might need to make it to actually finish by the quilt show deadline. After weekends of doing that, I finally had my shopping list. Surprisingly, I only had to buy a few of the 121 fabrics used in the final project. I had been collecting all of the Michael Miller Cotton Couture solids for a while, and most pieces weren’t big enough to warrant more than these fat quarters and some of the charm packs I had of other solid manufacturers.

Next, I printed the picture at the size I wanted the quilt. I am lucky to have a library with a large format printer to use at a reasonable fee. This print started to get me really excited about how lifelike the large quilt was going to be. I took several more weekends to trace all of the pieces onto freezer paper to create the pattern pieces of this beast. And I do mean beast. There were more than 400 pieces in this wall art.

The next largest task was taking all of those freezer paper pieces and ironing them onto fabric and applying fusible. That was quite the process. I then toted all of these around with me to work, hair salon, and nightly to my chair to cut while I watched TV. I sorted all of these pieces by number and tried to group them so that I wasn’t going to misplace any.

Time to work the puzzle. I traced the full size picture onto acetate to give me a transparent placement map. Next time, I will buy the heat resistant kind. I was quickly placing and fusing the pieces and then putting the map back on top of the pattern to continue working. The residual heat from the previous pressing melted many sections. Oh well, those pieces were done, right!?! Assembling the puzzle was the part I had to get done for the quilt show entry deadline to produce a picture for the show committee. I was lucky the final quilt didn’t need to be finished because I barely made that deadline.

Now that he was entered, I was committed to getting him (not sure when the sex was defined, but it did become him after a bit) quilted and finished. I have always been curious about how long it takes me to do some of my projects and really wish I had logged all of the time for this one. As it was, I started tracking all of the stitching time after the top was done. I struggled with how to stitch and whether to applique the pieces and then quilt it. I finally decided to stitch and quilt at the same time.

Many of you know that I have been in the textile business and have other family members in that business as well. I had quite a thread collection built up, but once I made the decision that I wanted to stitch this project using matching thread, I had quite the dilemma. I didn’t have thread to match all 121 colors of fabric. I hadn’t purchased anything but a few specialty threads in years! I had to buy thread. I had taken that all for granted for so long. It hurt, but now I think I have almost all of the colors they make of fabric and thread. Bring on anything else!!!

Once the thread was purchased, it was time to get quilting. I loaded him up and took him to retreat for some dedicated time to sew. I forgot to bring the border fabrics, so I had to improvise. I also forgot my basting pins so I quickly spray basted him and set out to stitch for 3 days straight! I was quite the spectacle at the retreat with all of my thread colors out on one side of me and this colorful animal spread out in front. I stitched using what I call the “Sketch stitch” where you just go back and forth over the raw edge of the applique piece until it is firmly attached. I changed thread colors for each piece, wishing I had gotten the needle threader fixed prior to coming to this retreat.

At one point, I went to the ironing board to freshen the fusing and noticed I had caught the edge of the backing fabric in the quilting. Had this been just a single line of quilting, it would have been an oops. As it was I had been stitching for about 20 minutes in this sketching manner. That was “Oh Shit!” I spent about an hour ripping out stitches and having my friends avoid eye contact while that was going on. Not a good moment. I managed not to rip too much of the backing fabric in this process.

All of the quilting took 38 hours. I didn’t finish it that retreat weekend, but it was finished before the deadline. I used 92 thread colors and an entire
875 yard spool of of bobbin thread. The border I had planned just didn’t work for me so it got scrapped at the last minute. I resorted to a 2 color binding instead.

I showed up at quilt check-in with him and all at the table celebrated that “The raccoon is here!” What fun that they liked the picture enough to watch for his arrival. I am on the Dallas Quilt Show setup committee, so I got to be present when he was hung with all of the other lovely animals. What a wonderful exhibit it was.