More wallhanging

It's a bit of a coincidence, but I've been to a workshop today to learn about the techniques for making, embellishing and fabric painting a wallhanging. The workshop was run by a new Craft shop in my home town and I had a whale of a time. (Their website is still in its infancy so please look back later). I learned about foundation piecing, "stitch and flip", stitching "in the ditch", soluble stabilisers, making a twisted cord edging and loads beside. Some of these terms I had heard while blogging but didn't know what they meant - now I know! It's amazing how complicated something seems until you learn the terminology. All of a sudden you realise you don't have to be worried about tackling something, it's actually fairly straightworward.

26 August 2008 photo deleted as I had not obtained Tutor's permission for which I apologise.

Above you can see that we pieced the background onto a pre-drawn grid (which for ease we had traced onto "golden paper"*,a type of tissue paper). Apart from the first piece which was stitched on without a seam so that there could be a lightly frayed edge (have a look at the last photo), all the pieces were stitched on with a seam allowance, right sides together and then flipped up. While the pieces were assembled on top of the tissue the machining was done from the tissue side so that you could see where to sew. Unfortunately we were so busy that I didn't get to photograph each stage.

26 August 2008 photo deleted as I had not obtained Tutor's permission for which I apologise.

This is the front of the piece after the layers have all been stitched together. The quilt batting and backing fabrics were then cut about an inch larger all round to allow a margin for eror. I think that at this point an invisible thread was machined along each line of existing stitching, known as stitch in the ditch. This secures the layers together. (I think this is the right order. I was so busy I didn't get it written down at the time).

As this was to be a beach landscape we drew beach huts onto water soluble stabiliser and then machined these onto the beach section. After the main outline was machined the stabiliser was washed away with a cotton bud and water. Once dry the planking was machined on.

The next step was to paint the eaves and the beach hut itself with fabric paint, in this case, Setacolour Opaque. You can use acrylic paint if you don't have fabric paints but the effect will be a little harder as the acrylis dries to a coarser finish.

As you can see the wallhanging has now been trimmed (but not exactly to the finished size in case of shrinkage during edging) and sewn together with a zigzag stitch. You can then go on to topstitch some of the layers with a decorative stitch, hand sewing can be added, yarns can be couched on and beads added.

Once the stitching has been added you need to square up the piece (a quilter's nonslip square is ideal for this) and cut with a rotary cutter. To finish off you can couch a twisted selection of yarns all round the edge with a zigzag stitch. You could also finish off with a traditional quilt binding. (Don't look too closely at mine-it needs a little tweaking to get the tasselly bits to hang in the centre. I will be adding a lovely purple button too).

You can see that I still have quite a lot to do to finish my wallhanging off but I am really happy with everything I learned today and I can see many more projects on the horizon. I am sure everyone has their own method for this type of thing and there is no right or wrong way of going on. If you go wrong just add some stitching or beading to cover the eccentricity!

PS Thank you everyone for all your lovely input and comments over the last few posts. I have really appreciated all the comments and interest and I'm glad Dilly enjoyed the wagon (dragon if you weren't sure VBG).

* I have googled "golden paper" but I can't find it so I may have misheard. Fine tissue will work just as well or you can work freehand without a template......scary!!! lol