Details For Making A Quilt Panel
This is a photo of Kris' panel in the planning stages (it's almost finished).
Ruth has provided some wonderful tips and tricks of the trade in this
section. If you would like to contact Ruth, just e-mail us and we will
get you in touch with her.
Here are some tips for making a quilt panel from Ruth:
The first time I did Kris' panel, I went the old way
of what I knew was available. And in some case, may still be the only
method depending where the families live. I took a picture to a local
professional T-shirt printer, they scanned and blew it up to the largest
size their printer could handle. I also took them a very high thread count
white woven cotton fabric. Especially developed for photo transfer.
The
T-shirt operators made a reverse image and printed it on a product they
use all the time in the business.Then they use their hot press (very big
square iron) to transferred the image onto my special fabric instead of
their t-shirts.( you can do it with your own Iron at home but more likely
to have a partial transfer).
I also did the words like "Kris' goals" on disk. They again
worked the same magic on the background fabric I chose. It did not look
as great or as readable but I was in too big of a rush to go back for
another stab.
Since that project, I ran into a lady from Las Vegas at a the quilting
wholesale market. Her product is different fabrics pre treated with a
special dyeing chemical, temporarily adhered to a thin paper backing.
It's a little pricey but makes a better final product for a quilt (not
as rubbery as the heat transfer).
You trim any extra threads that may come loose around the edges in the
shipping so it does not get caught in your printer. (Never had that happen
in the three years I've used it). I load one sheet at a time.
I designed my 8X11 piece of fabric in Word 2003 (don't have one of those
fancy graphics programs). I selected a photo of Kris and inserted it on
the page. (you can do some changes here if the image is too small or large,
but you have to grab it in the corners and not the sides so the distortion
is kept to a minimum). I learned to use the wrapping word feature, select
the picture and change the layout capabilities for the words to be printed
top, bottom, left or right. The tutorial helps on this.
Then
I played with the format font and size of type to get the largest for
the page I was working on without it defaulting to two pages. You can
also select the color of the letters but black fit mine the best.
I have seen many of the memory quilts with stark white as the only borders
around the images. I find that harsh to my eyes so I looked around in
the Word program and found you can print a background color, texture and
or shading effects. Even though I scanned in some of my own fabrics to
use as a background, the "canned" one I chose seemed to work
better than my vision. The scanned fabric was too busy and detracted from
the message. Keep it Simple principle.
Then I set up my print to do either Landscape or Portrait;Text and Photo
(the product recommends you do not print in best photo--too much ink and
potential for smearing.)
Product is by Color Textiles (www.Colortextiles.com)
6 sheets for retail $17.00 You might want to buy it wholesale and make
it available or just a link to those who are floundering. (Or link to
there website if she offers direct sales, I haven't looked) She has a
variety of product fabrics, silk to cotton. I did testing on most for
our store and found the Cotton Poplin has the smoothest surface and therefore
accepts the images the crispest.
After it comes out of the printer, you peel the paper backing off and
are supposed to wash out the excess ink that remains on the surface of
the fabric. This is the nature of the beast, the ink that reaches the
chemicals first, wraps itself around the fiber and becomes part of the
cloth-- the rest just lays on the top to become a potential runny mess
if the quilt is washed or gets caught in the rain during an outdoor display.
The finished cloth is not rubbery and easier to deal with in the sewing
or piecing stages.
When I quilt these memory quilts, I try not to go through any images.
(looks bad to have stitching going across someone's nose.) HOWEVER when
you don't support the fabric with quilting in the larger sections the
fabric with look unfinished and will sag.
SOOOOOOO.... I learned to place an extra piece of Wool Batting (Hobbs)
cut to fit the section where there is no quilting. I stitch around the
square or oval so the extra batting puffs up the image and it looks trapunto.
A very old traditional quilting technique. I did not do this on my first
project and proved once again to myself, life is definitely a learning
experience.
This is a project I am finally excited about and I don't just mean my
3X6 part, but the whole Honor the Fallen project. LET ME KNOW if I can
be of more help with these quilts.
Ruth
This page is dedicated to the memory of Kris Stonesifer
