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| Bat Falcon Quilt: measures 42.5" x 31.75" |
I'm so happy to finally be blogging about this finished quilt! I started it back in October, and while I've shared a lot of progress pictures on my instagram (
@quiltsNfeathers), I have been lazy about sharing it on my blog. So here is the entire 40 hour process of making it!
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| Original photo, taken by me when I worked/volunteered at a local wildlife park. |
I took a class taught by Rod Daniels (
go check out is gorgeous work!) through the NMQA on turning a photo into an applique quilt. I had seen some of Rod's quilts in person at ABQMQG show and tell, and was excited to try a new method to turn a photo into a quilt. The first thing to do was pick a photo. I chose the photo of the
bat falcon because I consider it one of the best photo I took while working and volunteering at a local wildlife park. My leaving the wildlife park was really ugly and hurtful, and I wanted to reclaim this photo (though let there be no doubt that it
is mine) and my happy memories.
Next was printing out the photo and then tracing a basic outline of the colors and shadows (I printed extras in grayscale and edits to try and get the most accurate outlines). The bottom right is the final version:
Then I took my traced outline to the copy store and enlarged it. I had no idea what I was doing, so it turned out huge, haha. Then that big version was traced onto a thin muslin, and I started placing appropriately colored fabrics on the quilt (glueing them down when I felt confident with my choices):
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| Bat Falcon Quilt: Pre-lunch progress in Rod's class. |
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| Bat Falcon Quilt: Post-lunch progress in Rod's class. |
I knew if I didn't finish it right away it would be a horrible WIP to come back to. So the next day I dedicated all of my available time to finishing it! In total I think I spent about 12 hours just creating the quilt top, and 99% of that on the bird's head!
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| Bat Falcon Quilt: Pre-lunch progress, Day 2. |
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| Bat Falcon Quilt: post-lunch progress, Day 2. |
The background colors are Kona Silver and Kona Cornflower. My biggest regret is how the blue on the right side dips down too sharply at the bird's shoulder. But I wasn't about to re-glue anything! So I accepted it as a design element, haha. At the time I was also working on a lot of other projects and knew I didn't have the time to quilt and finish it, so I carefully rolled it up and put it in a safe place.
Finally last month I basted it (using one layer of Quilter's Dream wool)! Here is a look at the 22.5 hours of quilting (I took a photo after most of the 14 bobbins I used!):
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| Bat Falcon Quilt 1: Basted and ready to quilt! |
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| Bat Falcon Quilt 2: started on the face and smaller pieces so they wouldn't shift! Yeah I was pretty intimidated to quilt this guy, just look at the glare! |
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| Bat Falcon Quilt 3: filling in around the head and chest. |
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| Bat Falcon Quilt 4: worked on the back and wings (the black areas). |
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| Bat Falcon Quilt 5: Decided it was time to work on the background before things got more distorted from quilting on just the bird. I marked out a 1/2" grid on the silver and did an echo on the blue. |
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| Bat Falcon Quilt 6: I have never quilted such a large area with such tiny orange peels!! I spent 8 hours and 4 bobbins on JUST quilting those tiny orange peels. |
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| Bat Falcon Quilt 7: four year old for scale. |
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| Bat Falcon Quilt 8: I was definitely questioning my sanity on quilting so SO many tiny orange peels! But I really love bokeh they create! |
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| Bat Falcon Quilt 9: Finally done with the orange peels!! My husband and I estimated using various methods that there are at least 6,000 orange peels (as in each little pumpkin seed shape)! |
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| Bat Falcon Quilt 10: That lower left blue area gave me some trouble and I ended up ripping and redoing the center of it. But look how smooth and nice it looks now! Also the orange above the nostrils wasn't right (I was overzealous with that color, haha), so I removed most of it and replaced it with a dark grey. Worth the effort. |
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| Bat Falcon Quilt 11: back to working on the bird--mostly on the grey feathers here. |
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| Bat Falcon Quilt 13: (photo 12 was indistinguishable, though I know I added stuff!). This is just before I called it Done. You can see around the bird the quilt is really warped! I soaked in in the washing machine all afternoon to remove the marking and dissolve the glues. and then spent an hour and a half blocking it and ironing the face flat (you can see a photo of that on IG!) |
Here is the before and after quilting:
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| Bat Falcon Quilt: Original photo, before and after 22.5 hours of a quilting! |
Obviously the finished quilt wouldn't be so amazing without all of that quilting to add depth, texture, blending and shading! Here are all of the Aurifil threads I used--mostly 50wt because my machine prefers it for dense quilting/overlap, but some 40wt (green spools) because I didn't have those colors in 50wt.
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| Bat Falcon Quilt: Aurifil threads used! I bought Dark Pewter (#2630) to use on this quilt and love it for a nice dark grey! It's the third darkest from the left! |
Check out this gorgeous "ghost" on the back!
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| Bat Falcon Quilt: the grey thread is Aurifil #5004 (the 4th darkest grey in the thread photo), backing fabric is Kona Espresso, binding is Kona Chestnut, |
Just look at this gorgeous grey thread! I love how the direction of the stitches translates the image so well on the back. The Aurifil does a lovely job of catching the light and giving life to the "ghost" on the back!
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| Bat Falcon Quilt: back quilting detail. |
Okay, let's look at the front up close!
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| Bat Falcon Quilt: detail of the shadow side and background. |
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| Bat Falcon Quilt: detail of the light side of the face. |
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| Bat Falcon Quilt: detail of the sun-lit wing feathers. |
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| Bat Falcon Quilt: eye detail |
All that's left is the hanging sleeve and displaying it in my living room between shows!
Quilts Stats
Finished size: 42.5" x 31.75"
Hours spent working on it: 40 hours
