New Quilt: 212 Canyon Road

 For a long time I've been wanting to make another topography quilt made based on the USGS topo maps.  The last one was in 2016, and featured the area encompassing a favorite hiking area in my childhood mountains.  

I decided this time to pick another area from my childhood, this time encompassing the neighborhood I grew up in.  Last time I used a synthetic non-woven (remay), but I'm in a using what I have era now, and I had a ton of this lightweight silk from Georgia (thanks Georgia!) so I decided to see if I could use that.  It's pretty thin, but so was the remay.  In this case I painted it and coated it with a layer of GAC400 fabric stiffener and that worked pretty well.

As usual, I painted with my small pots of latex paint.  I wanted a different color scheme than last time and I had a lot of these sandy pinks and blues, largely because both my sister and I have painted our house interiors recently and there were a lot of rejected shades that have now made their way into my stash.  I did a lot of color mixing to have a nice color transistion from the blue to the pinky-sand.  The painting took up the whole studio and made a big mess but I managed not to damage anything. 

Here's the final color range.  There's a different color for each elevation.  Like the prior piece, this one has three seections.  The size of the sections is limited by the cutting bed of my Brother Scan n Cut (12x24).  This time I'm doing a vertical orientation.  A lot of the colors have three layers apiece since that elevation occurs om each of the three sections.  Overall this one goes from 6280 to 7560 feet elevation, with each layer corresponding to 80 vertical fee.

I cut out all the layers with my new-to-me Brother scan n cut which I love.  I used my Silhouette for years but it finally just wore out and I'm very pleased with this new cutter.  I think it's a little like getting a new car-  even if you don't get a really fancy one, over the course of ten years or so the technology gets better.

When I did this kind of quilt before, I first tried using peltex to separate the layers but by the time all the layers piled up it was impossible to stitch through.  Then I tried using pony beads, and those worked but because they each had only one hole the whole stack sort of tipped over by the end.

This time I decided to precision cut button-like wooden discs to separate the layers.  The benefit of this was that they could have two holes that would perfectly line up and be flat (unlike actual random buttons) which would make the stack stand up better. It also meant I could pre-cut holes in the fabric (with the digital cutter) that were precisely spaced for the discs (you can see those in the picture above)  helping both with the sewing and the alignment.

I cut them on the laser cutter at the public library and at first had trouble getting the settings right (at first the cuts were too shallow and then they were too deep and my wood caught fire).  Luckily there wasn't any permanent damage and since then I've met with a librarian to learn a little more about the settings.

There you can see a pile of the little button discs cut out and ready to incorporate in the layers.

One other benefit of having all the buttons and holes in the fabric line up was that I could build the layers and sew them using thread, last time I had to use flower wire and that was a disaster. 

Come back later in the week to see the final piece!