State Fair Parade 1 - Lady in the Grass

Over the next few weeks I'll be sharing with you some of the projects I entered in the state fair. One of the reasons I like to enter different projects is to get a different opinion on my work. So I'm sharing with you what I sent with the comments I received back - good & bad! Hopefully you will pick up some tips for your own projects!

This is a sweet little wall hanging featuring Lady, our blond haired four-legged dog. At the time I stitched this, I was getting ready to teach several classes on fabric photo printing. I created multiple samples with different photos and this was one of them.

I printed the center photo onto pre-treated and pre-cut fabric sheets with my inkjet printer. Just as an added note - only inkjet and bubble jet printers will work to print photos on fabric because they apply wet ink to the fabric. Laser printers will NOT work because they use a dry ink that is set to the fabric by heat. (There are other kinds of paper that will not work on laser printers as I found out the hard way! :))

After printing, I let the photo dry and then rinse it under running water. Then I let it soak for 5-10 minutes in a Bubble Jet Rinse solution. The rinse releases any of the extra ink into the solution and sets the ink so it is permanent and won't bleed when it is washed in the future. Then carefully wring out the extra liquid and let dry. It becomes just like fabric and you can cut and stitch it in any way you desire. You can download some more information on photo printing and treating fabric here.

I added the toast marble fabric around the photo and then a floral fabric border. Then comes the fun part - adding embellishment! I found some cute little puppy buttons and paw prints which are scattered around. And of course, I just had to add some embroidered lettering above and below the photo! Plus it is bordered with a feather decorative stitch.

The quilting on this project is nothing spectacular - just a few random bubbles in and around the embroidery and buttons. It is just enough to hold the layers together.

The label on the back is also printed fabric. Only this time, I used the toast marble fabric, treated it with Bubble Jet Solution, ironed it to freezer paper so it would feed through the printer and printed the photo and lettering. Then I peeled off the freezer paper, set it in the Bubble Jet Rinse, let it dry, cut it down and stitched it to the back!

No ribbon for this project, but I entered another 5 items in this same class, one of which received a blue ribbon, which means no ribbons for any of the other 5. But this was a fun and quick project to stitch!

Here are the judge's comments:

What a wonderful quilt. Very original!

My thoughts and comments:

I was pleased with the way this project finished. It is a simple way to give photo printing a try if you have never done it before! Be sure to check out my tips for photo printing here.