Staging Tutorial

What is staging? It's also known as auditioning fabrics for a project.

I'll be using, as examples, my fish BOW.

In my stash,  I have fabrics that can be used as backgrounds, foliage, landscape, etc. Usually I find these types of fabrics in scrap bins at the my local quilt store. A lot of them are at least an eighth to a fat quarter portion, which are great sizes for projects.

Look that this pebble fabric. Lots of interest there.

Then there's this grassy fabric and a motley blue. Great possibilities.

 

If you are following with my fish BOW (Block of the Week), you know that I use an adhesive (Steam-a-seam or Heat-n-bond) to adhere the fish parts and at this point I can move the fish to different fabrics to see what works best.

I like what I see but am not ready to press anything down. That will come "way" later!!

After adding a couple of dragonflies and cattails, it's starting to look pretty good but still not ready to press. That may happen in a couple of weeks. There is no hurry with pressing everything down. If you are satisfied with the look you're going for, I'd suggest taking a photo but do not press yet. This is important because at some point you will probably change your mind or want to add something behind one of your objects and would regret pressing too early.

Here's the second fish  which I posted on Monday and here's the staging for that one. You can see the pebbles that I've used cut in a jagged way to look more natural. Still no pressing. I also added that grass fabric but cut it to look like underwater weeds.

So this is the process I usually use when making scenic quilts.

If you are making the "fish" designs with me, maybe think about doing a different scene for each fish. The guy in your life will be so proud and want to show off his prized quilt to everyone.

Stay tuned for more "staging" very soon.

 

Also there's still time to get in on the 5 ten inch squares give-away. Just leave a comment to be counted.

 I'll announce the winner on Thursday.