Bicycle Dreams

Last week I shared a few photos of quilts that my friend Tana pieced that included a graphic that was printed on fabric.  She mentioned to me that she finds many of her graphics at  "The Graphics Fairy".  So I decided to check it out.

Now that we finally have a hint of spring, I've been able to get outside and use my bicycle.  Since bicycling was on my brain, I decided it needed to be the subject for my next mini-quilt.  A search of "bicycle" revealed this wonderful vintage print.

I knew I wanted to incorporate this into a project.  So I started by printing this on an 8-1/2" x 11" piece of fabric.  I also saved a copy of the image on my computer.  The image is actually larger than that, but I just shrunk it so it fit on one sheet of paper.  (If you need some help on how to print on fabric you can check out my video -- Secrets to Successfully Printing Words on Fabric).

Here is my Electric Quilt Design.

Do you want to know how I got this image incorporated into Electric Quilt?  Check on this video tutorial.  I've also included information on how I drafted the rest of the quilt as well.

This is a simple quilt to piece.

• Cut the Vintage Girl print to three equal size units.  
• Cut 1" wide sashing and piece between the panel prints.
• Add 1" inch cut border.
• Create flying geese units.  Cut the pink pieces 2-1/2" x 2-1/2" and the taupe 1-1/2" x 1-1/2".

• Cut Taupe borders 1-1/2" wide.  Add flying gees units and adjust borders to fit your quilt.
  
• Cut outer border 2" wide.  Adjust lentgh to fit your quilt.

To quilt I did swirls around the outside of the quilt.  I stitched in the ditch around the graphic and I filled the background space with "Fracture Fill" -- a pattern within Art and Stitch's Creative Fill library.  With my Intelliquilter, I used both No Sew Zones and Clipping blocks for this part.  

I still need to add binding.

Vintage Girl on Bicycle by Kari Schell

Happy Mother's Day -- and Happy Quilting.

Kari

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