Wicked Challenge Progress

Progress on the Wicked Challenge quilt! 

While I had the original drawing on the sliding glass doors, I made a master tracing of the boots in order to start the drawing of the detail layers that I wanted to add to the purple base color.   In the back of my mind, I kept seeing flames, but not hot rod biker flames, more feminine, scroll-y flames.   My hunt for inspiration on the web didn't turn up anything remotely what I had in mind, though I realized after the fact that I should have searched cowgirl boots & I probably would have found something close.

In the end, I just grabbed my pencil & started drawing, and erasing, and redrawing. There were several crumpled up, discarded drawings and a rather large pile of eraser crumbs before I decided on the design-in-progress. 

I can’t call it final yet because it will continue to evolve until I put the last stitch in place.  I know me…I always think I can make it just a bit better, one more detail, what about this bit or that something.  Drives. Me. Crazy.  And yes, I realize it me, driving myself crazy – all my own doing.  It’s the joy/curse of a creative mind – it never wants to shut off!

I love FUSING!  It’s a perfect way to get these sharp point stuck down!

5 flame pieces on - 5 more to go!

The skirt, on the other hand, is not fused.  It’s one piece of black, with a partial interfacing in lavender, with the bottom edge rolled under and stitched down. I didn't take any pictures of the process (*smacks head* - need to remember to do that for the blog, dummy!) but the piece of black was shaped something like this:

I cut it about twice as long as I wanted it to finish for the width so that I would end up with fairly deep pleats.  I pleated it, pinning it in place and carefully stitched down the edge of each pleat.  I think I achieved a nice effect of a real skirt with it.

I thinking the quilting will be straight forward so as not to detract from the busy details on the boots but we’ll see.  This quilt needs to be finished by Monday & sent off to Cherrywood Fabrics in Minnesota to arrive before August 1^st!