Duke Done Differently

As with many crafters I enjoy all sorts of different crafts. One I enjoy is quilting and recently I saw a fun technique called collage quilting where fabric scraps are your colouring medium. I then went in search of a few YouTube tutorials on the techniques and thought it would be fun to try. My next issue was finding an image to use. Of course being on Mo Manning's Dream Team made me wonder if a digi mage could be used. Like with anything out of the ordinary it's always good to check with the artist if your technique is an acceptable use of their artwork. I was delighted when Mo agreed to my request and I decided to use the gorgeous Duke, partly because he reminds me of my dog 😉

I printed him off at just over 12" tall, transferred the lines to a piece of fabric and got to work. The plan was to use up scraps from my fabric stash and that's why he ended up blue - but I'm so happy with it and learnt a lot along the way. The fusible I had hiding in my craftroom was quite old and didn't always stay ironed down so I ended up using a decorative stich along the edges of the fabric pieces, not the way a true collage quilt is made but I was happy with the result anyway. I added wadding and a backing, did some more quilting to sandwich the 3 layers together and finished off my piece with binding. I now have a cute soft wall hanging ready to go up.

Here's a little idea of the steps the process took me. 

My sincere thanks to Mo for letting me use her artwork this way.

Ilana by Mo Manning

Today I'm bringing you a card using Mo's gorgeous Ilana image. There's just something so wonderful in the way Mo poses her images and I love the sweet cheekiness of this adorable girl.

Using striped DPs is always fun as you can orientate the stripes in different directions to really enhance them as a design element.