It only took three weeks from start to Finish, I dropped everything and made my latest animal portrait, Potato Hank.

Here is the original photo it is based on, Hank in his tightest curled up potato-pose:

It’s made with my usual technique but the edges are bound with double fold bias tape and turned all the way to the back as a facing. I also chose to introduce some piecing as part of the design, to break up the larger areas but also because I want to add more of an artistic flair to my pictorial quilts. I will be experimenting a little more with “regular pieced improvisationally placed” patchwork I think in the near future.

With this quilt I started to worry about my long term love affair with Sewline glue. With all of the white, I actually found the colour wasn’t fading as it should, and when it got wet it would get even brighter and bring the colour back.

Normally I’d just throw it on a delicate wash, however I hadn’t remembered to prewash the canvas I had put inside the quilt for stiffness, and that stuff really shrinks. So a proper machine was wasn’t an option. Thankfully just continually throwing water on it and wiping off the visible surplus with scraps worked eventually.

I also didn’t do mini stitches and cut the thread to end the lines of quilting this time. For the first time ever, I took the time to pull up the threads and cut leaving a tail, and then burying the ends. The thread burying and the canvas core is all part of my effort for a better standard of finish in 2019. This is also why I spray and pin basted the layers together instead of just pinning as usual.

Not a whole lot more to tell you about this, but I’m hoping it will be accepted into MQX, I just entered it for jurying this morning. I’m holding it back from entering into Quilt Canada this year because next year the show will be more local, and I’ll actually get to go to it! The lovely Molli Sparkles said I should enter it into Quiltcon because he particularly liked the irregular shape. While I never considered entering my portraits before, I might give it a try next year.

STATS
Size – 48″ x 43″
Number of blocks – N/A
Time to make – Around 25 hours.
Fabric – A lot of solid white and black. There’s some Carolyn Friedlander, the black and white print is from Uppercase by Janine Vangool (nearly out of that stuff now), some Sunprint and other random stuff from the scrap drawer.
Binding Fabric – Kona white, turned to the back as a facing.
Backing – Simple ol’ Muslin
Threads – Mostly Isacord polyester thread because of the thickness. It still snapped in places if I went too fast. Back is all Decobob.
Batting – 80/20 Hobbs Heirloom
Quilting- Directional lines for realism, with a little zigzag here and there. Pebbles on the nose.