Have you purchased a fabric panel and don’t know what to do with it? Have you used panels before and then disappointed with your effort and money spent?
We have some ideas for YOU! I am going to break down how to take a panel and figure out how to embellish it so it takes form into something that is unique and loved! You will feel great about the efforts you spend and the new skills you learned. I have purchased several panels through the years and rarely turn back to actually do anything with them. In the spirit of Halloween Fun, let’s break down this darling panel created by Emily Taylor Designs for Riley Blake. This panel was a coordinate with Emily Taylor’s Zombie Apocalypse 2014 Fabric Collection.
For Fall 2015, Emily Taylor designs with her talented skills created the Zombie Love collection for all of us to play with!
Zombie Love is just beyond adorable! I love studying her whimsical artwork and sweet loving Zombie story lines on her fabric! Darling! We will get to more of that in another post!
Let’s go back and focus on the 2014 Zombie Apocalypse panel we are going to break apart today.
You can see here there is a darling doubled sided Zoe the Zombie doll that has one side featuring her loveliness and the other side featuring her zombiness. Zoe the Zombie has cute tubular arms and legss to attach. Emily Taylor just couldn’t stop with her talent with a Zoe Zombie Doll, but Emily’s imagination gave Zoe a companion of “Bones”, the Zombie Dog! How darling is that? Bones the Zombie Dog has two body sides, an underbelly along with darling floppy ears to attach!
There have been times that I will create something from a panel but it lacks any shape or form to make the sewable item look like what I imagine it should be. Well to solve that issue in sewing you use interfacing right! This time we are going to quilt this panel with Warm and Natural 80/20 Batting and 100% cotton muslin fabric backing. This type of panel would be fun to learn and experiment how to quilt on a domestic sewing machine. Challenge yourself and play with a panel to learn quilting techniques on your sewing machine. I have a long arm quilting machine and going to load this sweet panel on that machine and doodle away.
I brainstormed what might look good for this Zombie panel and thought of things associated with Zombies while not being morbid. I’m more of a playful Zombie Halloween person not the scary kind run away from. Being the conservative person that I am, I do not find enjoyment in watching scary movies; life is already a bit to scary to add more to it. I do have immediate family members that enjoy scary movies. We do have Walking Dead fans in our family and I thought they might appreciate me “entering their world” making some fun Zombie items for them. Back to brainstorming… I find that Zombie culture has plaid in it, flowers, humor, and more.
When I was long arm quilting this panel, I felt like I was doodling with Emily Taylor and just simply embellishing her darling drawings! I used shiny black thread with on the hair and eyes. I used a metallic light green thread that worked great on all the various colors in the panel and made the quilting simpler by not have to change threads for the rest of the parts.
I decided to put flowers on Zoe the Zombie’s dress, accent her hair with waves, accentuate her eyes with more eyelashes, give the collar a bit of a lacey look and finally give her skirt some swirls. On the other hand, Zoe the Zombie’s scary side I quilted her eyes to look more zombieish, accented her hair with zig zags, scratched up the tares in her dress, and more. You can study the images to see more.
Zoe’s legs and arms are sewn in a tubular fashion so there wasn’t a zombie and non-zombie side but the panel seemed to have a zombie arm/leg and regular arm/leg. After making this observation, I decided to quilt the zombie arm/leg a bit scary and the non-zombie arm/leg a bit friendly.
Zoe’s Zombie dog Bones is already darling but I decided to quilt him with abstract non-descript “bones” on his body. I accented his eyes and features along with quilting a plaid pattern on his nose.
On the outside of Bone’s ears, I quilted lines between the polka dots and the inside of his ears did a circular pattern.
Videos of the long arm quilting of the panel are included in the post if you want to watch it in action. Remember I am trying to be lose with my quilting of the panel to give it a whimsical look. If you are new to quilting it is best to not try for perfection but instead be “consistently inconsistent” and you really end up with a great result. It pains me to think of the unpicking going on with quilting. Remember quilting is a fluid art with each person having their own fingerprint and style. Find your style and let it flow throughout your work. This video was filmed as a live Periscope Video with people asking questions during the video. After watching it I can’t believe the number of times I said “um” YUCK! I promise my next live video will NOT have that going on! The first person to watch the entire video and count the number of “um”s that I said and be the first to make a remark in the comments of this blog post, will have a quilting Halloween surprise mailed to them! The video was also a bit shakey and I will improve upon my video set up while long arm quilting and not have the video camera attached to the machine.
Tomorrows post will be on assembling and stitching together Zoe the Zombie Doll with her companion dog Bones which will be a written photographed and video post from streaming live on Periscope. If you are new to Periscope then it is an app you download on your phone, you can follow me at stitchesquiltin for live broadcasts and inspiring chats. You can watch the video and interact with me live by making comments and I can answer your questions. Let’s have some creative fun together.
Zoe and Bones are definitely going to bring smiles to my family members! You can still purchase this Zombie Apocalypse Panel at Stitches Quilting with either the Zombie Love or Zombie Apocalypse Fat Quarter Kit. So pull out fabric panels that you may already own and let’s get them put together for possible holiday gifts this season! I am a firm believer in using up what you have and put it to good use! Maybe this tutorial will motivate you to pull out some panels laying around transforming them into something unique! Please share comments below if you have been disappointed with panel results yourself and any tips you have used to make them come to life. I would also LOVE your comment of other ideas you have for quilting Zoe the Zombie and her dog Bones along with use of the fabric collections!
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