Inspired by Elvis—The Making of Memories, Part 1

A quilt of mine which depicts my memory of seeing Elvis signing autographs is included in the book INSPIRED BY ELVIS by Donna Desoto, which came out in late June, 2018.  I used a fiber-collage method to create this quilt. Basically, I combined various fabrics and fiber elements into a pleasing arrangement, then covered the whole thing with black tulle and stitched/quilted it to hold things in place.  In addition to fibers, I also added other bits of ephemera as needed to convey the image I saw in my mind. Some elements of the quilt were assembled separately, using the fusible appliqué method, before being placed on the foundation.  Today I will talk about some of those elements.

To make the brick walls, I put fusible web onto the back of a commercial brick-printed fabric, then cut it into strips, keeping a row of mortar on the bottom of each strip.  

I overlapped the strips to make smaller-scale bricks, fusing them row by row as I built the walls on my Teflon sheet. 

I added ‘mortar’ by using paint to make some strips appear to be made of the smaller ends of the bricks.

By putting my drawing under the 

Teflon sheet, I could fuse the bricks as I went, building the wall.

To make the stone inserts, I cut tiny pieces of a mottled grey fabric

I built the columns the same way, except that I had to angle the rows on the column sides to give the appearance of dimension. The same stone-colored fabric was used for the caps. I used a tiny wash of paint to give shadows to help with the 3-D effect.

For the stone wall, I cut 2x2" chunks from a variety of mottled fabrics and put fusible web on the backs.  

I cut these chunks into smaller stone-shaped pieces and fused them, mosaic-style, onto a gray background fabric.

 More brick strips were overlapped, as well as slashed and curved, to form the circular brick inset in the wall.  Then the top edge was cut to form the spikey surface.

I drew the ironwork (fence and gate) onto wash-away stabilizer which I then sandwiched between two layers of white tulle. 

. I stitched the design using 2 strands of white thread, being careful to cross over previous lines so the whole thing would be connected once the stabilizer (paper) was gone.

 When the stitching was completed, I removed as much of the stabilizer as I could, then put this sandwich into a sink of water.

The iron fence piece soaking in water.  I used gray thread in the bobbin and used green tulle for this section, because it was farther away from the vantage point and would have green lawn and trees behind it.

Once the stabilizer was rinsed away, all that remained was the stitched design on the tulle...the fence and gate!  I pressed them with a warm iron to dry each one and block them into the desired shape.

I put the iron pieces in place next to the masonry pieces on my design plan.

NEXT TIME, I will show how I made tiny Graceland...