Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Tuesday Tutorial with Karen of Buttons in the Attic

A Galaxy of Stars by Karen of Buttons in the Attic

I love the look of cutter quilts on prim items and while I love the look, I am loathe to cut up antique quilts, so I make my own! I just tear up strips of fabrics and utilize my scraps to make them. I am working on Christmas stars made from green and red ticking and here are piles of torn fabric to make the cutter quilts for the stars--
Cutter quilt ideas--I love playing around with the strips--do I do planned combinations or just let them happen as they may??
Here are a couple of finished ticking stars, just waiting to be tea stained and dried.
 
 Here they are quilted up! I used my free motion foot to do the quilting with--I thought that the randomness of the stitches really added to the 'primness' of the cutter quilts. I could just imagine a mom on the farm hurriedly stitching up a quilt to keep her family warm, wishing for the time and resources to create a master piece, such as a Baltimore quilt, and dreaming of the time when life would slow a bit so she could ply her needle at her craft.
Then, after stitching the cutter quilt sections, I traced the smaller star on the back of the cutter quilt pieces to make them more random in shape and fabric placement. Here are some of the red, green and patriotic stars after they were cut out and are ready to sew onto the ticking stars!
Here the ticking stars with the patchwork stars stitched on, waiting to be tea-dyed.
Here they are after being dunked in my tea-dye solution, waiting to be baked to prim perfection! I like to use a rather strong solution of tea and I bake my items at 200 degrees, turning every 10-15 minutes or so, until dry. I like to lay drier pieces against ones that are still damp to get water marks, as if they had been in a chest or box that had gotten damp over the years.
And, last but not least, here are the stars, baked and cooled and ready to fly to new homes!
I hope you have enjoyed a peek into my creative process, as much as I have enjoyed sharing it with you!
Thank you Karen for sharing this wonderful tutorial with us!
Karen can be found here:

12 comments:

Danice G said...

Very informative, thank you so much. I really love the stars :)

KEEPSAKE KORNER said...

Wonderful and very informative. I, myself am one to use my scraps anyway I can in my quilting...this just gives me more food for creating :)
Your stars are too adorable !
Susan

Unknown said...

Love these stars, thank you for sharing with us!
Kim

Colleen said...

I love all the stars. Thanks for sharing with us. :)

ButtonsInTheAttic said...

Thank you for your kind words! I really love those stars and I have used my cutter quilts for all sorts of items--my owls, sunflowers, both big and small, flower pillows, and I am sure there are more items on the way! I am so glad that you liked my tutorial! :o)

The Farmer's Attic said...

Great tutorial!!! Have loads of scrap fabric that I can put to great use!

Thanks so much for sharing with us Karen!!!

Lucy

Laura of TheQuiltedPumpkin/WildThymeThreads said...

I love stars! Great tutorial, Karen!

Unknown said...

These came out so great...love them!

Denise * KKL Primitives said...

Thank you so much for sharing this tutorial. Can't wait to try it out.

Unknown said...

I Love Love this. very awesome idea and adorable to boot, thank you for your inspiration and time putting that together

Unknown said...

Great tutorial! I loved it!

Unknown said...

Great tutorial! Thank you for sharing!