Third Saturday Sew

On the 3rd Saturday of the month a few of us sewing friends get together and have a potluck and sew all day.  For lack of any other name - I have been referring to it as "Third Saturday Sew".   Well yesterday was our day and I decided instead of lugging my machine around this time I would bring my Blue Jay that I wanted to work on for the Bear Quilt.  Here he is all fused down. 

I will still need to do the top stitching to secure it and some thread play to define the wings and tail feathers.

Once I got the Blue Jay to this point I started working on an enlarged quail. This is the original quail and I really like it - but it needs to be bigger so I am going to do the same one - just enlarged.  

I was able to finish it up today - 

Again, I will need to top stitch and do some thread play on this to finish it up. 

In case you are wondering how I do this - here is a quick overview of what I do.  I take the picture I want to work with and I trace it on to vinyl, Cellophane  or a sheet protector.  

I like to do this for a couple of reasons:  1. It's how I learned to reverse my picture to trace the fusible. 2. It helps in the placement of the pieces when working with layers of colors. That's why I trace all the different shadows and color spots.  Then I trace the shapes onto the fusible and fuse them to the appropriate colors.  

(These are from the Quail)

Then I  cut these out and place and fuse them to my background, using the light box, then the original picture underneath the background.  Then I will use my vinyl to help in placement if I can see the picture from underneath.  

Here is just the picture on the light box with the background on top - 

Then add the vinyl overlay. 

Here you can see where the I can use the picture under to see where to place my pieces. 

I can't see the eye or the where the white stripes go but with the overlay I can. You can really see in the next picture how the vinyl overlay helps.

I got a little side tracked... Back to Saturday Sew.  

    

I got a chance to use my new light box, however it really isn't a box since it is so ultra thin. It worked really good, I'm very happy with it.  Only second use but I used if for a big part of the day and it worked really nice. Everyone seemed to think it was so neat they were all taking down the name of it and going to see if they could find one too.  I got it from Amazon - it was from Tik Teck.  

Here is some of the food.  We also had a sausage, egg, and cheese casserole and I brought baked spaghetti.  And the husband of the ladies house we were at baked cookies for us.  

 Anyway I had a great time as always and thankful for my quilting friends.  I started this post this morning then the day got in the way.  But as you see I was able to finish the quail today and now it's almost time for bed.  
Have a Blessed evening -
Lynn