For the crab blocks on my quilt I used a product called Texture Magic. It comes in a package at the quilt store size 47"x18" for about $24.00. I needed to cut 10 squares of fabric 8"x8" (8 for my quilt and 2 for my wall hanging). Since the sizes in the quilt directions tend to be a little generous, I cut my fabric 8"x7 1/2". I cut pieces of Texture Magic to fit the size of my fabric and pinned them to the back of each piece.
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| My 8 fabric choices in reds and oranges |
My first fabric had a scalloped pattern on it, so I decided to free motion quilt along the natural curves of the material.
You can see above my fabric before steaming is measures from the 1 to 9 (8") on the vertical length and from the 1 to 8.5 (7 1/2") on the horizontal width.
In the photo above I am steaming the stitched fabric without touching the Texture Magic. You can steam from either side, but if the iron touches the Texture Magic it will make it hard. I steamed until I was sure there was no more shrinkage, and then I steamed some more to be absolutely sure.
In the above picture you can see I lost about 1 1/4" in both the length and width of the fabric. Below you can see a close-up of how this fabric turned out. I used orange thread in this block. It's difficult to see in this picture, but the shaded scallops really stand out on the surface of this fabric. I'm please with how it turned out. I find I like the result of my texture if I keep my stitches about 1/4" apart.
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| Finished front |
In the next two photos I used a stippled free hand look on the orange fabric with orange thread.
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| Difficult to see the orange on the orange |
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| The back side after steaming |
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| Finished front |
For the next square I drew a grid 1/2" apart on the Texture Magic with pencil going both horizontally and vertically to make squares. I changed to red thread for the next two fabric squares.
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| Finished front |
In the next square I drew a grid 1" wide on the Texture Magic and then came back on the diagonal to form triangles. I like how the red contrasted with the orange fabric
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| Finished front |
Below you can see the shrunken square. When it's formed into the crab's body, I think it will look fine.
The next piece had a natural grid to the fabric, so I followed along with the black thread.
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| Fabric with no stitching |
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| Free motion stitching in the lines |
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| Shrunken and texturized piece |
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| I think this may be my favorite! |
Here I did a series of "ME's" alternating M's and E's again in the gold thread.
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| Finished front |
Below you can see all the finished squares for the 8 I'm putting in my quilt.
A note about paper piecing: when sewing in the order recommended by the pattern, you cannot change the direction of the seam allowance. It will always lie in the direction of the piece you are adding. In the crab block I wanted the body of the crab to stand out and fold into the red fabric, so I folded my paper and sewed on the fabric next to the fold of the paper. You can see in the photo below how I did this.
Here is the finished "body" of the crab from the back side. All the seam allowances are turned into the red and ironed. As it so happened none of my seams went through the paper, so I had to pin each piece to the paper to keep them from moving.
Here are the three pieces that will make up the crab block.
Here is one finished crab block with the button eyes just resting on the top of the fabric.
Here is my finished quilt top before adding the eyes.
Click here to view my paper piecing tutorial.
