The must-have tool for fabric placement and art quilt success

In yesterday’s post, I showed you how to choose your fabrics for the Ariel art quilt. In today’s post, I’ll show you how I got ready to prepare the pattern for fabric placement. Inside the pattern, you have a true-to-size layout of the art quilt, in mirror effect. This is intended to help you prepare the cellophane and interfacing easily.

The UNIQUE Lighting Foldable LED Desk Lamp is an absolute must have

But before I begin, I have to tell you about my must-have tool for making this project. I wasn’t sure how useful it would be at first, but as soon as I started working on transferring the pattern, I realized I couldn’t make this project without it. It’s the UNIQUE Lighting Foldable LED Desk Lamp. This desk lamp has a bright white light offering true-to-life colors and clearer, sharper details. And the best part is that is has a magnifier with 2x magnification and 4x insert. It’s removable… but trust me… you’ll want to keep it as it’s really handy to mark and cut the fine details on this project.

Using cellophane to mark the design

Transferring your design on cellophane

I followed the instructions in Lise Bélanger’s pattern. She suggests drawing the design on cellophane to help you position your fabrics in the next step. You can usually find cellophane in most stores in the wrapping paper section; you can even try to get some at a florist as that’s what they use to protect flower arrangements.

Here is a video showing you exactly how I transferred the design onto the cellophane.

Once the design is all traced on the cellophane, remember to write ‘BACK’ onto the cellophane. So you know to reverse it before positioning it over your background fabric. You should now see the design exactly how you see it on the cover of the pattern.

Marking your background fabric with Omnigrip ruler and Clover Water erasable marker (Thick)

Use your Omnigrip Ruler and Clover Water Soluble Marker (thick) to mark the outer edge of your background fabric for easy placement of the cellophane. The cellophane has to be well-positioned and easy to move around as you’ll be adding your fabrics piece by piece in the next step… and believe me… it will be exciting to see this come to life!

Tell me what you think of my must-have tool – the UNIQUE Lighting Foldable LED Desk Lamp. Are you running out to your local quilt shop to get yours now? Remember to come back tomorrow when I show you all my tricks on how to prepare the interfacing.

This is part 2 of 5 in this series

Go back to part 1: Color values and contrast make this art quilt a ‘mane’ event

Go to part 3: Marking your interfacing for art quilt appliques

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