Umbrella man

After a conversation with Annie of Annie's Musings  (Freeze Frame) almost as long ago as the barn quilt challenge, I have been pondering how to make a steam punk quilt. I keep looking at the images of steampunk costumes and retrofits trying to decide how a quilt would fit in.  The notion of attaching gears and watch parts contrasts too much with the cozy notion of a quilt.  Seeing the lush use of materials, beautiful wood, brass, leather; I imagine the ideal steampunk quilt would be a lovely silk and velvet crazy quilt.

Given that my collection doesn't extend to lush silk and velvet fabrics, I wanted to come up with a more practical approach.  After scouting around a bit, I decided to use old images. I found a rich source of them at the Graphics Fairy.  In fact there are so many there I can hardly decide which ones to print.  I have been printing them on fabric and combining them with some improvisational piecing to make small quilts.

These are all quilt as you go projects.  It seemed the easiest to do as I am figuring out what I like and how to put the pieces together.  The neat thing is that when I am done piecing the block, it is all ready for the binding.  I don't have to spend a lot of time trying to figure out the best way to quilt it.  More importantly, i am not tempted to spend months fiddling with hand quilting. Now I just need to figure out how I can machine stitch the binding.  (That is a a disaster I will leave for another post... after I haved recovered from the trauma of ripping out decorative stitches in four layers of fabric plus batting.)

I'll be posting more of them over the next few days. 

  Linked at Connie's Freemotion by the River.  It looks like I have a lot to catch up with!