Quilted Anatomy: Lungs

Hello all! I'm continuing my series on quilted anatomy. This time, I give you: Lungs!


I wanted to make sure the colors would match the first two I made (P.S. I made a kidney), so I laid out my fabric and picked the colors I thought matched lung color IRL and also the nice palette I have going with the heart and kidney. In real life, the lungs are a bright salmony-pink color, almost neon. They're fantastic to look at.

Then, I had to cut up the pattern I made based on one of my drawings. The trachea was probably going to be the hardest, so I started there. I had a nice batik that makes a really good ligament color.

You can see the garden from my craft room

About halfway through, I realized the step between main color and shadow was way too steep. So I decided to start over, adding an extra color with fabric I got from The Stitchery.

 

Much better!

 

 

Here it is with the other two. I think it turned out great! I'm really excited to do more organs. I'm working on a pattern for a Uterus and a Liver, but I also want to do a brain and the cross-section of an eye. We'll see what happens next!

 

Quilted Anatomy: Heart

So I've had this idea in my mind for a while - I want to quilt anatomically correct organs. It combines my background as a medical illustrator with my love of quilting. I spent a loooong time making my own paper piecing pattern of a heart (from one of my illustrations) and trying to get it down just right. It took a lot of tries to make the pattern, and I ended up having to chop the pattern into about 20 different sections and piece those all together individually. I made about a million mistakes and the first one I made had terrible colors. This is the second one I made. I increased the size about 50% and chose some better colors than the first (not posted here. Never will be).

materials all ready to go!

I think it turned out pretty well, considering how many pieces it ended up being. I missed part of the top left pulmonary vein over there, but I can applique it back on. I'm thinking of embroidering on the cardiac vessels next...

Quilted Anatomy: some new fabrics

Hey All!

Lately, I've been addicted to spoonflower.com, a site where you can create and upload custom fabrics. I've started making my own fabrics, mostly using my medical illustration background. Hopefully people will be interested in them. If not, it's still kind of cool to have them so I can use them for personal projects :)

organs!

adipose tissue

hearts

Since you have to have printed a few in order to make them available for selling, these won't be available in the shop until next week or so. But, I think they turned out nicely.

Please like my shop!

Non-geek: Table Centerpieces

I'm in love with scrappy-style projects. Something to bust up the stash, and get rid of all those fat quarters I seem to accumulate.

Lately, I've been doing some lone star tabletoppers for friends and family. I love the look of lonestars; you can get such depth and elegance from them.

This one was for my mother for christmas

Trying to figure out what orientation to use

 

 

For my sister's MIL.

They're actually not that hard to make, just a bit time consuming to get the corners pieced just right. They come together quickly at the end and are really impressive. Next one I make (which will be one for myself, since I haven't made one that I haven't given away yet) I will include a tutorial. :)