Fabric Cut Out Art - NYC Metro MQG Bee Block June 2014

The start of another year for my NYC Metro Mod Quilt Guild Bee - we took a break for May then in June Queen Bee Earamichia started us off again for another round with a couple of new Bees on board.

Our packages included a square of charcoal grey solid cotton and some black Misty Fuse.  Queen Bee E asked us to create a Fabric Cut Out Art Block based on Silhouettes and Scratch Art - remember when you were young and you'd colour a rainbow with crayons then cover the whole piece with thick black crayon then scratch away a picture into the black crayon to reveal the rainbow of colour beneath? - I loved doing that.

I quickly set about fusing the Misty Fuse to the back of the charcoal grey solid and then I thought and thought about what design to make.  In fact, in between my travels I've thought about this block for 2 months and finally settled on my design this week. 

If you haven't used Misty Fuse before you might want to read this helpful Tip Sheet written by artist/author/teacher Sue Bleiweiss, she's got some great Misty Fuse project tutes here on her blog too.

I cut the solid down to a 10" square and sketched out this peacock feather using white chalk.

I carefully cut out the feather and border design.

Here's strips of 'peacock' colours I pulled from my scrap boxes.

Queen Bee E asked us to create a background block that's 3" on all sides larger than the cut out block so I cut out a 16" square of paper and starting sewing the strips onto it ...

then pressing each strip open ...

and cutting away the excess.

 And the finished square looked like this.

Time to place the Feather and Frame on the block, Misty Fuse side down. I marked 3" in from each block edge and lined the frame edges up with it then ironed to fuse the pieces together and fix the design in place.

The finished block from the left ...

and the right ...

I'm really pleased with the finished block though I'm intrigued as to how Queen Bee E is going to quilt all the blocks and hold the fused designs permanently in place. As and when I find out I'll let you know!

As always you can check out all the blocks that our Bee make for E on my Quilty - Fabric Cut Out Art Block Pinterest Board - I'll add more pins as each person in the Bee posts photos of their finished blocks and you can see my NYC Mod Quilt Guild Post here too.

And you can click this link to see all of my NYC Mod Quilt Guild Bee Blocks and Challenge Blocks/Quilts.