Friday, May 07, 2010

Quilted Pictures - A Wonderful Concept!



Many, many years ago I came across an interesting quilting concept and was so intrigued that I decided I had to try it. It involved no sewing, gluing or special tools. It also involved fabric, a foam board and a kitchen knife.

Have I piqued your curiosity yet? I hope so!

This small company called "Picture It With Fabric" in Minnesota had a concept for creating quilted no sew pictures and was selling kits that contained a pattern and a specially treated foam board. I don't know what they treated one of the large flat sides of the board with, but it stiffened the foam. The foam used wasn't Styrofoam or soft foam like for cushions. It was somewhere in between.


In any event, the pattern was for a quilt block and contained the instructions and a pattern sheets that you would trace onto the large flat treated side of the foam board with carbon paper.

Then using the kitchen knife you would slice all the lines of the design on the board about 1/2" deep.

The next thing you would do is center your foam board on a large piece of fabric that was to comprise the back and sides of the quilted picture and bring it around the sides to the front and to the frame border line and then add about 1/2".

Then using the kitchen knife you would proceed to tuck the edges of the fabric in the 1/2" slice of the frame border line until everything was taut and secured in place. Once you had done this you had nicely framed the front border, sides, and back of the quilted picture with fabric.

All that remained was to cut out the remaining quilted picture pieces with 1/2" allowance overall for each of the pieces and then proceed, using the kitchen knife, to tuck the pieces in place until they were secure.


Once you got the hang of it creating the quilted pictures was easy to do. So, of course, given that I always do everything in excess I proceeded to create the 3 other kits I had bought. Of course I didn't buy just one kit to test it. Oh, no! I bought 4! LOL LOL

My husband and I decided that a wood frame would not only finish the quilted pictures nicely, but would allow for easier hanging on the wall.  So we decided to finish the quilted pictures by inserting them into painted wooden shadow boxes that we had made.   Well, my husband made them - I painted them.

The welcome quilted picture shown below hangs above one of the doors in our side entrance.  The other quilted pictures shown above are hung near the front door and changed out with the seasons.


A few years ago I decided I wanted to make some more of these quilted pictures as gifts.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find the company on line. Every once in a while I try searching again to see what happens.  The last time I did I got a Google map that showed the address was in the middle of a field.

So, I guess the company went out of business.  It's too bad.  It was a great concept with a lot of possibilities.

If I knew what they treated the flat part of the foam board with to stiffen it I'd try creating one from scratch.  But, for now there are so many other projects sitting on the back burner I'll have to put that on hold.

I hope you enjoy the quilted pictures.

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