Lady of the Candied Fruit: Using a lightbox to trace appliqués onto fusible web. 

Your Name Here: Fabric squares for QR code pinned to design wall.

I'm With Her: Using a picture window as a lightbox to trace at full scale.

Test Pattern: Machine appliqué.

Test Pattern: Machine appliqué.

Test Pattern: Knotting off the ends of threads on the back of an appliqué. Yes, I really do stitch around every raw edge.

We Watched: Appliqué on the balcony near the beach.

Lady of the Candied Fruit: Original version of a mannequin's head for Chinese Characters, which I rejected because the hair was too yellow and the skin, too pink.

Lady of the Candied Fruit: Tracing paper laid over the mannequin's face, with numbered shapes corresponding to appliqués for her new hair.

SPQR: Edge zigzagging a vintage Fiat 500 appliqué in progress. Appliqué of Candida-of-the-pierced-tongue rests comfortably on the worktable. Note the most important tool: a tall glass of iced coffee.

Met Centennial "M" Noren: Using a craft knife to position part of the stencil. The negative space of the stencil serves as a placement guide. 

Met Centennial "M" Noren: Completed "M" with the stencil partially removed.

Central Booking: Removing the basting stitches after the quilting is completed.

Speak No Evil: Posing with my self-portrait.

Dreamtime: Quilting, using a large footed hoop. The white fabric extensions give the hoop something to grab onto at the edges.

Read between the lines: Roughed out in fabric; the essential composition of a strong vertical stripe with alternating horizontal bands of squiggly lines and small appliquéd letters is present.

I'm With Her: Background for the right-hand side, with more appliqués arranged on the grid.

Chinese Characters: Mannequin heads against stenciled but not yet pieced squares.

Noo Yawk, Noo Yawk: A collage of paper printouts for the central lamppost and the borders.

Reveal: Quilting.

I'm With Her: Background for the left-hand side, with piecing in progress. The strips on the left have been ironed, which accounts for the differing lengths.

I'm With Her: Completed left-hand background with the Emma Lazarus poem, The New Colossus. I used graph paper to carefully plot out the placement so that when all of the elements were assembled, Liberty wouldn't overlap the text.

Noo Yawk, Noo Yawk: Stenciling in progress.

Noo Yawk, Noo Yawk: A completed appliqué next to the two Con-Tact™ paper stencils used to create it. The image of the two projectionists at the top is a silkscreen print.

Noo Yawk, Noo Yawk: Detail of pinned and basted appliqués.

Jive Boss Sweat: Quilting in a small snap-together frame.

Noo Yawk, Noo Yawk: Peeling the stencil off the completed fabric print. Note that the "island" in the center of the letter in the upper left is cut from Con-Tact™ paper. If there are many "islands" in a design, I'll use Con-Tact™ paper for the whole stencil.

Noo Yawk, Noo Yawk: Cutting Mylar® with a craft knife to make a stencil (it reads, "Yonah Schimmel's Knishes" in Yiddish).

Sweet Hello Kitty Dreams: Edge zigzagging in progress.

I'm With Her: Statue of Liberty appliqué, completed.

Lady of the Candied Fruit: Tracing paper laid over the mannequin's face, with numbered shapes corresponding to appliqués for her new hair. The tracing serves two purposes: I use it to trace onto fusible web for the individual colored shapes; and as the guide for arranging all the little bits into a coherent picture.

Lady of the Candied Fruit: Headdress in progress. A square bracket marks which part of the design I'm working on. The paper drawing is reversed when it's flipped over onto the light box, so it's easy to get confused about which little shapes to trace.

Amelia Bloomer: Lifting the silkscreen to remove the fabric print.

I'm With Her: Completed appliqué of Liberty for the right-hand side, but before the final trimming, with the background in progress.

Lady of the Candied Fruit: Headdress, ready to be stitched and trimmed.

What Next?: Suturing slashed fabric with bakery string.

Lady of the Candied Fruit: Headdress in progress. Building up the layers of the next skewer, from light to dark.

Chinese Characters: An earlier version of Mao.

Chinese Characters: The final version of Mao, pinned together.

Chinese Characters: Mannequins' bodies and heads.

Strong Words: Laying out the randomized background. My palette of white and gray fabric squares is arranged on the stool.

FRANKENTIM RULED: Tim, appliquéd to the background. Unfortunately, once I made Frank's background, I realized that not only their eyes had to line up in this pendant portrait, so did the strong horizontal elements. Therefore I had to pick out the perimeter stitching, align it correctly and restitch. This required a Goldilocks amount of caffeine--enough to energize, but not so much that my hands shook. It took four hours--but it had to be done!

FRANKENTIM RULED: Now with Frank!

I'm With Her: The digital collage that was the basis for the quilt.

Jive Boss Sweat: Layers of appliqué.

I'm With Her: Background for the right-hand side, with first layer of appliqués arranged on the grid.

Born Analog: Pinning and basting some of the many overlapping appliqués in place.

Lady of the Candied Fruit: Using a seam ripper to gently nudge a shape into place.

Lady of the Candied Fruit: A bird's eye view of my fusing and tracing stations. Here, the Lady is on top of a large tabletop ironing surface. The traced image, numbered to correspond to the palette of chosen fabrics, is laid over the ironing surface. The tracing paper is extra wide, so that it can flip over to the lightbox. Both the ironing surface and the tracing paper are clamped to the table or weighted down, to keep everything aligned. There are a few cut pieces of fusible web on the lightbox, numbered so I know which fabrics to apply them to.

FRANKENTIM RULED: One of the fabric shapes for Frank's face, ready to be applied.

FRANKENTIM RULED: Frank, with background, in progress.

Jive Boss Sweat: Building up the layers of the design.

I'm With Her: The digital collage that was the basis for the quilt.

FRANKENTIM RULED: Comedy and tragedy.

I'm With Her: The completed quilt top, before quilting.

Hold Fast to Dreams: Before: the reverse of the freezer paper appliqué, prior to clipping and ironing. After: "dreams," stitched.

FRANKENTIM RULED: A detail, showing a multi-layered appliqué on organza and cotton.

Lady of the Candied Fruit: Flipping the tracing paper at the fusing/tracing station.

Sweet Hello Kitty Dreams: Fusing the letter appliqués in place.

Sweet Abby Cadabby Dreams: Finished and resting comfortably until I can deliver it to a great niece, who requested a pink and purple quilt.

Dreamtime: Attaching the binding.

FRANKENTIM RULED: Ironing the quilted Frank to remove markings. 

Chinese Characters: Basted, ready to quilt!

We Watched: Sewing on the binding.

Beijing: Hand appliqué on the beach.

Amelia Bloomer: Rectangles of silkscreened fabric for the background, laid out to dry. A corner of the full-size paper printout, tacked up to the design wall, is just visible at the top.

Amelia Bloomer: Knotting off the loose threads on the back.