Sound City quilt- practicing on the letters because you know I am going to do them backwards!

Not much work done on the quilt today, but here is the update.  I wasn't quite happy with the green satin I bought as the colour was a bit off.  Yesterday I found a bit darker colour as well as some green vinyl so I will be trying each of those fabrics out for the edge of the amp.  Who knows if my machine will be able to sew the vinyl, and who knows why any store would sell green vinyl? Can't imagine it being a big seller.

My biggest challenge is how to put the Sound City letters on the front of the amp.  I was thinking I would hand embroider them on, but that is because in my head the actual letter sizes were WAY smaller.  Once I enlarged the whole image, the letters were bigger than possible to embroider, so I then decided on using my old standby method- Steam A Seam.  Steam A Seam boggles my mind each and ever time I attempt to use it.  Which side of the paper do I draw my pattern? Do I draw it right side up or up side down? These are some of the hardest questions in the universe- well to me anyway.  This is one reason why I HATE paper piecing too. I always plan my pattern and then once it is sewn, I come up short.  I waste so much fabric with these techniques.  Thankfully I can expense them with my business.

SO, my worry is ironing the letter onto the tulle and not having the tulle melt.  I traced my letter S as my sample, good thing too as you can see in the photo that once again I have it backwards!

I lay a tea towel down- couldn't find my pressing cloth and the tea towel drawer is directly below my make shift work area, and pressed away.  The tulle curled a bit on the edges of my sample, but basically survived.

Now I just need to appliqué around the edge so that it stays down.  My Sgt. Pepper quilt from years back didn't have any appliqué, as I was making it days before the concert (my usual procrastination technique) and I didn't have time to appliqué the letters. I am sure by now that they have all peeled off, so I hope to avoid that disaster by securing my Sound City letters permanently!

I then tried out some of the appliqué stitches my sewing machine has and narrowed it down to every quilter's favourite- the blanket stitch and then the blind hem.  I decided on the blanket stitch as it was easy to follow the edge of the letter fabric without fraying that edge.  Here a few photos of my sample stitches.

In any of the photos I find online, the actual Sound City letters look to be yellow.  I am not sure if they are originally yellow, or if like Rick's checkerboard guitar, they were once white and yellowed with age.  The yellow/ gold fabric  I have looks really good but I think I might take some white and tea dye it tonight and see if that looks any better.  

That's it for today.  If you don't hear from me for a few days it could be that I traced all my letters backwards once again and have to re-do them-LOL.  Or that it will take me a long time to appliqué around each letter of the words.  Either way know that I am hard at work on the letters and hopefully the next photo will be of a finished amp grill.