Where the fabric meets the road

I wanted to thank a generous relative of ours who has gifted us with high-quality useful stuff over the years by making a custom piece to hang in his new home.

I asked him what colors he likes, and he said red, black, and gray. He's also a cyclist, and I don't remember if he mentioned biking as a theme or not, but that's what I chose to base the piece on.

I went to a local non-profit, Remainders Pasadena, that sells donated art, craft, and sewing supplies at VERY low prices (www.remainderspas.org). The background piece came from a pillowcase someone had donated, and most of the grays and blacks came from Remainders' scrap bins as well as some I had in my stash.

I started by creating the tires for the wheels - an exercise in geometry in order to get the correct angles that would create a circular arc when pieced together.

I also had to figure out how to make the spokes completely straight. I didn't want to glue the gray embroidery floss to the fabric itself because the glue would likely show. So I ended up stringing the floss tightly across an open box and then applying layers of glue to stiffen it into straight lines. To attach them to the background, I used a zig-zag stitch with silver metallic thread. (It's hard to see the metallic effect in the photo.)

Online image searches gave me ideas for gear shapes, the wheel hub, the bike chain, and the spoke patterns. It would not have been possible to cut all these shapes so precisely without my Cricut electronic die-cutting machine. I applied double-sided iron-on fusing before cutting to make the fabric more durable. After ironing them to the background, I also stitched around the pieces to make sure the edges would stay down. Some fabrics proved better than others. The looser weaves tended to ravel at the edges a little bit.

The bike chain proved an interesting challenge, but I found the perfect material: aluminum-coated ironing board cover fabric (one of the few things I purchased new). It had a nice sheen, and the coating made it ravel-resistant. I used the same iron-on fusing and cut a LOT of the shapes with my Cricut. They are slightly smaller than normal links in a bike chain.

A gray pavement-like patterned fabric (also purchased new) completed was perfect for the border. The quilting around the shapes was done with my sewing machine.

The finished piece is 45 inches by 21.5 inches and is happily installed in its Athens, Georgia home.