"Tool Time" (Project Quilting challenge 3)

I barely got "Project Quilting"'s 3rd challenge done this week!  The challenge was to create something with "tools" as the theme. We had to incorporate 4 tools into the quilt.

The kids and I have been making "bleach" T-shirts on a regular basis for years now.  It's the perfect thing to do on a hot summer day when the kids are bored to death!  We take dark solid T-shirts, I let the boys arrange objects on their shirts (often making ones for me and my husband too), then use a spray bottle to spray bleach on them (to make the hands, above, I traced the boys' hands onto cereal boxes, and cut them out).  As the bleach reacts, it leaves the silhouette on the shirt.  I remove the objects, and plunge the shirts into a bucket of water once they start reacting, to stop the reaction.  It's a whole lot of fun!

I decided to try this approach on my "tool time" quilt, using black fabric and tools that I use regularly, a knife in the kitchen, scissors in the sewing room, a hand shovel in the garden, and needle-nose pliers, for beading, and various other things.

I had to try a few times to get it right, and the weather wasn't exactly ideal, but I'm pretty happy at how it turned out.  I figured batiks would be the best type of fabric to pair it with, and used up some of my scraps as well.

If you've been following my Pfaff free motion saga, I did get it to free motion quilt quite nicely, after opening up a brand new pack of 90/14 top stitch needles (I was using embroidery), and playing not only with the balance adjustment, but also the tension adjustment.  I am writing EVERYTHING down that I try now, so that I can also go back and look at what worked for each thread type, etc.  I also found and bought some Isocord Thread on-line to try out.  This is what Leah Day of "Free Motion Project" blog uses, and actually Pfaff customer service, whom I now have a dialogue with, suggested, using a high quality polyester thread, as they said sometimes cotton can be "more delicate".  Enjoy, and wish me luck!