Fabric wave

There's an imminent new arrival in our extended family, so it's time for me to get working on another version of my baby beach scenes. Simon suggested I incorporate surfing since the father is a keen surfer. That was the starting point for my designing, anyway.

I ended up with this row of (potentially surfable?!) waves which will go across the top of the reef/water section, and I started by piecing them.

I divided the waves into organic shapes, much like those I used in the much larger Australian scene and space quilts, which I could then piece from different colour water fabrics. The first step was to trace these onto mid-weight non-woven interfacing and mark some registration points along the curved seams to help piece thems evenly, then cut the pieces apart.

After carefully selecting the fabrics to use for each piece (colour, and a smooth gradation was the main consideration)I placed the interfacing patter piece directly on the fabric and drew around it with a air-erasable marker, adding the 1/4in seam allowance by eye as I went. I then added the registration marks and the piece number with a fine-tip permanent pen before cutting it out. I've saved all the interfacing pieces in case I want to do the waves again.

Then I pinned all the pieces in place on my pattern and checked I was happy with my fabric choices.

Then it was just a case of gradually sewing them all together, carefully easing the curves.

The wave section is all done now and will be pieced to the top of the reef/water section once that's done (the bottom is straight-ish).