This little A4 piece uses several techniques. I belong to an online group of quilters and the challenge was a picture containing several red colours. My inspiration came from a billboard of fresh salads with a sliced tomato which, for no reason at all, I saw as the can-can skirts on Toulouse Lautrec’s famous poster.

The first stage was to trace and digitize the outline of the dancers.  These were then stitched out.

To create the tomato applique I bought a tomato, sliced it and photographed it.  Then I traced the image to give me three different areas – dark, medium and light.  The outlines were created in four different sizes.   The tomatoes were appliqued one at a time working from the smallest to the largest and positioned to line up with the dancers.  I laid down the medium red fabric first, stitched the outline, then placed the dark fabric on top and stitched.  The excess fabric was cut away.  The centre light area was complex so I cut those out separately and fused them down.

The legs were fused and a little colour painted in the dancers.  The lettering is an outline filled with acrylic paint .

The edge was satin stitched using the #2 foot – brilliant for stitching on the edge of anything as it controls the tension beautifully.

Hope this made you smile,

Hilary