Thursday, October 09, 2025

More of the Pink Turtlehead Flowers

Allô and welcome 😊 I hope that you've had a good week. In Ottawa, we had lots of sun, even humidity, but after yesterday's poring rain, fall seems to be here. It looks like the trees changed drastically overnight. 🍁 The cold to freezing night temperatures may have something to do with it. It's all very beautiful.

The pink turtlehead flowers art piece

Last week you saw the beginning of the pink turtlehead flowers art piece. I was able to work on it a little. I like it much better and it's coming along nicely. I'm even looking forward to my next piece using fabric coils. Here's what it looks like now.

Pink turtlehead flowers

Before it got dark outside, I pinned the fabric to the canvas and took some pictures outside. It makes such a difference in the colours. It was also good to see how it's coming along at the edges after being pinned to the canvas. As I had mentioned, I had used a running stitch to very loosely mark the sides. Now I'll be able to use this photo to ensure that the sides are nicely covered.

Here's another photo that I took of the pink turtlehead flowers while on another walk. I guess what I love about this flower is the contrast in the greens of the leaves and flower, and those gorgeous pink petals.

Pink turtlehead flowers

I don't have much more to share, so here is another photo of the art piece.

Pink turtlehead flowers - photo taken in the back yard

Last but not least, Poppy chilling on the couch as I work on the piece.

Poppy chilling

What I learned

Once I unstitched the coils from the top left side, it became obvious that I just needed to add more leaves to the piece.
I've been making the fabric coils as I watch TV - it's the perfect place to do these, now that it's cooler outside. When I stitch the coils onto the background fabric, I listen to a podcast or an audiobook.
I haven't had much time to work on this piece but it will be finished for the Out Of The Box (OOTB) Fibre Artist's Fall Fling sale.

Free Motion Mavericks

Welcome to week 552 of Free Motion Mavericks! Thanks for linking up. Since I missed a few weeks, I've decided to feature projects from the last two weeks that included FMQ, ruler work or walking foot quilting. I'll start with the most recent.

Donnalee finished two lovely pumpkin placemats. Aren't they cute? We may be seeing a few more of these soon!

Donnalee's pumpkin placemat

Another of Donnalee's pumpkin placemat

Gwyned Trefethen has been busy learning how to use her new Bernina 990. She used it to embroider 3 practice pieces. She then put those pieces together to make a runner.

Gwyned's runner

Here is one of the practice blocks that she embroidered and then FMQ. She quilted around the leaves and flowers, then micro quilted in tiny loops.

Gwyned FMQ around the leaves and flowers
then micro quilted in tiny loops.

Kat of Scrapbox Quilts finished three lovely Lil bear hug quilts. The quilt tops were donated and she finished and then quilted them.

Quilted by Kat with a diagonal crosshatch

Quilted with a double diagonal crosshatch by Kat

Kat quilted this one with an overall spiral circle

Gail of Quilting Gail made this gorgeous quilt using Island Batik fabric line, Splish Splash. Gail "used Silly Moon’s 4″ Beanie to create the orange peel flowers in the neutral squares. Each short and each long strip was quilted differently" with rulers and FMQ. "There are swirls, loops, circles, feathers, flowers, hearts, squares, ribbons and many many more." You'll want to check out her post for the closeup photos.

Gail's quilt using Splish Splash fabric line

Closeup of the FMQ by Gail - as seen from the back

Melva took one of her first quilts from the cedar chest to place on the guest room bed. It was a cross-stitched wild rose quilt, made with 7 cross-stitched panels. Melva quilted it as a quilt-as-you-go, long before she knew what that was.

Melva's first quilt - a cross-stitched wild rose quilt

A closeup of the cross-stitched panel by Melva

It's now your turn! 😊Sorry for the mix up - I managed to put 12 pm as opening instead of 12 am. It's all fixed. Let's party!🎈🎉🥳

Friday, October 03, 2025

Textured Pink Turtlehead Flowers

Hi and welcome! 😍 I'm so grateful that you kept the linking party going without me. I'm way behind on reading, commenting and replying but I will get there. 😊 Here's what I've been working on since I've been back. I watched the latest TextileArtist.org Stitch Club workshop and quickly got hooked. Our teacher, Julia Wright, makes textured and sculptured landscape fragments with strips of coiled fabric.

Pink Turtlehead Flower

As I walked Poppy this summer, I started taking pictures of interesting flowers in the neighbourhood gardens. The pink turtlehead flower intrigued me and I thought that it would make an interesting art project some day. After watching Julia Wright's workshop, I decided to give this flower a try.

Pink turtlehead flowers

This is the flower part of my piece. You can see the fabric coils that make up the image - it is a bit abstracted but the flowers, pods, leaves and stem are all there. I worked this part in a 12" embroidery hoop until it got too large. I'm working to cover an 8" x 8" canvas.

The flower part of the piece

After that, it becomes more difficult - how to cover the fabric with coils and still make some sense. This is what it looked like when I first started this post. After considering it overnight, I decided to remove the green coils on the side. I think that the flowers are curved and that the almost straight green coils didn't fit in.

The flowers so far - with outline of leaves to be filled in

I've kept the leaves and the flower buds that are underneath. At this time, I'm thinking that more leafy shapes would be best....we'll see!

The latest photo of the piece

You can see around part of the piece the running stitch that outlines how large it needs to be. It's a very rough outline and there will be coils sticking out over the frame.

Making the Fabric Coils

The process of making the art starts with creating coils. I went through my scrappy strips for fabric that could be wound into these coils. Here are a few photos to give you an idea of the process.

I started off with a scrap of fabric (it's actually green). I ripped it up into strips, but only about a half inch from the edge. I did this for the whole piece of fabric. After that, I coiled the fabric with sewing and hand-quilting thread that I probably won't use to quilt with. Using irregular fabric strips creates bumps in the coils that add texture to the piece.

Fabric scrap

Fabric scrap ripped into sections

Rolling up the fabric into coils using thread

Coil of fabric, bound with
thread

What I learned

Julia Wright uses this technique to make abstract landscapes. I'm not sure how my piece will end up - there are a lot more details than there would be in a more linear landscape.
The background fabric, where I removed the coils, is a bit messy, but it'll be covered again with coils, just in different shapes.
At first I found it difficult to use scrappy strips to make the coils - as a quilter I want to sew them together! But I've gotten over it - I still have so many 😉
Making coils to then use in the art is time consuming but it is very meditative and enjoyable. I've been making most of my coils outside in the back yard while keeping an eye on Poppy.

Poppy keeping the yard free of animals!

Free Motion Mavericks

Welcome to week 551 of Free Motion Mavericks! I'm back home but getting over a cold and have no energy. I intended to feature your projects this week but I'm already very late in posting. Things should be back to normal next week.

Since I was late to post, the party will be open until the Wednesday night 😍

It's your turn!