Showing posts with label Stable Stuff. Show all posts

Saturday, January 23, 2021

Map making

Hi, I've been hibernating for a bit. It's always good to get back to creating art and blogging. I hope that you're surviving the winter so far. 😊

Map of another childhood place

Valerie S. Goodwin is the guest artist for TextileArtist.org's Stitch Club. Valerie is a retired architect and college professor, and a well know artist who creates wonderful textile maps (see Related links below).

For years I've been wanting to make a project based on maps and buildings of my childhood places. The last project that I made in the Stitch Club workshop was a hand-stitched piece of the Toburn Mine, part of the Mile of Gold in Kirkland Lake Ontario. I mentioned that this might be the first piece in Glimpses of Childhood Places. Well, it looks like I've made the second piece.

My grandparents' place in Kenogami Ontario

This is just outside of the area since it's in Kenogami Ontario, about 20 minutes north-west of Kirkland Lake. I was in my teens when my grandfather retired from working in the mines. He and my grandmother moved to a small trailer park just off the highway, next to the river and tons of trails. My grandfather spent a lot of time fishing while my grandmother had a small garden, hiked and cross-country skied behind the park. You can see my grandmother's garden and my grandfather fishing in the river.

The trailer park and my grandfather fishing

Google Map - Kenogami ON
Making a map

I started by finding the map in Google Map and then drawing the area that I wanted to work on.

Valerie suggested that we paint silk organza to use as layers for the map. Since I had already dyed a dark blue piece of silk organza, I painted one piece with Tulip Fabric spray paint (Hawaiian Fizz) and used a dropper to add slightly watered down Pébéo Setacolor (turquoise) on the other.

Drawing of the map
with notes

The turquoise was lovely but much lighter than I wanted, so I place a piece of dark green batik under it. This lightened the batik and added soft lovely colour around it.

I drew the map onto a piece of Ricky Tims' Stable Stuff and then started covering it with fabric backed with a fusible web. I didn't want to work directly on the stable stuff since it was too white. I added strips of off-white batik on most of the background except for the river.

I placed the dark green batik to the forest background and then added some of the painted organza over and around it.

Adding free motion stitching

I used some slightly darker brown fabric for the trailer lots and then some very light yellow for the highway and a darker batik for the road to the park.

For the river, I placed the darker blue hand-dyed silk organza at the bottom and then added the painted, lighter blue on top.

I then free motion stitched everything down. I was going to keep it simple but when I got to the trees I got carried away - so I added more free motion stitching to the water.

Adding embroidery stitches

I used a variety of stitches in the project: backstitch, running stitch, blanket stitch, chain stitch and French knots. Most of it was done with Perle cotton.

What I learned

I had a really hard time deciding on what to use for my map. There was an area around our home that would have been great, but I wanted it to be during the winter. Then I got into all kinds of technical considerations like how to illustrate a hockey rink or a tobogganing hill without adding people or having enough colour when everything is covered in snow. It was just getting too complicated, so I found another spot to illustrate.
I bought Valerie Goodwin's book, Art Quilt Maps. It's been on my wish list for a long time, so it was time to get it. It's really great and I look forward to making more maps in the future with Valerie guiding me through her book!
Large kraft paper journal to hold on-going projects
I didn't think that I would be making another piece of my childhood place so quickly, but when the opportunity presented itself, I just had to embrace it!
I've created a big journal with kraft paper to hold some of my work-in-progress. This is perfect for my Memories of Childhood Places pieces as well as some of the larger embroideries that I'm working on.
I'm not sure how I'll finish this project, but it's probably best to wait until more pieces are done so that I can have a bit of consistency.

Sunday, March 22, 2020

Le petit oiseau de toutes les couleurs

Welcome! Challenge 11.6 of Project Quilting is due in less than an hour and I am frantically writing up my post. The challenge was "Vibrant & Vivacious". It took me 5 days to think about it and 1 full day to make the quilt. It's one of my favourites to date. I hope you like it.

Le petit oiseau de toutes les couleurs

If you're wondering what's up with the French title, it's because this small bird of all colours is based on a song by Gilbert Bécaud (1927 - 2001), a song writer extraordinaire from France. His song, "Le petit oiseau de toutes les couleurs" is one of my favourites. 😊

Le petit oiseau de toutes les couleurs

The song starts with the singer coming out of his home in the morning and the bird is jumping around on the sidewalk waiting for him. It's nice out and the singer decides to follow him. At one point he loses the bird but then hears the bird whistling - he's waiting for him. Finally the singer watches the bird fly off over the sea. He says "I can't fly and I can't swim, I'm a prisoner here. Don't hold it against me. Bon voyage and come back soon"

Drawing the bird and

starting to fill in the colours

The idea

I had no idea what to make but remembered that I had seen a lot of art quilts with birds in them lately so that brought to mind "Le petit oiseau de toutes les couleurs", and that was that!

I went through my quilting art magazines and saw an image that would do. Since I just drew it from the magazine, mine is quite different - as my son said, more of a pigeon shape but hey, everyone recognized it as a bird, which is what matters!

I ended up drawing the image on a sheet of Ricky Tim's Stable Stuff. It was perfect since the fabric scraps didn't move when placed on it. I glued the pieces down, and when I was done, I simply cut around the bird and then started making the background.

The bird of all colours

Background

I have a large cookie tin of strips and scraps of solid fabric, mostly Kona. I listened to the song again and decided to have the bird on the sidewalk with the sea in the background. I found almost all of the strips that I needed in the tin, and only went into my stash for the blue fabric for the sky.

FMQ background, mostly with Kimono silk thread.

After piecing the strips, I started free motion quilting (FMQ). I used a heavier thread for the sidewalk and then everything else is quilted with Kimono silk thread. I wanted a shadow of the landscape so as not to distract from the bird.

You can see the FMQ better if you click on the image to make it bigger. The first green layer is grass and vegetation, the next layer of browns is the beach, then it's three blue fabric for the sea and the final two blues are the sky. I even used trapunto for the two clouds.

What I learned

I had so much fun cutting up little bits of scrap fabric for the bird. I know that I'm going to be doing more of these and I want to figure out how to make it less messy. I can't stand all those little bits of fabric everywhere - paper is so much easier to cut up, but not as exciting!
I finished the quilt by facing it. I couldn't find my favourite tutorial so I ended up just looking at another faced art quilt that I had made and figuring it out. It was a lot more work - I need to find that tutorial...of course it's somewhere in my favourites.
Project Quilting is coming to an end for another year 😞 This is my second year participating. Last year I only "discovered" it on the last challenge and had so much fun that I put the event down on my quilting calendar for 2020. I participated in 5 of the 6 challenges. I've really enjoyed myself and look forward to next year.
I want to thank Kim Lapacek of Persimon Dreans for the wonderful work that she's done this year. I'm wearing my new Project Quilting t-shirt - it's awesome!