Showing posts with label silk scarf. Show all posts

Thursday, October 28, 2021

Trying for something different and Free Motion Mavericks

Welcome! I do have some free motion quilting (FMQ) to show you, but not on my son's quilt...my Jag is getting a long overdue tune-up and it could take a few weeks.

Creating an improv quilt during a playdate

The Out of the Box Fibre Artist Group had a playdate which I attended, since at the last minute, I had decided to take the day off work. Our playdate host, one of our members, did a great job of introducing us to improv piecing and stripes. Who knew that there was anything to say about stripes other than wide, thin, horizontal and vertical!😁

Improv piece with Shadow Stripes

I don't have any pictures until I got to this stage. With the FMQ, I wanted to try different effects on the solid fabrics. In the end, since I wasn't sure what to do next, I put it on my design wall and took pictures.

I liked the piece but it was just ordinary. What can I say...as I've started hand stitching, everything is calling out to be embellished somehow, and this piece was no exception.

Adding embellishments

The first thing I did was add this bright pink ribbon in one corner and then embroider fly stitches and stars. The ribbon is fun because it's translucent and has wire within the edges to give it body.

Pink ribbon and stitching off the quilt

After this beautiful embellishment, I had no idea what to do. So, I started thinking about what I wanted the piece to represent and made a mind-map to get me going.

The improv shadow striped piece is now called "Glimpses of Joy". I want it to represent life, the messiness and the joys, since I don't think that we can have one without the other. The background improv piecing depicts the messiness of life where lines don't necessarily join evenly, but they are beautiful despite this.

I started thinking about some of the things that bring me joy. There is a whole list, but I'll explore these one at a time as I make something to depict it on the quilt. The first one is the Sun.

The Sun - source of life

I had lots of fun making the sun. I wanted to use some yellow hand-dyed silk organza as well as cheese cloth. Since I collect absolutely everything for my art, I though of using these plastic discs that are at the bottom of Keurig coffee pods. They have these lovely holes to stitch through.

Covering up the disk with fabric

Stitching the fabric to the disk

The rays of the sun are made from a silk scarf that I bought on our trip to China.

The wonky heart is filled with all kinds of stuff - love, hope, fears, pain, gratitude, envy, etc. There are so many things that fill our hearts. I'm probably not finished with this one yet, but we'll see.

The next piece is from one of my eco-prints. I embroidered it and then attached it to the piece. There is so much in nature that brings me joy, as well as learning new things such as eco-printing and stitching😊

Embroidering on eco-printed linen

Wonky heart full of so much stuff!

This is what "Glimpses of Joy" looks like so far.

It's coming along

What I learned

A lot of the art quilting that I do start off intuitively. However, sometimes intuition only takes me so far, and then I need to think about the details of design.
I learned years ago how to create a mind-map. I mostly use it to help me think things through, and to keep me organised when I have guests over for a meal. This is one of the things that really stresses me out - so having all of the steps and considerations needed to get things done on a mind-map is my life-boat.
I'm still posting on Instagram. The wonky heart today was Day 45/100. Tomorrow's post will be the leaf. I'm enjoy the process of posting - not daily but about 5 times/week. It's encouraging me to keep stitching but it doesn't stress me out if I miss a day or two.

Free Motion Mavericks

This is week 353. I hope that you had time go see Muv's post, Very Newly Wed, with her daughter in her wedding dress. It looks like it was a wonderful event!

Last time, if you didn't catch Karin's FMQ with rulers, go visit. It's well worth it!

Patience Corner Quilt Finished by Karin

Thanks for visiting - it's now your turn!

Sunday, November 01, 2020

Translucent meanderings

I can't say enough about how much I've enjoyed playing with fabrics with TextileArtist.org's Stitch Challenge 2020. As you saw from my last post, I have even used free motion quilting (FMQ) in some of these projects.

Using sheers on my abstract template

This is the first piece that I did based on Sabine Kaner's workshop. She showed us how to make an abstract template by crumpling a piece of paper and then drawing along the ridges of the lines. You can read more about it in my last post which is in Related links below. For this first piece, I used a regular sheet of printing paper, which resulted in lots of lines!

My first impression was of a map of a country or a continent, but I kept it abstract as I put things together. Sabine Kaner's art is abstract but she doesn't use sheer fabrics. It's almost all recycled fabrics with lots of heavier textiles like wool, with lots of texture. I love the look of her work but I had just finished Vinny Stapley's workshop where she works mostly with sheers. I just didn't want to stop working with sheers, so I interpreted Sabine's workshop in translucent fabrics. It made for a very different project.

Working again with sheer fabrics

Here is my crumpled paper pattern placed over the light box. There were some really small sections that would have been impossible for me to applique with different fabrics, so I placed sheer fabrics over a couple of areas, but embroidered them to reflect the small sections within them.

Abstract paper template

This is what the piece looks like when it isn't in front of a window. The colours are much more vibrant.

Translucent Meanderings

As I looked closely, there is something really cool that happens to the stitching when the piece is in front of a window as opposed to against the wall. You can see both here.

Stitches seen against the wall

Stitches seen through the light

As I was writing this post, I had the piece in front of me, leaning on the window. I observed those cool stitches at the very top of the piece and was wondering how I got that effect. They look almost like a chain stitch - but upon closer inspection, I saw that they were a blanket stitch - that I could see both the front and back of!!!! How cool is that?😊

You can also see this kind of effect in the pink piece on the top right of the piece. Against the wall, they are just ordinary seed stitches, but against the window, they are meandering all over the place. Even the running stitches appear as one solid line against the light.

Sheer remnants - what lovely colours :-)

The sheer fabrics that make up the piece are from all over the place. The backing is from a sheer pair of curtains that I purchased at Ikea (I have great plans for them!). I used some very fine silk from a scarf that I picked up in China, a black lace camisole that was my mother's, on fabric that I attempted to sew into a skirt for my daughter and another from a rather useless see-through bathing suit cover! Last month I dyed some silk organza and a little bit made it into this piece. The flower at the top of the piece is from a piece of commercial lace. I also used all kinds of thread and embroidery floss in the piece, including some couched yarn.

As you may imagine, I am now on the lookout for all kinds of sheer fabrics and I plan on dyeing more silk organza. I believe that these last two projects with sheer fabrics are the beginning of some great fun and adventure!😊

What I learned

I find that hand-stitching sheer fabrics is a lot easier than machine-stitching them.
It looks like I'm going to be collecting more than just quilting cottons! There are so many kinds of sheer fabrics - from old curtains to some lovely sheers and tulles of all colours.
I also love dyeing silk organza. The colours are so rich. So far I have some amazing fuchsia, violet and dark purple. It's going to be a lot of fun playing with the different dyes!

Monday, May 21, 2018

Morning has broken - Art with Fabric Spring 2018

Welcome to Art with Fabric, Spring 2018 edition!

Morning has broken

What if surrealists created happy, colourful art? That's the premise of my art piece today.

Morning has broken

Alida, our amazing host and organiser, chose the theme of 1+1=3. I did some research and while I'm intrigued by surrealism, I find the lack of colour rather depressing. There is enough harshness in the world without my contributing to it. However, when I found a painting featuring an egg as the sunrise, my imagination went into overdrive. I love the concept of the egg as sun and harbinger of life. So, I took the egg concept and ran with it.

Vladimir Kush - Sunrise by the Ocean, 2000

Vladimir Kush was born and grew up in Russia where he attended art school. He now lives in Hawaii and owns 4 art galleries. Many of his work are based on mythology and symbolism. While some of his pieces have vivid colours, I find that as a surrealist, there is usually something evocative and sometimes disturbing in his work.

When I first saw Sunrise by the Ocean on the internet, it was attributed to Salavador Dali and called L'Aurora, 1948. It was my daughter, who is studying art history, who researched the piece and found that it was actually a work by Vladimir Kush. Apparently misattribution on the internet is quite rampant.

Creating a background

The first step was to find fabric for the background. Both larger pieces are hand dyed fabric. I bought the sky fabric but the bottom fabric comes from last summer's experiment with hand dying. The egg shell is from a commercial fabric with a very light paisley pattern. It was perfect for free motion quilting (FMQ). I didn't cut the ragged edges of the eggshell until later, when I was sure that it was what I wanted.

I experimented with three different suns. The first was a bright yellow fabric but was too small. Then, somewhere on the internet, I saw an amazing looking moon that had been pieced. My first pieced attempt was too symmetrical but the next one made it into the piece.

Creating the background

You can see a little bit of pink fabric peaking behind the sky. I didn't want to use interfacing so I used some thin cotton fabric to make it a little sturdier, since I knew that I would be attaching a lot of fabric to the background.

Auditioning the foreground

I cut out many flowers, leaves, trees, animals etc. (can you spot some of Tula Pink's amazing fabric?) but wasn't sure how I wanted these together. On my new design boards, I auditioned three different "looks".

I can't exactly say why I chose the foreground that I did, except that it was somehow lighter and more vibrant (Foreground #2).

Foreground #1

Foreground #2

Foreground #3

After examining the photos of the three foregrounds, I chose to go with the lighter one and then played with the placement, using fabrics from all three to come up with this almost final version.

The almost final foreground

I sewed the fabric to the background, using a lot of thread sketching to highlight some of the fabrics and colours.

Details: the sun and water

Shimmering sun and water

Now it was time to make the sun and water shimmer. I knew that this would be the highlight of the piece and that made me quite nervous. I took out my box of shinny transparent fabrics (gauze, tulle, silk, etc) and started playing with colours. It's not a very big box and my variety is rather limited but I really wanted to make it work without going to get more fabric.

I have a very light silk scarf that I bought in China that has the most amazing colours. The scarf is too delicate to wear but is perfect for using in art. I did a lot of fussy cutting to get the yellow/pink/orange for the sun. The fraying added the perfect look around the sun.

For the reflection of the sun in the water, I already had a yellow hand-dyed fabric to work with. Using some gauze and more silk, I managed to get the colours that I wanted. Over all that went a sparkling tulle that just makes the water sparkle and shimmer.

Putting it all together

I always find it hard to decide when to stop thread sketching and when to add the batting to quilt. I actually sandwiched this piece before I started playing with the sun and the water.

Details: the sun and eggshells

For the eggshells, I FMQ the design on the fabric before sandwiching the piece. Only the outline of the eggshells are quilted, making them really pop out.

After the sun and water were finished, it was time to start quilting the foreground and finally the sky. I played around with the quilting of the flowers, sometimes quilting the actual flowers, while at other times quilting around the flowers to make them pop. There were many lessons to be learned 😊

I decided to use a facing to finish the quilt. I like how it finishes it and at the same time it will let me finish working on the quilt while making it look good on this post. I still have a little bit of quilting left to do on the background.

Morning has broken, Art with Fabric, Spring 2018

What I learned

This was the first time that I've taken the time to create various parts of the quilt to audition it, like the sun and the different foregrounds. It really didn't take that long, and was so worth it in the end. I feel like this project was much more deliberately constructed than my other work.
I've never quite fallen in love with one of my pieces as I have with this one. Last week I was higher than a kite....on art!
However, after that euphoria, it was a hard drop! I think most of it was due to having worked so much on this. I was exhausted. I actually did almost nothing except read two books. It was also difficult to go back to actually finish the piece, but once I started, everything was fine.
As I mentioned, I learned some interesting lessons while doing all of this FMQ. It's probably because I was bored that I started experimenting with two fabrics that are similar - they both have smaller flowers with lots of leaves, and I had already thread sketched the leaves. For one of the fabrics, I quilted the flowers and some of the leaves, while for the other, I quilted the white space between the flowers and the leaves. I must admit that I would not usually have thought to FMQ in the white background but it was very effective.
I had a really hard time deciding what to do with the sky. Finally I just FMQ some lines and added a few clouds. It was hard to keep it simple after having quilted so much in the foreground. I think that keeping it simple was probably a good idea. (I have to finish quilting a few of the lines to the edge since the piece ended up being bigger than I originally thought!)
I still want to do a little bit of quilting of the background fabric that shows around the foreground. I did some of it, and it does look better when it's flattened and lets the flowers in the foreground pop.
I also considered adding some seed beads, but I really don't want to distract from the shimmering water and sun - so I think I'll skip the beading. I'll just have to find another project to bead :-)

Project Details

Morning has broken

14" x 20"

Material: hand-dyed fabrics, commercial fabrics, tulle, silk, gauze.

Techniques: applique, free motion quilting, improv piecing

Thursday, January 12, 2017

Catching up on World Quilting Travel Adventure

World Quilting Travel Adventure

with JoJo Hall

I have a lot of catching up for the World Quilting Travel Adventure with JoJo Hall. We are going on a wonderful world tour and making souvenirs from our destinations.

Souvenir from Oregon

Oregon, United States

Our first stop was in Oregon, where JoJo comes from. I made a smaller, more whimsical version of her landscape. Check out her original landscape, it's gorgeous!

Hawaii, United States

The second stop was Hawaii. It's certainly an attractive destination, especially with the -25 C weather we were having in Ottawa! In November I started making the plumeria flower that is on JoJo's headwrap. Of course, since I need to do my own thing, I'm incorporating the plumeria into an art quilt.

The beginning of the plumeria flower

JoJo warned us that the flower would not be impressive until it was painted and sewn. I have to admit that I was terrified of painting it. I'm sure that's why I waited until late December to attempt it - and that's just because my quilting space was such a mess that I didn't want to go near it.

I took the project to the kitchen table with my water colours and brushes (never been used) and played with the paint. I can't say that I had much fun - I was too intimidated, and I also can't say that I liked the results, but I gave myself the benefit of the doubt to wait until I had sewn it before judging it. As my son remarked, this project had better not be washed, or I'll be loosing my water paint!

I'm glad I waited. Turns out it was better than I expected! The paint and the FMQ really add to it. I didn't sew around the whole flower so that it also has a 3-D effect.

Plumeria flower after the water paint and FMQ

The genesis of this art quilt is a silk scarf that I bought in China. The scarf was very fragile and better suited to art than wearing. In my stash, I found peach and yellow fabrics as well as this amazing purple and orange fabric that my daughter brought back from Senegal, Africa. This is truly a multi-cultural project!

Working on this multi-cultural project

To make the background, I just sewed a few pieces of the fabrics together and then cut them up and sewed them back together again. I just love improvising like this.

Embroidered and beaded flower taken from the silk scarf

I cut out one of the flowers from the silk scarf, bunched up the silk around it and embroidered it down. I added many beads (until I'd had enough!) but as my daughter said - it looked like a colourful blob. To make it look like a flower, in colours that would stand out, I embroidered around the different parts of the flower.

You may have noticed the frilly bit on the right in the picture above. I wanted to add more of the silk scarf, to tie it in with the flower. I originally intended for it to drape on the right edge, then my daughter turned the piece around so that the scarf hangs off the bottom. What a difference 90 degrees makes!

Escape - almost done!

I've been hand quilting the orange and the yellow areas and adding beads to some of the colourful African fabric. I'll have to be careful to not over do it - it's so easy to get carried away.

Canada

The third stop on JoJo's World Quilting Travel Adventure is my homeland. I love Canada and I think that JoJo chose well with her souvenir - it's the Northern Lights (aurora borealis) made of hexies. I have to admit that before this project, I had no desire of doing any type of hexies! I have a UFO - an English Paper Piecing project started last summer made with triangles. It's really fun, relaxing and very, very addictive! This hexie project is even more fun because I didn't try to plan the project first. I just went into my scrap bag of batiks and cut out hexies from colours that might fit.That's my kind of project - jump in and adjust as I go!

Making many, many hexies

I won't say much more about this project except that it's a work in progress. If you're interested in doing hexies, JoJo has two really good tutorial for Basting Hexies and Joining Hexies. Please check them out!

Not sure how I'll be putting these together. Stay tuned!

What I've learned:

As usual, I'm not doing so well with following dates. That's also how I prefer to travel - without strict agendas and time tables, just an outline of possibilities!
JoJo has given me plenty of possibilities. I'm having a blast, and working very hard to not take it (or me) too seriously. This is a perfect opportunity for play,
I'm addicted to hexies (only really cool ones, but hexies none the less!) We'll see if this lasts when I try to join them!