Showing posts with label woven background. Show all posts

Sunday, July 12, 2020

Slow stitching with new projects

I'm still doing a lot of slow stitching and participating in TextileArtist.org's Stitch Club 2020. I think that it's our week off, giving me time to catch up on my projects.😊

Ciboulette Stitches coming along

Two weeks ago it was Sue Stone's turn to host our stitching assignment. We cut up some strips and made a woven background for our piece. You may have seen the beginning of Ciboulette Stitches (see Related links below). I'm now ready to stitch another two ciboulette flowers (French for chives). I'm not sure what's slowing me down - probably last week's project! 😊

Ciboulette Stitches is coming along

Close-up of Ciboulette Stitches

Best of Times, Worst of Times Concertina Book

Last week our featured textile artist was Mandy Pattullo. She showed us how to make a concertina book. Her book was mostly pieces of fabric that meant something to her and played well together. I was in a more literal mood so mine is more of a story book.

Pages 1 and 2 - The beginning

My first spread, pages 1 and 2, is almost finished. I'll be adding stitches in the background once I've finished stitching the fabrics.

Pages 3 and 4 - Wishing

Pages 5 and 6 - Learning

Pages 7 and 8 - Moving forward

Stitch Challenge Re-do

I also worked a little on my Community Stitch Challenge - Week 2 Re-do (no new name yet).

Adding new bit of fabric and stitches to the Week 2 Re-Do

What's on this week

I really want to finish these two Stitch Club projects. The Ciboulette Stitches only has a few hours left of stitching. The concertina book will take a while longer.
I really enjoyed doing some FMQ this week for Free Motion Mavericks. I may try to take some time to play with my sewing machine.

What I've learned

I'm still spending a lot of time getting the studio organised. I've moved the sewing machine and desk around since I'm spending more time at the desk, so it's now in front of the window.
I have about half of my fabrics placed in the studio - it looks like it will all fit.😊
As I stitch the concertina book, I find that I'm missing not having a second layer to stitch through.
Hand stitching is called slow stitching for a reason - the concertina book may end up being a longer term project since it's demanding a lot of stitching.

Wednesday, July 01, 2020

July is here!

I can't believe that July is already here. It must be Canada Day because it's really hot and muggy in Ottawa. It may get lively in the burbs today as people who usually head to Parliament Hill stay home and have small parties. I watched a few fireworks from my studio last night - that was a treat.

Happy Canada Day!

Fireworks in July (2015)

I thought that I had only made one other Canada Day quilt, but when I looked at my old posts, it turns out that I made quite a few Canada minis for Canada's 150th in 2017. I must have forgotten them because I gave them all away except for my Canada 150 Art Quilt.

Canada 150 - Beaver block
designed by Sew Fresh Quilts

Canada 150 Logo
Designed by Dana Szucs Hayden of SeaSew

Sergeant Sesquicentennial block
from Quilting Pleasures

Canada 150 Art Quilt

I hadn't planned on doing a Canada Day quilt show but here it is 😊

What's on this week

I'm working on all of my hand stitched projects right now (Meditation blocks, Traveller's Blanket and the Community Stitch Challenge - Week 2 Re-do [I need a better name for this one!]).
This week's Stitch Club 2020 is hosted by Sue Stone. We are making a woven background with stitching. I'm really hoping to get most of it done by Friday. If you're wondering, "ciboulette" is chives - but it sounds so much nicer in French!

Ciboulette Stitches in progress

What I learned

I was pleasantly surprised by my collection of Canada Day minis. In 2017 I hosted several months of linking parties for Celebrate - Fêtons 150! It was great to look at those posts again - I also remember how much work all of this took but I really enjoyed it.
It even had it's own page and button!

Thursday, March 31, 2016

Woven Landscape Finished

Completed Woven Landscape - 13" x 17.5"

Here is my completed Woven Landscape.

My last post introduced my latest landscape art quilt. I talked about my inspiration, my love of weaving and my struggle with the design of the trees.

Once I finished the trees with matching fabric and organza, I stitched them on with embroidery thread. I then added more embroidered flowers and changed some of the original appliqued flowers.

Getting the trees right

It was then time to consider how I was going to finish the quilt. I really liked the woven pieces sticking out at the edges, and didn't want to loose these by adding a binding.

I have no idea where I got the inspiration to find ribbon to frame the picture while keeping the edges intact. Off I went to my local craft shop and I found the perfect ribbon of jute and cotton.

However, if I was going to finish it this way, I had to figure out how to add the backing and batting to the quilt without the binding. I ended up tucking in the backing edges between the batting and the quilt top. I then attached the backing and batting to the top by sewing on the ribbon. It wasn't quite as neat as I would have liked, but not bad for a first attempt. I hope to make more of these woven pieces and perfecting the backing.

Quilted and beaded sky

The entire piece is densely hand-quilted, mostly echoing the shapes. There are also a few beads in the sun and within the flowers.

Close-up of the flowers with beading

Foundation paper pieced label

The finishing touch was the label. It's a 4" foundation paper pieced block in the same colours as the trees and backing.

I'm thrilled to have the piece ready for next week's Out of the Box Fibre Artists' Fibre Fling 5 Show & Sale. If you're in Ottawa, I hope you'll consider attending. The artists are incredibly talented. It should be a great show.

What I learned:

As always, when I get frustrated with a piece, it's important to let it sit for a few days. Inspiration will eventually come!
I was lucky to find the jute/cotton ribbon for the border and even luckier to have somehow thought of that as an option.
I really like the look of the dense quilting. It's very effective.

Check out these linky parties: Oh Scrap!, Linky Tuesday, Let's Bee Social, Needle & Thread Thursday, MOP Monday, Monday Making, Main Crush Monday, Off the Wall Friday, Fabric Frenzy Friday,

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Woven Landscape - Part 1

Did you know you can weave the background of your art quilt with strips of fabric? That's exactly what I did in this project.

Before discovering quilting, I used to be a weaver. I absolutely adored creating cloth, but it's such a long, long process. Since learning to quilt, I've always wanted to somehow incorporate weaving into my quilting. I now know that there are all kinds of ways of doing this - and this is my first attempt.

Quilting Arts Magazine

My background is based on Jude Hill's article in Quilting Arts Magazine (Dec 2015/ Jan 2016). It's actually a reprint of the article from the Aug/ Sept 2010 issue, to celebrate Quilting Art Magazine's 15th anniversary. Happy Birthday!

I decided that I would create the woven background using scraps. I chose primarily neutral strips left-over from my Bali Back Flip quilt and my Orange Peel Table Runner.

I picked the warp strips (the vertical pieces) and taped them to the top edge of my work table to keep them in place. I then wove the weft strips (the horizontal pieces) as closely as possible to ensure that there were no holes in my background. I very carefully slid the woven background onto a piece of beige Kona solid that was slightly larger than the background. Once it was to my liking, I pinned the edges of the background to the solid fabric and stitched them together. It was flimsy to work with, but I took my time and stitched very carefully. I only had to pick out and re-stitch one weft strip that had bunching up.

The beginning of the process

Although I knew that I wanted to weave the background, I didn't know where I was going with this project. Jude Hill's examples in the article are all quite abstract. I tried that, but I'm not quite ready. It seems that my art quilt has to represent something specific and I'm still thinking too literally to add blocks and shapes that have no meaning to me. So, I did what I seem to be doing well - I made a landscape art quilt!

Again, digging into my scraps, I added the beautiful fussy-cut sun and a sky. It's my favourite part. The foreground of flowers and then narrow strips of different teal fabric where the warp and weft meet were the hardest to work on. The strips were supposed to represent trees, but they looked more like tree trunks. I wanted to add something to them, but didn't want to hide the background. I spent more time agonizing over the trees than any other part of the quilt.

Experimenting with the trees

The Trees

In my first attempt at the trees, I used wool and other fibres to create the tree tops. I then covered the tops with green organza to keep everything together. I embroidered around the fibres. After the first tree, I was pretty sure that I didn't like it, but since nothing better came to mind, I kept going. That's the great thing about working with textile - almost everything can be undone, or covered up!

While making up my mind about the trees, I added a few embroidered flowers, knowing that I could finish them later.

At this point, I took a photo of the landscape and printed it up in both colour and black and white. By then, I was a little discouraged because the only part I liked about the piece was the sky. I loved that sky so much, that I wasn't going to give up!

New and improved trees!

Still not knowing what to do, I went on Pinterest to check out different styles of quilted or embroidered trees. Finally I was inspired by my own piece, The Lone Tree.

The Lone Tree

It couldn't be the same because I was only working with the trunk, and I didn't want to make the trees too wide.

I drew a few options for the trees on the printed photos. Once I had an idea of what I wanted, I cut fabric that matched the tree trunks as well as organza for the 5 trees. I used two different colours of organza to give the trees variety and stitched around each of the trees.

At this point, I took another picture to see what I needed to add as well as to figure out how I was going to quilt and finish the project.

What I learned:

Taking photos of the project so far has really helped me "see" the piece differently. It's also great to be able to draw onto the image to try something out.
The woven background was flimsy to work with, but adding the Kona solid fabric underneath added stability - but also thickness. More about that later.
So far I like the woven background. It's adding a bit of whimsy to a landscape that I hope is fun and whimsical!

Please come back soon to see how the project ends! I'll be finishing this piece soon since it will be shown along with some of my other landscape art quilts on April 8 and 9, 2016 at the Fibre Fling 5 Show & Sale with the Out of the Box Artists Group.

I will also be participating in the Art with Fabric blog hop. I'm really excited. This is the first time that I've been asked to participate in something like this on the internet. I see this as a milestone in my blogging life!

So, I hope you'll join me, Alida (our host from Tweety Loves Quilting and MOP Monday Linky Party) and about 20 other quilters on this blog hop. It's from May 9th to 13th, 2016. Here's the link if you want more information.

Linky Parties: Oh Scrap!, Monday Making, Main Crush Monday, Fabric Tuesday