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,

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

More FMQ Practice

Still flitting like a butterfly

Here I am, flitting again! Oh well, there could be worse things than flying around from project to project like a butterfly.

I've discovered a great way to practice my free motion quilting (FMQ) while doing something creative and fun. What more can a quilting gal ask for?

It's a weekly Journal Challenge called Colour Me Positive, sponsored by Lulu Art store in Australia. It's mostly for artists who create art in their art journals, but any medium is welcome.

Every week they have a positive theme or quote to encourage creativity and art. Just my kind of positive, loving space. The weekly post includes the latest weekly prompt as well as a link to ideas and examples of art and techniques related to it. It really is lovely and wonderful.

Week 3 of Colour Me Positive

All participants are encouraged to post a picture of their work, and write a few words on Facebook. There is absolutely no stress about participating every week. If your art work is ready by the end of the week, you post it and are included in a draw. Otherwise, everyone is encouraged to post whenever they are ready. The participants are very encouraging in their comments and "likes".

This was my first post for Week 3. The prompt was: “Make today so awesome that yesterday gets jealous.” For me, this means that if I want to make today awesome, then I have to be present. I have to enjoy each moment of today, because there is only today. I remind myself to do this with the statement "Be here now".

FMQ the sun

It took me a while to figure out how I wanted to interpret this. I chose the sun because it symbolizes life (and I can draw it!) For the writing, I used stencils, outlined the letters with thicker thread and then FMQ inside of them with finer thread.

I drew the sun's outline with iron-off marker and then quilted feathers within the sun shape and its rays. This gave me an outline to follow but left space between the sun and the rays. I like the open look of it.

After I added the wording, I didn't know if I should leave it as is, or keep FMQ. You may notice in the right hand corner, the word "Today". I was thinking of including some key words, but I didn't really like the look of it. That's why it's just there, not connected to anything.

As you can see, I decided to stitch close lines in the background (they are called match sticks). To make sure I didn't get totally off track, I drew the odd line with a ruler with my iron-off marker.

My latest creation is for Week 6. It's based on a quote by His Holiness the Dali Lama, "Be kind wherever possible. It is always possible.” I wasn't going to write all that, so as you see I abbreviated it!

Week 6 - Colour Me Positive (11 ½" x  9 ¼")

Since kindness includes many concepts, I used the outline of my hand (I can trace that!). I also wanted to include a representative from the plant, animal and people world - since kindness extends to all. I am very partial to the Buddhist concept of "Do no harm" - which for me can be translated into kindness to all.

Drawing the flower

I drew the bird from an image and created the heart-shaped flower. Here is a picture that I drew of the flower, before quilting it. I had a template of people that I outlined and quilted around.

The background quilting is made up of small swirls. I tried to use muted colours to go with the pink. That wasn't an easy thing for me to do!

What I learned:

• Writing on fabric using FMQ is not easy, and there's no spell check. Oops!
• I used one of my previous lessons learned by applying painter's tape around the project so that I would know where to stop quilting. It worked out well, but I need to be a little more accurate in the placing of the tape.
• It's taking me about 2 weeks to create one of these. The hardest part is figuring out what to draw and the most tedious part is finishing it off (binding etc.)
• I'm hoping to use more than free motion quilting in my next one. Will it be appliqué, beading, or paint? I don't know yet - it'll depend on which week I decide to interpret. I really want these fun pieces to help me learn, try and practice new things.

I've linked these to awesome linky parties: Free Motion Mavericks, Needle and Thread Thursday, Linky Tuesday, Let's Bee Social, Fabric Tuesday

Hockey Day in Canada Landscape Quilt

Did you know (or care) that Saturday was Hockey Day in Canada? I found out when my husband wished me a Happy Hockey Day! I know that it's a big deal in many places in Canada, with special games and events. I don't personally follow any of it, but I appreciate that people care about our national sport.

The shiny green and blue stripped background fabric is from Paris.

A few weeks ago I decided to play with fabric that my brother got for me from Paris. He found a store that was going out of business and got some lovely samples, remnants and a couple of yards of some great fabric. The fabric is mostly upholstery weight in linen and other fibers. I'm sure I'll be able to incorporate them into art quilt projects eventually.

I chose a piece that had a cool vibe to it - something that might be used for a winter project. I played with the fabric and got very frustrated, so I did what I usually do then, I left it there overnight to get a fresh perspective in the morning. It worked!  I started working with the little bit of winter scene fabric that I have, and then raided my Christmas stash.

From my stash and bag of scraps, I found the little bit of hockey fabric as well as some interesting blue-grey for the ice.

An old fashioned winter scene

The winter scene fabric I bought last summer has an old fashion winter landscape with houses, barns and trees. In my Christmas fabric stash were these wonderful deer and the trees.

To try and get it to work together, I created sections within the piece by using a blue-green fussy cut fabric.

I had a lot of fun with the sky. I found a couple of pieces of an interesting night sky and then found this tulle with stars in my stash. I had used it years ago to decorate my cubicle for a Christmas cubicle decorating contest.

Tulle sky and snowflakes

After free motion quilting the piece, I added some more wooden fabric as the binding and quilted that too.

In my stash I found snowflakes, trees and added a snowman. As I told my daughter, I'm not sure how I feel about the landscape. It was fun to play with and is really a collage. Art quilts don't all have to be serious, do they?


What I learned:

• I didn't plan this piece (what else is new), so I ended up unstitching the long blue-green columns sticking out of the picture to put the wooden border around the piece. 
• As I mentioned, if things are not working out, it's best to just leave the project and come back to it later. So far, it always works!
• When I make a collage type landscape, I feel like I'm cheating, but really trying to pull all of these different elements together is probably more work than creating a landscape from scratch.
• I haven't decided if I pulled it off - if you want to offer me some constructive criticism, I would certainly appreciate it.

So, Happy Hockey Day in Canada! May your favourite team win. :-)

Participating in the following Linky Parties: MOP Mondays, Monday Making, Main Crush Monday, Oh Scrap!, Fabric Tuesday, Linky Tuesday with Freemotion by the River, Needle and Thread Thursday, Off the Wall Friday, Fabric Frenzy Friday

Orange Peel Table Runner

I never thought I would enjoy hand appliquéing orange peels! After appliquéing 144 orange peels for the Orange Peel Quilt Along with Julie of Button Button, amazingly enough, I didn’t want to stop. However, not being completely crazy, this time I wanted a smaller project. I searched the internet and found the Orange Peel Table Runner pattern by Sharon Holland and presented by the Canadian Quilter magazine.

Orange Peel Table Runner

The pattern called for piecing the orange peels but I really wanted to keep hand appliquéing, so that’s how I made it.

Orange peel blocks with quilted flowers

I wanted to make a runner for my friend Heidi. We have been pen pals since I was in grade 7. We met on the Polar Bear Express, the train that goes from Cochrane to Moosonee and back. She was with her family visiting Northern Ontario from Pennsylvania and I was with my girlfriend Lyne and the rest of my class. Heidi asked Lyne and me what language we were speaking because we were using the Northern Ontario version of bilingual – a few sentences in French followed by a few in English. The switch is usually happens when we’re struggling for a word, or if we’re talking about something we would experience in one particular language.


Heidi and I have been writing once or twice a year for over 40 years! With the advent of email and Facebook, we’ve re-connected a little more often. When I heard that she had redone her dining room, it was the perfect opportunity to make her a quilt.

Orange peel appliquéd on half-square triangle block

The orange peel block in this project was a lot like the previous project except for two important differences.

• Instead of placing the appliqués on only one background fabric, this one is done with two colours.
• Each block is made of two half-square triangles. Some are made of fabrics of the same colour while others have the beige or white that form the middle of the runner.

I was nervous about leaving the hand-sewn appliqués without extra machine stitching. I want the orange peels to stand up to regular washing! I ended up FMQ on the inside of each orange peel and then adding a small flower in the middle of the yellow circles. For contrast, I didn’t quilt inside the beige blocks.

The back of the runner

I was lucky to find a beautiful batik for the back. With the quilting details, it makes the runner reversible!

What I learned:

• I forgot when I started making the appliqué blocks that Julie had gotten us to make the blocks larger than required so that we could trim them to the correct size. I really wish I had remembered this! As you can see from the picture, the orange peels are not even, especially at the edges of the runner.
• A bonus for making this runner was trying out some quilting strategies for my larger project from the Quilt-along. Quilting ¼ inch inside the edges of the orange peels was not a great idea. It was very difficult to get nice edges. I’m not sure what the answer is, except to possibly use an all-over pattern that will go through the orange peels. 
• I really like making scrappy projects where I can cut pieces from a variety of fabrics as I go. I realize that these are the projects that I don’t mind piecing (as opposed to having to cut up fabric all at once, from very few fabrics, which is what I’m doing now…but more about this in a later post).

Update on the Orange Peel Quilt-Along Project 

When I started this post, I didn’t realise that I hadn’t posted an update on the Orange Peel Quilt-Along Project since last December. Here’s are my blocks.  I think that I’ve assembled the quilt, but it’s been so long that I’m not sure! I know that they are stored in a safe place, with the rest of the project fabric (in case I want to use it for binding), and I even know where they are – but I’m not going to dig them out until I’m ready to quilt it.

Orange Peel Quilt-Along Project

Here is Julie’s post of all of the participant’s quilts. You can also check out all of Julie’s Orange Peel Quilt-Along Posts.

Check out these linky parties: Fabric Tuesday, Let's Bee Social, Linky Tuesday with Freemotion by the River, WIP Wednesday (will it really be her last?), My Quilt Infatuation, Free Motion Mavericks, Fabric Friday Frenzy, and Off the Wall Friday. Also, check out the Lessons Learned Linky - just up my alley!

Update - Landscape Art Quilt Challenge

It's been 7 months since I launched my Monthly Landscape Art Quilt Challenge. This is where I challenged myself to complete one landscape art quilt per month. A little ambitious? Maybe....

"How's it going?" I can hear you ask. Well, here are the results to date.



June 17, 2015: Monthly Landscape Art Quilt Challenge Announcement
July 3, 2015: June Landscape - the Lone Tree

June's The Lone Tree (8" x 11")

July 29, 2015: Fireworks for July's Landscape Art Quilt

July's Fireworks for July (14" x 8")

September 14, 2015: Yellow Kayak Landscape Quilt

August's Yellow Kayak (11½" x 12½")

November 30, 2015: Fall Tree Project

September, October and November's Fall Tree (19.5" x 25.5")

January 13, 2016

December's Mountainscape Project

Thread Paining and Beads

I started December's Mountainscape Landscape Art Quilt on November 11 (Remembrance Day in Canada) when I attended a workshop with quilter Hilary Rice. Here's the post about the workshop.

Once the pinning was done, I left it until my Christmas holidays to complete. I didn't know how to thread paint and quilt it because the colours didn't bring anything to mind. It's more of a desert landscape but with a river. I ended up finding a few pictures of mountains and rivers on the internet and thread painting it as best as I could. Two of the hills are covered with trees while a third one has rocks or sand. The big brown hill had a pale area that I thread painted around. It could be a glacier or, in a desert area, a hill without vegetation.

I added metallic thread in the river. This was done by sewing from the back of the piece, with the metallic thread in the bobbin.

Metallic thread and beading in the river

Once I had finished, I found the piece a little dull, so I added bling to bring it to life. The river and one of the hills has beads while I added some birds in the sky.









What I learned:

Tape at the edges so that I could stop quilting

• I seem to need a specific idea for my landscape before I start, and choosing the fabrics is an important part of this. I found this project very difficult because I didn't know what it was supposed to represent and I hadn't chosen the fabrics.
• I know that the landscapes don't have to represent real things and that I can make things up. It was only when I allowed forced myself to do this that I was able to keep going on this piece.
• I did put one of my former recommendations in practice - I marked off the edges of the piece with tape so that I didn't quilt or sew much past it. It really helped.
• Sewing on the metallic thread through the bobbin went well, but I should have checked my tension!

Mountainscape Landscape Quilt (17"x 11")

This is my 100th post on this blog. How cool is that - time sure goes by quickly!
Here are my linky parties: Let's Bee Social, Fabric Tuesday, Freemotion by the River, Off the Wall Friday, Free Motion Mavericks, Needle and Thread Thursday, and Can I get a Whoop! Whoop!

Bali Back Flip Quilt

In September 2013 I went to Philadelphia on a bus trip to see a quilt show and of course, to shop. After the trip, all of the participants made two beige and brown blocks using the Bali Back Flip pattern. Our trip organiser put the quilt together and quilted it for Jay, our bus driver.

After making the two blocks, I decided to make my own version, also using beige and browns. I decided to make it a little more structured by placing the lightest blocks in the middle and the darkest near the edges.

Bali Back Flip Quilt in beige and browns

The 6 middle blocks all have a beige that has a fairly prominent light brown pattern in it. For visual interest, I turned these blocks 90 degrees.

One of the middle blocks

I found it difficult to work with beige and brown since there are so many variations of each. Some beige are more cream while others have more yellow in them. The browns range from light to dark and chocolate to taupe. Some have more yellow or orange in them while others are more grey or green. In choosing the fabrics, I tried to stay away from anything too yellow or orange.  I didn't know if these would play nicely together, but they seem to!

This wasn't an easy quilt for me to do because I find neutrals rather dull. Adding structure helped me make it more visually appealing. It's hard for me to work on a quilt when I'm not in love with it - and that's mostly about colour. 

Chevy modeling with the quilt 

I started this quilt over two years ago, but didn't put it together until a few weeks ago. I decided a while back that this would be a perfect gift for my sister-in-law's mother, Kirsten. I know that she loves neutrals and will appreciate it. Since she lives in Denmark, I waited until she came to Canada to give it to her. She is leaving in a few days, so the quilt was finished just in time for her journey. It`s a lap size (48 by 56 inches), perfect for bundling up on the couch to read.

To make the back interesting without too much piecing, I enlarged the Back Flip block while using beige and a brown fabric that has a touch of blue. I had to add colour somewhere :-)

The back is a large version of the block

Quilted block

I wanted to FMQ the lap quilt with something interesting that would also make it soft and cozy. I stitched-in-the-ditch around each block and then used a stencil (SCL-354-06 from The Stencil Company). This time, I followed one of my lessons learned and practiced drawing the pattern before quilting it. It made a big difference in my confidence to quilt the pattern and was well worth the 10 or 15 minutes it took.

The Stencil Company

This morning, before bringing over the quilt, I made the label. Since I had spent so much time thinking the project through, I wanted a nice label to go with it. I made a 4 inch paper pieced cup from Quilting on the Square's Miniature Collection 2. To receive their free paper piece patterns, just sign up for their newsletter.

What I learned:

• It's great when I put into practice lessons learned from previous projects, such as drawing the free motion pattern from the stencil before quilting it. It's even better when doing so really pays off.
• I learned early in my quilting journey that there are many types of pinks. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that there are as many types of beige and browns!
• If I don't love the colours in the quilt then it's important to find other ways to make the project interesting. 
• I was tempted to add more colour within the quilt but in the end, it's about the recipient liking the quilt, not me. I just have to like it enough to get it done!
• The continuous teardrop stencil was perfect for the project. I didn't want anything too complicated since it's not very visible against the fabrics. It's just enough quilting to give it interest without making it stiff.

Here's wishing you the best in the new year!

Here are some linking parties to check out: Monday Making, Main Crush Monday, Fabric Tuesday, Let's Bee Social, Needle and Thread Thursday - My Quilt Infatuation.