New Quilt

Earlier this summer I dyed fabrics in 2 diferent color runs, blue/violet and yellow/green. I used various combinations of blue - sky blue, cobalt, electric blue and grape, reds - chinese red, light red, fire red, and fushia, yellow - lemon yellow and golden yellow, and black to get a large variety of hues and values of each color.

These fabrics were sewn to create a pieced background. The blocks were arranged to form a light source coming from the top left down to the bottom right. To me piecing the background gives more subtlty of the value changes.

The focus of the quilt is an old stone smoke house. Pictures were taken and enlarged for my pattern.

I want the house to look very dimensional and have been making samples of different tehniques to get this effect.

Return for the results.

Falling Petals

SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Association) is going to have an online auction starting September 12,2011. They are accepting quilts that are a maximum of 12" x 12" and you must be a member. The proceeds go towards funding travel exhibits, catalogs, and out reach programs.

I haven't been a member for that long, a little over a year, and felt that entering a quilt was a good way to help support the group.

Below is the quilt I entered.

I used 4 crazy patch blocks that I meander quilted, gessoed, then stenciled a leaf branch over. Around the branch I stitched on small silk flowers with a bead in each center to hold them on. I stitched veins in each leaf with a lighter shade of green thread to make them stand out.

A detail of it is below.

Go to www.saqa.com for more details on the auction and how you can bid on one of the many quilts for sale.

Weeping Cherry Tree Quilt

My neighbor has a beautiful weeping cherry tree in the corner of her yard. Springtime, its pink blossoms cover the branches; summer, the leaves are lush; fall, the leaves are golden and orange; and winter shows the skeleton of the tree. Pictures were taken each season, fabrics dyed, discharged, overdyed, painted, stenciled and stamped. I had the makings for a quilt. I started with the pictures and photo enhanced the colors, cropped and used filters to get pictures from each season. I printed them on cotton lawn fabric. These were fused onto background fabrics with curvy edges.

I pieced background squares using a crazy patch design and sewed them together with the photo picture pieces.

Something was wrong. It wasn't coming out like the picture in my mind. I looked at it for days and couldn't come up with a solution. It was driving me crazy, time to step back and work on something else.

The quilt top hung on my design wall for a while, I needed some input. Two of my quilting friends, Martha and Eda critiqued the quilt for me. Using their comments, I went back into the piece. The large spring photo I made brighter since this was the focal point. The pieced background was too chaotic and distracting, so I toned it down with gesso. I then stamped leaves over it to take away some of the brightness of the pinks and reds.

This was better but I still was not overjoyed with it. I should have just given up. But, I had put a lot of work into it, so it was getting quilted. I stitched in the ditch around the pictures and meander quilted with dark green thread in the background. Because of the gesso painted on the background, the stitching is not good. I couldn't keep a good tension and sometimes it would skip stitches or the thread would break. The pictures needed quilting to keep the density of the quilting even. For these I used the braches as a guide.

Below is the final quilt.

Even though this quilt wasn't a success, I learned from it.

1. Not to use a busy background, the color values were too varied in each block.

2. Make sure my pictures are clear without distracting elements in the background.

3. Stitch first then paint on gesso. The gesso makes the fabrics stiff which makes quilting irregular.

It Snowed, So I Snow-dyed

Last Monday morning I woke to snow-----so instead of working on a quilt (anything not to work on that quilt) I did some snow-dyeing. There wasn't that much snow and it was melting fast. I soda soaked a couple of yards of fabric, mixed dyes and scraped snow off the driveway. I used a combo of red/violet and yellow/orange. The second piece I used blue/violet and yellow/green. I set these to the side to melt and do their thing. When I looked outside the snow had stopped and was quickly melting (faster than it was on my fabric). Tuesday after my guild meeting I rinsed the fabrics.

My dh came out to the garage and advised me that it was to snow again Wednesday, so instead of washing my fabrics I let them air dry and got more fabric ready for the snow.

I woke Wednesday to more snow than Monday so I decided to dye 4 more pieces.

Orange and green

Orange and blue/green

Orange and blue/violet

Red/orange and yellow/green

I had a little dye left over (can't let it go to waste) so I did a 3 layer parfait.

Left side is Layer 1 - orange, middle is Layer 2 - fushia with a little blue, right side is Layer 3 - blue. These are dark saturated colors.

I enjoyed my 2 days of snow-dyeing, but lets face it -------

I'M SICK OF WINTER!!!!

Now back to the quilt.

Leftovers

I started making a quilt using hand dyed fabrics and pictures of my neighbor's Weeping Cherry tree. My original idea wasn't working out, so I put it to the side and using the extra pictures, crazy quilt blocks, and sections of blocks, I started experimenting on a much smaller scale.

I used 4 crazy patch blocks, quilted them to background fabric and batting, with just enough quilting to keep them in place. I then painted gesso over the whole piece, let it dry, then stamped black dots and green leaves. I used smooch paint to make curved lines. I made some brush strokes with Perfect Pearls, but didn't care for that and finally used fusible thread and gold foil. I trimmed the edges and couched wool roving to the edges for binding.

Not bad for an experiment with mixed media.

I moved on to scraps I saved from piecing the original quilt, sewed them together, used one of the organza pictures backed with fabric and sewed it on top, then stamped weeping cherry tree around the sides. I took a variety of pink scraps and fused them onto the piece. I quilted using a decorative curly stitch and fused a binding on. I secured it with the same curly stitch.

I had more leftover fabric pictures. I took a winter picture and cut curving lines across on a diagonal. I fused these onto a medium pink fabric then cut in the opposite direction, then fused onto a light pink fabric and cut 1/2" around each piece. These pieces were reassembled and fused onto dark green fabric. I zigzag stitched around all the pieces then added pink scraps to look like petals falling. I quilted a meander design throughout. The edges were faced to the back. I like the look of the picture being shattered. The flower petals should have been rounded and not so angular, but overall I liked the result.

My experiment quilts were turning out better than the original.

Lastly, I made a postcard from an organza picture and strips of fabrics. I sewed the organza onto the background strips, stamped fall on the side, backed the quilt with cardstock and muslin, then stitched around the edge.

These were all small quilts. The experimenting freed me to explore techniques I've been wanting to try, taught me some lessons and let me have fun.

Now, you're probably wondering about the quilt I originally started. Will blog about that later.

Start of New Quilt

Over the summer I started dyeing fabric for a new quilt. After dyeing I had taken some fabrics and discharged and overdyed them. These I wrote about in earlier posts when I was working on them.

The end of last month and the first week of this month I reviewed all of these fabrics and decided some still needed some more texture on them. I got out the paints and paintsticks, stencils, stamps, and rubbing plates and got to work.

I used irredescent paintsticks and rubbing plates over some of the fabrics.

Next I used paint, both metallic and matte with stencils. Last was stamps and paint.

After they all dried, they were heat set.

With the dyed, overdyed, discharged, rubbed, stencilled, and stamped fabrics gave me a diverse group to make this quilt.

Now I can get down to the sewing.

Will keep you informed.

Baby Quilt Done

Last time I blogged I was working on my to-be grand niece's baby quilt. Her parents picked a ladybug theme for her bedroom. I designed a quilt with flowers and ladybugs on the flowers and also in two corners.

I added two borders and outline quilted around the applique. This will hang on the wall.

I also made a cuddle quilt for her, using the same basic color scheme, I pieced rail fence blocks and the machine quilting was an overall loop-d-loop.

Liana Paige was born Sunday, February 6th. She's healthy and beautiful. We're blessed to have her as an addition to our family.