Heart book and practice

My sample book is finally finished and I am pretty happy with the results. Sadly blogger has decided to show the pages turned sideways so you will have to twist your neck to look at them. Ah well....

Anyway, I will be teaching these techniques at Quiltz as one hour hands on classes starting in February.
I also found a wonderful website by Leah Day. She posts new free machine quilting patterns regularly with a video demonstrating the how-to of it all. Email me if you want her blog address. I did these two pieces in a matter of minutes and plan to continue practicing with others. She already has over 100 of them on the web and plans to create 365! Worth checking out for new ideas.
I have been working on a few pieces that will be unveiled in the New Year. Speaking of the New Year...my resolution is to continue with the Dunderhogan series and come up with a more serious one too. I want to use my dyed fabrics and do a lot more free machine quilting and embellishment. What are your goals for the New Year?

I would love to hear from you.

Dunderhogans

I have been wanting to create a series and over Thanksgiving my son Jordan suggested that I do a whimsical one. We came up with this creature who we named Dunderhogan since my father used to call us that when we did something silly. All the creatures have washers for eyes, stripes on their antenna and fuzzy belly buttons. I wove the backgrounds out of two fabrics before creating the Dunderhogans. I did this series in conjunction with my critque group. We were studying the color wheel so the first one was black and white and he is The Original.

The second Dunderhogan was all green fabric or monochromatic.

I call it "Going Green".

The third Dunderhogan was created using complementary colors and I call him "Check it out". It is amazing how the backgrounds change appearance depending on the value of the fabrics used.

The fourth Dunderhogan was a double-split-complementary color scheme and I really had to think about that one. I plan to do more in this series using other restrictions rather than color. I learned a lot from this exercise and had fun in the process.

scarf, t-shirts and more

It has been very cold and icy here lately. This is a picture of the stream in my backyard. I am guessing that a neighbor had a water pipe burst because I never get this much water flowing until the snows melt! It is beautiful to look at and very solid.
Another t-shirt quilt for my friend Therese in memory of her father.
This scarf was made from a silk hanky. I spread the fibers between two pieces of Solvy and sewed them together with metallic thread. It is delicate but warm.
And lastly a picture of a part of my show that is hanging at Grilla Bites. I was surprised at how large the walls were and had to run home for more quilts. It is great to be able to show my work to the public.

Symbiosis challenge

My critique group chose the word Symbiosis for our challenge this month. We all created 12 x 12 pieces and they are phenomenal. Tina Somerset used foiling to get that sparkle on her spiderweb and she stenciled leaves over the top using paintsticks. Very effective.
Shirley Snowden used dyed fabric for her background and black and white felt for her zebra. I love the rear view!
Nancy Pagani used wonderful batiks for her piece and I realize that blogger turned it 90 degrees so you have to tilt your head to get the full affect. Sorry Nancy!
This one by Lola Sonnenschein is obviously turned too. It is very dimensional and the next picture shows how her spider stands off the piece.

I opted for black and white velvet and a chance to use some of my button stash.
Darn it! We have a bird on his nose! He is actually on the back of a rhino. Elaine Turcke made this one and she bound it with a chiffon ribbon.
This is a photo that Carolyn Wolf manipulated in photo shop. I love the colors that she used.
Betsy Beyer had fun needle felting onto mesh wire. Her piece stands on it's own and you will have to ask her for a detailed explanation.

We were all very pleased with our work and hope to hang a show one of these days so you can see it in person.

So. West Nine Patch

So, here it is at last...my South West Nine-Patch, a commissioned, Queen size quilt....just when I swore I would never do a big quilt again. What was I thinking??? It took 29 hours just to piece the top! But on the bright side, I did listen to some good books on tape in the process and I got to use a few beloved fabrics from my massive stash. Working at a quilt store means that I am always using the newest fabrics so my stash rarely gets touched. It was so nice to revisit some old favorites.

I am happy with the results but you are all my witnesses...I never want to do a queen size quilt again. Don't let me!!!

Irises

Almost three years ago I took a workshop with Phil Beaver and we painted on fabric. These Irises came from that painted fabric. As usual I went home and painted a lot more fabric and haven't gotten around to doing anything with it yet....but the Irises have been haunting me. The quilt top was finished and the pieces were all tacked down with glue which was what had me really scared. What would happen when I started quilting?

I finally bit the bullet...mostly because I was procrastinating about beginning a new series and I quilted the piece last week. Amazingly everything stayed pretty much in place and the glue washed out when I needed to reposition a few leaves.

I used 30 weight thread in some places and I love the way it came out. If you click on the photo, you can see the quilting better. What a relief to have this one finished at last.

My texture series

Okay, so I joined the SAQA Visioning Project and I decided that my goal is to work in a series this year. While I pondered the true nature of my series, I decided to return to the series that I began upon my return from Ohio. All of these pieces are done on 8 x 10 wrapped canvas pieces which I bought in advance. Six are on black canvas and 2 are on dark green canvas which I painted that way. They all have at least one object from nature and they use the same color families....and lots of texture. I have used papers, fibers, soy silk, chiffon, velvet, mesh...the list goes on and on. I did some gluing and as much stitching as possible. The stitching was difficult since the canvas is wrapped on wood and the wood got in the way of the needle.






I found this piece of sea weed at the coast.

I used silk coccoons

and bark that was dyed green.

Love the sparkly yarn in these two.

Seed pods and wood that I found on a walk in the woods.

Purple cheese cloth that I dyed myself.

I posted these two a while ago when I began the series. They were the inspiration for the rest of them. ...and I still have four more to do.

Maybe next week....

Lots of Gingkos

I designed this quilt a few years ago using silk pieces from a grab bag and fusing them. Yesterday I was inspired to finish it and quilting gingko leaves seemed to be the thing to do. I used variegated metallic thread and a technique for binding that I learned from Carol Taylor. I am very happy with the results.
I also finished this gingko sampler that I have been working on for Quiltz. If you click on the pictures you should be able to see more detail. Every square uses a different "art Quilt" technique - lots of fun new materials to play with. I printed the names of the techniques onto TAP - a transfer paper that is new on the market...but first I had to figure out how to mirror image the words in photo shop. TA DA! I am getting better at this computer stuff.

The hearts that I showed in earlier posts use the same techniques and materials. I plan to make those blocks into a book.

In the meantime, I have committed to the SAQA Visioning project and my goal is to work in a series this year. It inspired me to return to the collage series that I began when I returned from Ohio....a sort of warm up before I do larger quilts. I will post a few collages next time.

Fast, Skinny and what I have been up to

I have returned at long last to the word of the week and the word for last week was fast. I had marbled this fabric years ago and it just looked like fast moving air or water to me.
Skinny gave me the opportunity to couch yarn and to free hand quilt with metallic thread. Neither of these pieces had me really excited.
My art critique group did an exercise where we began with our own design using values in black, grey and white. Then we did the same layout using colored fabric of the same values. Those are the pink and teal pieces. The purple piece used the same values in the same layout but I placed the values in different positions. The last piece is going to be using the same layout and values to create an out-of-balance piece. It will be a challenge because I definitely like balance in my work.

I just completed a Queen size quilt top in earth tones and as soon as it is quilted, I will post a picture. Stay tuned!

Squared

This is my newest pattern made from 40 strips of Metro fabric. I love this fabric line - stripes, dots, plaids and florentine designs all blending together. I was really pleased with the results. One of these days I will get it quilted!

Passion

Our Friday morning critique group decided to create art pieces that are 12" x 12" around a theme word. This month's word was Passion and a lot of us thought red or purple. Tina Somerset used some of her recently hand dyed fabrics, added folds, stenciling and angelina for glitz. I love the curvy lines that she got from a lasagna noodle!
Rona Barnes did lots of felting. She molded her 3-dimensional shape, appliqued cording that she had made herself and played with circles on her Bernina.
Nancy Pagani made the center of this piece a while ago and found the perfect Asian fabrics to go with it. It has a very calm and watery feel to it.
I designed this piece to have the Dragonfly flying off from the upper right hand corner but blogger has other ideas. I painted canvas a purple color and wrote the word Passion at various angles across it. Then I collected anything that I could find in my studio that was red or purple including the Dragonfly that was left over from another project. I enjoyed working small but it was definitely a challenge.
Elaine Turcke got lots of texture on her flame piece. I love the beading that she did by hand to highlight the outside curves.
Debra Wolfson's piece is still in progress but everything is fused and ready for quilting. She is passionate about water too.

Carolyn Wolf's passion is her garden right now and she took some amazing photographs of her tomatoes. We decided that they were very erotic. She is ready to quilt her piece too.

Our next challenge is due two months from now and the word is Symbiotic. Now that is what I call a challenge!