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....