Blogger's Quilt Festival Autumn 2015 Art Quilt

Bark

I am entering the Blogger's Quilt Festival sponsored by Amy of Amy's Creative side. This is my Art Quilt entry.

Now I can show!

I have delivered one of my finished quilts to its new owner, so I can now show it off to you! My friend Karen commissioned me to make her an art quilt for her living room. She wanted it to feel like the color of cranberry. First off I had to go shopping. While in California earlier this year I was able to find some wonderful batiks in cranberry. I then had the idea to have my friend Lisa cut Maple leaves for me using her silhouette machine. You can read about how that worked on this post . Since I had moved on to another project, this hibernated for a while. I wasn't exactly sure where I was going with my Maple leaf idea.

Auditioning fabrics

So for the background I was going to sew some half and half blocks, with curves. Note the 4 blocks in the upper right hand corner.  Yeah, that wasn't doing it for me.  So I decided if I had leaves, I would need a tree trunk. I put up chunks of fabric for the tree trunk and the background.

Background is all pieced!

Several of the fabrics did not make it into the quilt. I also thought I would need some branches. Some are sewn in, others are on top.

Quilted

I machine quilted the background. Mostly with the walking foot, some with free motion quilting.

The quilting on the back.

Close up of the quilting

 Trimmed

I then placed the leaves all over the quilt. I left it on the wall for a couple of days to cure. I did move some of the leaves a little bit. Then fused them down and free motion quilted veins in all of the leaves. With so many of the leaves floating off by themselves, it took an hour to tuck in all the threads. I am a tucker. I feel that it looks better that way.

Finished!

I am pleased with the finished quilt. Karen loved it! That was the most important part!

This is my off the wall post for this week.

I am also linking to design wall Monday.

I am working on sorting out some stuff from my studio. I am going to be moving my studio to a smaller space and need to destash.  I have listed a bunch of stuff in my Etsy shop. More stuff will be going up in the next couple of days. Use the coupon code of BBLOG10 for 10% off a $10 or more purchase.

Craft books/magazines and patterns 
Vintage craft books/magazines and patterns
Craft supplies

Thanks for looking!

Blogger's Quilt Festival Entry #2

This is my second entry to the Blogger's Quilt Festival at Amy's Creative Side! I decided to enter my Rainbow Utah quilt into the ROYGBIV category.

Rainbow Utah

I made this quilt to honor the fight for equality. Since this was finished, there was a ruling on October 6,2014 and marriage equality is now legal in Utah. I may add some more text with TAP to update this piece.

Ready to be bound

This is my first time working with Trapunto. I enjoyed the process! I am looking forward to doing it again. I hand dyed the rainbow fabric in the center.  The quilting lines are intentionally not straight. The colors are more accurate in the second photograph.

I blogged about my other entry here.

Check out the rest of the entries!

Since what I am working on cannot be shown publicly yet, this will have to do for my Design Wall Monday post this week.

Blogger's Quilt Festival

I am excited to enter the Blogger's Quilt Festival at Amy's Creative Side! I decided to enter two quilts. This entry will go in the art category. This is my second boat using these fabrics. They are all hand dyed with the exception of the batik binding. I used the leftovers from the original boat. I just started sewing all the pieces together and I ended up with another boat!

Odin II

Auditioning the parts

Sewn together

D cup

After I had it quilted, it had a huge bulge in the center. So I decided to block it before I trimmed the edges.

Dye run

I laid the piece on the ironing board and spritzed the bottom half with water. Let is set for a few minutes and then steamed it flat. Moved the piece and spritzed the top half. After letting it set for a few minutes I cam back to find that the orange dye had run into the sky. It showed up in several spots. So I made a plead to my friend and found out you can get it out using Dawn natural essentials. I used a small washtub, added a bit of the dawn to some warm water and then soaked the piece. After a few minutes I went to check and Voila! The run was gone! I then blocked it again, trimmed and then bound it.

My Name

I am not good at free motion quilting. I do try to hid my name somewhere in the piece when doing free motion. This piece combined walking foot quilting with the free motion.

I am blogging about my second entry here.


This is my off the wall post for this week.

Check out all the quilts at the festival!

Don't Look Anne!

Do you ever get stuck in the design phase? I am stuck right now. Big time. My friend, Anne and I are doing another challenge. We did one 2 years ago, check out the results here. I really enjoyed it and it was a good stretch for my artistic side. So we decided to do it again. Anne got to set the rules this time.  We swapped two fat quarters, one had to be hand dyed by us, the other could be dyed, but also needed some sort of surface design on it. I was able to do my dyeing late last year, scroll down on this post to see the fabric I sent to her. It also shows the 2 pieces that she sent me. They have been auditioning on my wall ever since. Our original due date was September, Anne moved it up to July so that we could enter them in the Springville art museum's annual show.

Progress? or is it?

I had an idea right away, but could not work on this piece for a while. I still like my idea, but the last couple of weeks I have had trouble getting my idea to work. Yesterday I actually cut fabric. That is when I found out the stamped FQ was 18"x16". So I need to revise my border idea. Today I need to work the shop, so maybe tomorrow will bring actual work on the project.

Some of the fabrics that have been auditioning for the challenge piece.  

This is my Off the Wall post for this week.

Freezing Friday

First snow of the season!

Last night was cold and rainy.  And snowy up the mountain.  Note the snow line.  We covered our raised vegetable beds, the blue tarp, hoping to get one more harvest from the tomatoes.  Since my flowers in the pots on the patio didn't freeze, I think we escaped the hard freeze.

Last week I posted the results from the Wales group's lime green fabric challenge. I had someone ask how I made my piece.  I took in progress photographs so will share the process here.

Bottom shadow

I sewed the dark blue strip to the leaf print.  I still have a bit of my favorite navy blue Moda Marble fabric.  I love the texture in the print.  It gives more oomph to a design than a flat solid.  Right now working with solids is "in".  My opinion, so feel free to have your own ideas about this, but I don't like to use plain solids unless it is black or white for backgrounds unless I am doing all solids.

Free form cuts

I wanted to have nesting curves, so I free form cut my pieces out.  I should have cut the curves tighter, they smoothed out  more than I wanted for the final version.

Side shadows

I added side shadows to each piece. I used a bias strip thinking that it would work better with the curves.  Eh, didn't really work that way.

Adding in the background

I layered the curved pieces on top of the background and then cut the background with the same curve. Then sewed the two piece, cut the next side and so on.  On issue was that I need to make sure that the lines of the bottom shadows matched.  After I had all 4 pieces sewn into the background, I trimmed the top and bottom and sewed on the border.

Top completed

The finished top.  One thing that I did do, which is unusual for me, I made sure that the background print was facing the same direction in all of the piecing.  The print is directional, but it is very subtle.  Normally I would just whack away at it, but this time I was trying to be more grown up about it.  I wonder if it would look any different if I had used the background in any direction?

Finished piece!

I quilted it using my trusty walking foot.  I am happy with the way it turned out!  I would have like the curves in the pieces to be more curvy, but it was a good learning experience.

Close up of the quilting

This is my Off the Wall post for the week.  Check out what everyone else is up to at Nina-Marie's blog.

And since I have a finished piece I am linking to TGIFF and Link a Finish Friday!


Also, check back on October 1st!  I am participating in a blog hop and it should be a lot of fun!

Taking a chance and putting myself out there.

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about working on a magazine challenge.  I decided that I am ready to share my process.  The Challenge was for Quilting Daily 's reader challenge.  It had to be 10"x 10" and the theme was Passages.  The first thing that came to my mind was "The Final Passage".  

Drawing

I rarely work from a drawing, but this time I did.  I drew a 10" square and then tried to add some lines for the perspective.  I scribbled some notes as well.  The drawing floated around my cutting table for weeks.  I would get enthused about the idea and then I would be afraid that I couldn't pull it off.  I finally decided 2 days before the email entry deadline that I was going to JUST DO IT!

The palette 

I always pull way more fabric than I need.  I ended up only using about 9 or 10 pieces of fabric.

The Path

 I had originally envisioned a tunnel, but couldn't figure out how to make that work.  So I decided a path would be the way to go.  When I do a collage like this, I put down the backing and some batting and build on those layers.  I had drawn the 10" square on the batting so that I was sure to cover the area.

Background in place

 I needed the "darkness" to show off the "light".  In the bottom right hand corner is the "green, green grass of home".

The light

Trimmed Light

 I cut a rectangle of this fabric for the "light".  I used 2 layers so that the dark below would not show through.  I stitched some rays of light and then trimmed away the excess fabric.

Tree (photo is sideways)

The dead "tree of life" is quilted into the background.  I quilted some wavy lines in the dark to represent the air.  I also quilted stars into the dark.

Too much like Casper

I was trying to show "spirits" breaking free from the chains.  These guys looked stupid.

I then took the sheer and just chopped it up with the rotary cutter.  On my cutting table was another sparkly sheer fabric and the edges were all frayed into threads.  I cut those off and then covered it with some netting.

Covered with netting

After I had quilted down the netting over the chains and the "spirits" and the "light, I did some big,wide quilting to hold it down over the "dark".  Hated it.  I wasted quite a bit of time taking that quilting out and cutting the netting away from the background areas.  I am glad that I did, it works much better.

The Grand Finale

At Peace

Closeup

Memorial stones

The Meaning of the piece. They say that there is a light at the end, but is there?  Does anyone really know? This piece represents my vision of my Mother and Brother breaking free from the chains of ALS as the disease took its' final toll.  My SIL had some stones etched with my brother's name.  They place the stones at the locations where they scatter ashes.  I hope that Mom and Tom are at peace.  They are not forgotten.

It is a very emotional piece for me.  I am glad that I was able to let it out and to send in an entry.  I didn't make the list.  That is ok.  The second time I looked at the list I saw that there were over 125 entries and only 12 finalists. Less than 10% made the cut.  For a first entry I am ok with that.  Maybe next time I will make the cut!  

This is my Off the Wall post for the week.  And also a Link a Finish Friday. And TGIFF.

Blogger's Quilt Festival

Peaceful Woods

I saw that Amy with Amy's Creative Side is having another online Quilt Festival and decided to participate. 

I made this piece in December for a friend's birthday.  It is 12"x12".  I layered some fabrics to look like woods and then covered it with some netting before quilting it.  I added some dragonfly charms and used a wood grain fabric for the binding.  It was a rewarding piece to work on, I made it in 3 or 4 days.  It was for her birthday, 12-12-2012.

I am entering it in the Art Quilt Category.  Thanks for stopping by!  Check out the main page at  Amy's blog.

Woohoo! A completed quilt!

Now it just needs a title.

My FMQ faves, stones and posies.

A little while ago I had blogged about working on this piece from a Sandi Cummings class.  Ok, it was a bit more than a while ago, it was mid November.  I had gotten all the quilting finished and just needed to tuck the threads and bind it.  So it has been pinned to the design wall waiting for me.  I finally decided it is time to tuck those awful threads and get it finished.  Well it didn't take me nearly as long as I had expected to tuck the threads.  I am a "tucker" and not a "take 3 tiny stitches and clipper".  I found that I like the way it looks when you tuck the ends.  It might be my FMQ skills, I always get big clumps when I try to take 3 tiny stitches and clip.  I would love to hear what everyone else thinks about this problem?  

This guy needs a name and I am totally drawing a blank, I am open to suggestions, thanks.

12-12-12

"Peaceful Woods"

Close up of paws

Aspen and pine

A couple of weeks ago Karen Musgrave put out a call for a 12-12-12 challenge.  Perfect, that is the date of my friend Karen E's birthday!  I will make a 12"x 12" art quilt for her birthday!  I wanted to do something that is meaningful to her and not go with the number 12 for inspiration.

My first thought was to do a collage.  Something with a forest theme.  So I pulled all kinds of brown and green fabrics.

The palette

Then I started to build the piece.  Somehow it turned into a landscape instead of a collage.

Building the foreground

Trees trunks in place

I was so involved in the process that I spaced out taking more in progress photos.   Once I had the background in place I did some quilting along with stitching down the foreground.

Little bits of fabrics for the pines and aspens

I knew that I wanted to use little bits to make the pine needles and the Aspen leaves.  To keep it all in place I put a layer of netting over it.  Then I quilted to define the pines and aspen leaves.

A layer of netting

I ran into an issue.  The netting wasn't secured down in most of the places and something seemed to be missing from the details.  I did some loose quilting in the backgrounds to hold down the netting.  On a whim, I used some black thread and went around the details such as the rocks and tree trunks.  I also did some gold thread in the aspen leaves to give the illusion of "quaking".   Much better.

Ready to trim

I had started with a larger piece thinking it would shrink down more.  I had to cut off some of the trees on either side.

I used a piece of fabric that looked like wood grain for the binding.  And then I added some dragonfly charms.  Karen uses dragonflies on her business cards and logo.  

I delivered the gift to her this morning.  She loved it.  She had tears in her eyes.  I knew that I got it right.  The 3 paw prints in the piece represent her 3 beautiful German Shepherd dogs.  Two of them passed away this year, one just 2 weeks ago.  I knew that she had a yours and mine family and wasn't sure of how many kids there were.  I had intended on adding 6 dragonfly charms and somehow ended up with 7.  Which is how many children they raised together. And the woods is to represent the forest just up the mountain from where we both live.  With pine, Aspen, wildflowers and rocks everywhere. I used some gold thread in the background to represent the shimmer in the woods on a sunny day.

My finished photo didn't quite turn out as well as I would have liked.  Karen is going to try and take a better photograph tomorrow.

This is my Off the Wall post for this week.  Check out what everyone else is doing at Nina-Marie's blog. And also my TGIFF!