Look what I got

Look what I got!! At the moment they are only a couple of boxes being a nuisance in the middle of the living room, but when they are unpacked and assembled they look like this:

I got a HQ 16 longarm!! (I borrowed this picture from the internet). My house is not big enough to have room for a frame, so I settled for the sit-down model. My studio has no room for it, so the guest room will be my quilting room as well :-). In total 4 boxes with a total weight of 120 lbs which have to be carried up one floor. That is not something I am looking forward to, but the result will be worth it.

This machine has been on my wish list for quite some time and last month when I was in the US I was able to buy it.

Spirit of life

Spirit of Life or Inua is a show planned for 2010 in which I am participating. It took quite some time before I knew what I was going to create for it, but when I had dyed this piece of fabric:

I knew what I was going to do. By the way I used turquoise, basic blue and lemon (or sun yellow). For me it represented the blue of the water or air and the green of the plants. In other words the essential ingredients for life. But how to use this fabric? The theme of life circled a bit around in my mind and made the connection to birth or womenhood in general. I wanted to use the fabric as a whole cloth so I was looking for an image in which I could use it like that. The Venus of Willendorf was the answer. This paleolithic statuette symbolizes the female figure.

I enlarged this shape to the size I wanted and draw the outlines with a chalk pencil on the fabric. Batting was added and a backing fabric. Next step was the quilting. I always try to match my quilting with the theme of my quilt and this lead me to all kind of different (pagan) fertility symbols. These pictures show some of the quilting:

And this is how my quilt looks now:

Not the normal square or rectangular shape, but I cut it into the shape of a woman. Some stabilizer was added close to the edged of the quilt and I used a pillow case type of binding. The quilt looks finished, but I still have to work on it. This shape makes the hanging divice much more complicated than adding a simple sleeve. Also I want to add a - separate - background for it. Depending on where the quilt is on show, the background might be interfering with it. For those kind of situations I want to have the possibility to attach the woman shape - with Velcro? - to the background.

alphabet

The U is one of those characters of which not many materials or techniques excist. Utee - ultra thick embossing powder - is one of them so I decided to try this. My first attempt literally blew away when I switched on my heatgun. Second attempt was better. This time I started with applying some ink over the fabric before I sprinkled the Utee powder on it. The ink - or any other liquid - will hold the Utee to your fabric when you switch on the heatgun. I decided to combine the colors blue and green. Zapped it long enough so that the Utee melded. Let it cool down and finish it by stitching around the shape of the U.

alphabet

For the T I decided to use tyvek. I either recycle my envelops or I buy it. Depending on the type of tyvek there is a slight difference in the bubbles you get when you zap it. This piece of tyvek I painted both sides with different colors - don't ask me which type of paint or which colors I used because I have no idea. I did not keep any notes. When it was dry I used my heatgun to zap it. After this was done I cut out the shape of the T and stitched it to a piece of Black Kona.

discharging to white

Although most black fabrics discharge to tan while using bleach, it is possible to discharge it to white. Thanks to Laura Kemshall I found the proper fabric to do this. It is called H200 and is sold by Whaley in the UK.
Here you see some of the fabric I discharged today:

All pieces were fanfolded and different clips were used for clamping. For bleach I used different types of household bleach. For the first two pieces I used Glorix, for the third Witte Reus toiletcleaner. Glorix discharges much faster than the other brand, even though it is at least 6 months old.

alphabet

Today is for the S. For this I made silk paper using blue fibers and some little flowers in between. I stretched the fibers over some plastic covered with netting, sprinkled the flowers over it and added some more fibers. Glued everything together with wall paper paste and let it dry. The next day I cut the shape of the S and stitched it to my usual black fabric background.

alphabet

I got a bit behind with my alphabet pictures so instead of one picture every two weeks, I'll be showing you a few more in a short period.

This picture is for the R and I used rusted fabric for it. I love this technique although I always have problems to find rusted material. The fabric was soaked in vinegar and wrapped around something rusty - sorry I don't recall anymore what I used. After a couple of days I got the color I wanted. Rinsed the fabric, let it dry and fused it to some Bondaweb. Cut out the shape of the R and stitched it to the Kona black fabric.