new designs

The last couple of days I have been working on two new designs. For my C&G course I have to make the 5th assessment - a wallhanging. For this I want to make a wholecloth quilt and I will use one of my handdyes. On it I will applique a flock of birds. The picture on the right shows roughly what I intend to do. The size of this quilt will be around 40"x40" (or 100x100 cm).

The picture on the left shows an ammonite. This will be my design for the final assessment I have to make for the Quilten Speciaal course. This course was organised by the Dutch Quilters Guild. The background fabric will be a dark blue handdye on which I intend to use sheers and lots of quilting. The theme for this assesmment has to be texture. Size of this quilt will be around 40"x30" (or 100x75 cm).

this and that

I have been working on the design for my final assessment for the c&g course, but that is not yet finished so no picture yet. Instead of that design I can show you two pictures of what I worked on yesterday and today. The picture at the left is a journal quilt with the theme 'mask'. I used painted lutrador, sequins, flower, stick, fake hair on it and some quilting. The picture at the right shows 5 little boxes made with the pattern from the Winter 2005 issue of Quilting Arts. All the fabric I used for these boxes was handdyed and handpainted. Both the journal quilt as well as the little boxes are for my surfacing group.

challenge quilt

On my surfacing group we are working on a challenge quilt. The first round was make a quilt (40"x40") based on your surroundings. This quilt is the inspiration source for the 2nd round. As my inspiration source I choose the colors Marijke used in her quilt. I handdyed and handpainted the fabric and made it into a convergence quilt. Not my usual technique, but I like the result.

party!

My surfacing group celebrated last month its first anniversay and for this occasion we all made a small quiltlet - journal size - with material we received from 2 members. There is no co-ordination between them so it is always a surprise what you get. And the material you receive have to be used! Cobi send me some Chinese looking fabric and some blue lutrador and Susan send me a variety of beads and decorative yarns. With this I created the 4 ladies who are dancing at a party as you can see on the picture.

black/white quilt and painted fabric

Today I finished a small quilt - about 15" square - of which I can only show a detail on this blog as I intend to send it to a Dutch Show. For this quilt I used a black gradation and decorative yarns. The show is in March so till this time I cannot show you the full picture.
The other 2 fabrics are handdyes on which I added Lumiere paints. I placed different type of coasters and bubblewrap under the fabric and rollerpainted the paint over it. On purpose I had not cleaned my foamroller in between so some of the copper/gold paint is also on the blue piece. These fabrics I dyed/painted for the second step of the challenge quilt we are doing on my surfacing group. The fabric is prepared so now I can start working on the quilt. Size is again 40" square and my inspiration source is the colors Marijke used in her sunsetquilt.

Fibers journal quilt + swap

On my surfacing group we had to make a theme based journal quilt last month. The theme was fibers. It took some time before I got inspiration but today I made the journal quilt. As fibers I used different colors of blue angelina and chrystalina. Placed this onto a handdyed blue fabric. As quilting pattern I used triangles because on top of the angelina are a number of felt triangles. It is always difficult to take a picture of angelina, but I think you get an idea of the quilt.
The picture on the right shows a chinese coin block. I made two of these for members of my dyeing group. The strips are made from - again - handdyed fabrics. It is a great way of using up scraps but I am glad that I finished them as actually I am not a 'block-person' :-)

catching up

Today I had time to do some catching up. The last couple of weeks I spend most of my time working on the digitalis quilt, but that is done. I worked on 2 pieces for the complex cloth round robin I am participating in. As technique I did rollerpainting. For one piece I placed a coaster under the fabric, for the other one I placed bubble wrap under it. Put some Lumiere textile paint on a plate and applied the paint with a roller.
The left and center picture will go into the mail to Kelly tomorrow so that she can put an extra layer on the fabric. The picture on the right is a piece I did just for fun.

digitalis quilt

At last my digitalis quilt is finished! When I was writing down the evaluation of this triptych for Linda and Laura I came to a total number of hours I spend on this piece of 84!! Most of it was used for making the pieced background. It was a lot of work but I am happy with the result.
It was the first time that I made a triptych and one of the practical issues I stumbled upon is that with a piece like this you have to make a label for each panel. Just to be certain that when it is at a show that they hang it properly I mentioned on each label whether the panel should be at the left, center or right side. Most of the time I do not create my art with a specific show in the back of my mind, but I am thinking of sending this piece to coming year's Festival of Quilts.

digitalis quilt

The second panel of my digitalis quilt is finished too. The pictures show two details of the quilting, a hummingbird and some snails. After all, every garden has some snails :-)

If I can keep up this speed the whole triptych will be finished Saturday. Then at last I will have time to catch up with some other commitments. I am way behind with making journalquilts, there are 3 waiting to be created.

quiltswap

I am a member of Quiltswap. This is a yahoogroup on which we swap a quilt twice a year. The picture here shows the quilt I received today from Karol Kusmaul. Title of the quilt is New Hope. It is a lovely green with variegated pink/purple threadpainting. Thanks Karol!

digitalis quilt

Today 2 detail photos of the digitalis quilt I am working on. As you can see the satinstitching is been done and I am now working of the quilting. This type of quilt does not want stippling but more decorative quilting so I decided to add flowers and plants to the quilt. Maybe some dragonflies, or birds will be added too. I guess that I can finish one part of the triptych tomorrow. When that is done I show it here.