Alphabet: C

Another 2 weeks have gone by so I can show you today the next character of the alphabet. This time the C. For this I started with a piece of clear cellophane, zapped it with my heatgun till I got the texture I wanted. Next step was to cut it into the shape of a C and stitched it to the black background. Size is 4"x6". By now I have finished most of the alphabet but I will post one every 2 weeks till the year is finished.

Metamorphosis

For the metamorphosis challenge I am working on a second piece. Some time ago I showed you the drawing. This is how it looks now:

The flowers are made from more than a hundred hexagons. All distorded so all unique in size handpieced to eachother using the paper piecing method. They are now stitched to the background. Next step is to quilt and to add something to the flowers. They are a bit dull at the moment.

journal quilt

Recently I joined the Contemporary Quilt Special Interest Group of the Quilters'Guild of the British Isles (or short CQGB). For 2009 they have a journal quilt challenge using a slightly different size of 6"x12". For January I made this quilt:

Background is a shaving cream dyed piece of fabric, quilted with a tulip design. On top of this I placed a transparancy sheet on which I had printed a tulip and attached this with brads in the shape of a flower, sorry no tulips :-).

Urban decay

My urban decay quilt of which I blogged about a couple of days ago is finished. Here are some details of the quilting designs I used:

For the rusted fabric I used a variegated Sulky rayon thread, for the background a black Madeira thread.

And here is a picture of the total quilt:

Size is 20"x25" (50cm x 65 cm). I am not yet certain what to call it. Maybe 'Rusted Beauty'. Any one else has a better suggestion??

Urban decay

With Fiberartsconnsocal I also signed up for the Urban Decay challenge. The idea of this challenge is to use an inspiration source of urban decay and use a fragment of this. My inspiration source is a picture of a manhole cover with a Maori design:

I have permission of the photographer to use his picture. Of this picture I have taken a fragment to work with and enlarged it to the size I wanted. Background is black fabric and for the design I am using a rust dyed piece of fabric. This I fused to the background:

It is now ready to be quilted.

Metamorphosis

The first quilt I am making for this challenge is finished. Background is made from a split 9-patch on which I appliqued a couple of tulips. All the fabrics are handdyed. Size of the quilt is 21"x21" (53 cm x 53 cm).

Knotted resist

There are many ways of using a resist. Complicated ones and simple ones. The one I used today is a simple one. You just tie a couple of knots into a piece of fabric. When you use for instance a fat quarter, this might be a bit difficult, but with a narrow piece of fabric it is easy to do. For the fabric you see on the picture I started with a green fabric out of my stash. I have no idea which color I used to create this. I tied it into 5 knots and put it into a dye mixture I made from 1 ts/cup of Blue Violet. After a couple of hours of batching - and of course rinsing, washing and ironing :-) - it looked like this:

For everybody who keeps track of my alphabet, guess what I will use for the K????

Ice dyeing

Again I have been doing some ice dyeing. However this time I used a different technique and I must say I am happy with the result. With my 'normal' type of ice dyeing I always end up with white spots on my fabric but not this time.

Instead of freezing the fabric I made ice cubes of the dye mixture and placed these on top of soda soaked fabric and left them there till the next day. For this test piece I used ProChem's Nickel 603 (3 ts/cup).

It does not look like a grey, but I like the separation of the color.

I've been tagged

I have been tagged by Judi. Thank you! Okay, here are the rules: go to the fourth folder of pictures and pick out the fourth picture. Well when I did that, I found that there was only one picture in that folder so I had to readjust the rules a bit. I excluded the Adobe folders and this worked better. I ended up in my 'alphabet' folder where the fourth picture was this one:

I know that I showed this picture a couple of days ago as well. With my surfacing group we are working through the alphabet this year.

There are a number of blogs I read on a regular base and I know that not everybody is happy when they get tagged so my choices for today are: Mia, Margeeth, Sarah and Shirley.

Challenge quilts

As you might know I run another blog called 'Challenge quilts'. With this group we make 4 quilts size 20"x20" (50x50 cm) a year based on a theme. Due to circumstances some of the members had to leave the group which means that new members can enter. If you can commit yourself to this and want to join, please let me know.

alphabet: B

Every 2 weeks we start working on a new character with my surfacing group. This time the B. There are a lot of different materials/techniques which start with a B, for instance: breakdown printing, beads, bobbin work, bamboo fabric, bleach, bubble wrap. I decided to go with buttons. For a previous quilt I bought a collection of white buttons and there were still a lot remaining so I picked as many different shaped buttons as possible. The buttons are stitched onto black fabric and the size is 4"x6".

Metamorphosis

Why work on one metamorphosis quilt when you can work on two :-). Besides the split nine patch I also started working on another changed traditional block. For this quilt I will be using the hexagon used in Grandmother's Flower Garden, but the shapes of the hexagon are distorted as you can see on the picture of the drawing. The drawing is inspired by a picture of poppies, one of my favorite flowers. When you make the traditional GFG block it does not matter which one it is, as they are all similar in size. You just have to make a zillion of red ones. With the distorted hexagon it is different as they are all unique in size. For this reason all the paper pieces have their own number. When the fabric is stitched to the paper I will pin them temporarily to the drawing before I can start stitching them all together. I am a huge fan of machine piecing, but this one will be pieced completely by hand.

more plastic & mail

I did some more experimenting with plastic and this is the result:

Although it does not look like a quilt, it still qualifies for one :-)) as it is made out of 3 layers: 2 transparancy sheets and sheer fabric as 'batting'. The transparancy sheets are connected with eyelets at the corner. I quilted it following the shapes of the petals. With the aid of a burning candle I changed the squarness of the plastic sheets a bit and at the same time I burned the edges of the sheer fabric. This way it looks a bit more organic. This 'quilt' is now hanging in front of my studio window.

In December there was a give away on this blog. I left a comment and to my surprise I was selected as a winner of one of the books they gave away. Today the mail brought me this book:

I have not yet read it, but no doubt it will give me some ideas for future work.

Metamorphosis

Most of the time I am working on more than one project at the same time. One of them is a challenge organised by Fiberarts Connection of Southern California with the theme metamorphosis. Okay I admit I will also be working on the Urban decay theme :-).

With metamorphosis the idea is to use a traditional quilt or block as a starting point and transform it into a contemporary quilt. I decided to use the plain old nine-patch as my starting point. Like this one:

Each square is 2,5"x2,5"and from hand dyed/painted fabric. I stitched them together into nine-patch blocks and than I sliced them both horizontal as well as vertical. The new blocks I arranged on my design wall like this:

Next step is to stich them together, sandwich it and quilt. Normally I quilt before I add the applique. For me that is an easier way of working. More pictures will follow later

Tulips

The theme I picked for my c&g diploma course is decay. There are lots of natural and urban decay so depending on the assignment I have to do I can choose one of them. This time the assignment was to work with plastic - in combination with decay. I went through my pictures and decided to work with decaying tulips. I printed pictures onto transparancy sheets in two different sizes and started from there. For the green one I wanted to explore the different effect the background fabric gives in combination with the transparancy sheet. For one example I placed yellow and red fabric onto the fabric - cut out in the shapes of the petals like this:On top of that I placed the transparancy sheet and stitched the contourlines of the petals. This I repeated with another sheet placed directly on the green fabric. The result is here:

The top one is much duller compared to the one which has the yellow/red fabric under it. Sorry for the reflection of the flash.

The same picture I printed on a sheet in a bigger size. This time on A4 (roughly 8,5"x11"). The background fabric was this time a yellow/red ice dyed piece of fabric which I had quilted using a traditional tulip design. Sorry, but I forgot to take a picture of this. On this sandwich I placed the transparancey sheet and again stitched the contourlines of the petals. Of the two samples I made I prefer this one above the green one. Here is the picture:

I like the way you can see the quilting lines through it. They give depth to the whole composition.

Gold

As I mentioned earlier on this blog I have been working on a challenge piece with the theme gold. Since the last pictures I showed here, I have added lutrador to it and quilted it. After I added the golden lutrador and had it stitched I zapped it with my heat gun. Most of the quilting was done with gold metallic thread, on some areas I quilted with black cotton thread. This is the final result:

I made this quilting going with the flow and I must say I really like the result.

Alphabet

With one of my surface design groups we are going to work our way through the alphabet this year. Every 2 weeks we will focus on a character and use that as inspiration source for a surface design: technique, material, image whatever, you get the picture. I have decided to use black fabric as background for all of them. For me they will all be 4"x6" and I am going to use the shape of the character as well.

For the first character I decided to use angelina. I placed 2 orange/pink/reddish color in combination with a bit of gold between baking parchment and ironed this together. Next step was to cut out the shape of the A and stitch it to black fabric with some batting. This is the result:

I must admit that I have already created 6 characters, but I will show only one every two weeks.

Frost on my window

This title does not refer to the weather here - although it is freezing - but to my quilt for the Four Seasons Quilt Swap 5. This is how the finished quilt looks like:

And a detail of the quilting:

On purpose the quilting lines go over the white layer. After all some of the frost lines are to small to be cut out of fabric :-). I can not tell you for whom I made this quilt. She has to wait till after February 15 when I can send the quilt to her.