alphabet

This week I was not able to do much creatively speaking, so I am glad that I can fall back on the alphabet :-). It is time for the Q and when you are a quilter, the first thing you think about when you hear this character is of course quilting. I used a variegated red/white thread and free motion quilted the shape of the Q. As always size is 4"x6" (10x15 cm).

Some more experiments with paint

Mia and I had agreed to have a paintday today. We would do some more experiments with manipulating fabric before using paint on it. Here are the pictures of the fabric I did today:
This red one started out as a sunprint. I sprayed water over this one, crunched it and placed my hot iron on it. This way the folding lines can be made much smaller and nicer than when the fabric is dry. For paints I used a Lumiere gold textile paint, don't remember anymore exactly which one. Let the fabric dry, heatset it and repeated the process with a different pattern of crunches and a different Lumiere paint. When I unfolded it later, I saw that there were a few places who needed a bit more color. I used a bit of Golden acrylic paint and with a sponge I tapped a bit of color on the fabric. Again let it dry and heat set it.

This blue one was a dyed piece of fabric. Roughly the same procedure as I described above was done to create this one. The colors I used for paint were more in the blue/green range.

For this one I had to do some preparing. I sewed a lot of seams in the blue fabric - same one as shown above - on purpose they are irregular. A thin layer of gesso was applied on it before I brushed Golden acrylic paints over it. I used the gesso to make certain that the fabric would not absorb too much paint, the negative of this is that I ended up with tiny white lines/spots on the finished result. I used 2 colors of acrylic paint and added a tiny bit of a 3rd one to lighten up some places and let the paint dry. Next step was to remove all the stitching and iron the piece. It ended up looking like this:

All these pieces are rather small. The size is between a f8 and a fq. As they are experiments I don't mind that they are small. They gave me some ideas for bigger work and actually I am stitching on one already :-). If you want to see what Mia created check out her blog. No doubt she will post pictures later this week.

discharging fabrics

There are several ways of discharging fabrics. This weekend I used both bleach and discharge paste. The fabric you see here:

started out as a handdyed piece of fabric. It came from my stash so I have no idea which colors I had used for it. I knotted the fabric and poured plain kitchen cleaning bleach over it, let it soak a bit and when I saw the fabric change color I rinsed it in water. Removed the knots so that the water could get everywhere. After this rinsing I rinsed a second time in water mixed with antichlor to stop the bleach activity.

Also I worked with some black Kona fabric. The first bleaching had been done last year when I had covered the fabric partly with cheesecloth before I sprayed bleach over it. I did several pieces like that and decided to continue working with one of them. Through Google I had found a quote by Dom Helder Camara which I liked. I enlarged this to the size I needed and cut out all the words of freezer paper. These templates I ironed onto the fabric. Next step was to apply discharge paste with a brush to the cut outs. Let this dry. Final step was to remove the templates and iron the fabric. The discharge paste becomes active when you heat it and the fabric where it had been applied to turns into a creamy yellow/white. Using these 2 combinations of discharge I got a result with which I am very happy.

ALQS3 again

I donated 2 quilts for ALQS3 which means that in return I will get 2 other quilts. Today the mail brought me my second one:
This lovely cotton/satin/velvet quilt is made by Emma How. The velvet gives it a very rich feeling. Thanks Emma! I'll attach a sleeve to it and will find a place to hang it.

miniature quilt

My miniature quilt is finished. Here you can see the result:
Total size of this quiltlet is 11"x11" (27,5x27,5 cm). All fabrics used are my own handdyed ones. I did not want to make a regular square quilt, but decided to place it like this. This made the hanging device a bit more complicated: I used a mylar sheet to keep the quilt in shape and flat. To keep everything in perspective, the label is 2"x1,75" (5x4 cm). Normally I write my labels, but this small I could not do this instead I printed the label.

alphabet

Another sample of my alphabet. Today is it time for the P. I used pulcinella or sequin waste as a mask. Out of my stash I picked some light blue fabric, placed the pulcinella on top and with a brush I dabbed Lumiere textilepaint on it. This I let dry and heat set it. Next step was to fuse some bondaweb at the back and cut the shape of the P out of it. The shape was fused to black fabric, some batting I put behind it and I stitched the P to it. The result looks like this:

ALQS3 and Birmingham

Kate had organised another ALQS swap - this time only for art quilts - and I participated in it. I entered the swap with 2 quilts and that means that I will receive 2 other quilts. Well the mail brought me today the first one. Patsy - unfortunately no blog - sent me this homage to Van Gogh. The quilt is made of up to 9 layers of rayon and one of gold lame fabric, stitched and cut to make a chenille effect. There are a few beads appliqued on the stars. On purpose Patsy left the edges a little ragged quite deliberately, considering the state of Van Gogh's mind. Isn't it a beauty? Size is 19"x22". I have used this technique only once in a c&g course, but I love the way - and the numbers of layers - Patsy used with it. Don't be surprised if this technique shows up in one of my future quilts :-).

As I blogged some time ago my Gold quilt will be on show in Alkmaar (The Netherlands) next month at the first 'art-quilts-only' exhibition. At that time I knew it had passed the first selection for Birmingham, well yesterday I heard that it also passed the second selection. So even as I did not make any special quilt for FOQ this year, one of my quilts will be there. If you go there check out the exhibition by the European Art Quilt Foundation.

Gel medium transfers

A couple of days ago I started working on gel medium transfers. I did this according to a tutorial I found on the internet in which was mentioned that a number of layers of gel medium had to be brushed on the image. After at least 4 layers, you had to soak it in luke warm water and scrub the paper away.

On these pictures you can see the result. The one on the left was painted paper, the one on the right a computer print. Well one thing is certain this type of technique I will not use again. The result on the left feels and looks way too much like plastic to me, and the result on the right is not attractive either. In other words, time to do some more googling. And yes I found another technique on how to make gel medium transfer. This technique was to put a thin layer of medium to the print, press this down onto fabric and leave it for the night. Next day scrub it with a wet brush. This could be done with a paper print, but a print on a transparance sheet also gave great results. When using the transparancy you do not have to wait, but you place the sheet on top of your fabric and start rubbing away with your fingers or with a spoon. This is the result I got by using these two variations it:

I LOVE this result. This is a technique I will use more often. The sample you see here is doubling as my journal quilt for CQGB for the month of August

First samples

For my miniature quilt I have been making the first samples. Samples is not something I love to do, so I decided to make these in the size 4"x6" (10x15 cm). This way the samples double as fiber cards :-). I started out sampling for the background fabric and - as I normally quilt before I add the fusible applique - the quilting design. On the picture at the left you see the fabric which I will be using in the final quil. It started out as a yellow dyed piece of fabric which I tried to overdye with black. The idea was to use only a little bit of black because I was aiming at getting an olive green. Well as you can see I used way too much black :-). On this sample I used triangles as quilting design. The picture next to it, shows how it looks when the applique is added.

The fabric is okay, but the quilting design is probably not the one which I will choose.

Here is the same fabric again - the picture at the right shows the true color - using a different quilting design. I always try to find a matching quilting design for the quilt I make and I think that my Fibonacci design will be best matched with a straightlined design. Leaves or doodles as quilting design are not the most suitable. To make this straightlined design a bit more attractive not all the lines go to the top, some of them turn around at different heights of the quilting lines. At the moment this is my most favorite design for this quilt.


I also made a sample using a different background fabric. This is one from a grey gradation I had in my stash. Not dark enough to make the Fibonacci design stand out well enough. For a moment I thought of adding black paint to the fabric, but this would I think remove the attention from the appliqued design. Again a straight lined quilting design, a different variation. Nice too.

After these samples I think that I have been able to make the decion on the background fabric and on the quilting design. Now it is time to start auditioning the fabric for the Fibonacci design and maybe some other techniques.

miniature quilt

No pictures today. For my c&g course I have to make a miniature quilt (maximum size 12"x12" or 30x30 cm). For this I will be using one of the Fibonacci designs I showed a couple of days ago. And as usual with c&g I have to make samples regarding the techniques/materials I intend to use. One of the samples will be a gell medium transfer which I am preparing at the moment. The preparation means that several days in a row I have to add a layer of (transparant) gell medium to the picture. You can guess that this will still look the same as the original picture :-). Hopefully I will have pictures somewhere during the weekend.

decay

For my C&G diploma course I decided on 'decay' as a theme. That means that most of the activities should have some kind of connection with decay. One of the activities in my present module was foundation paper piecing. As inspiration source I picked an old door with paint peeling everywhere. To get this effect with fabric I settled on a red overdyed with grey fabric covered with dark blue lutrador. After piecing the door I zapped the lutrador so that the more reddish areas showed up much better. It is a sample piece - size A4 (8,5"x11") so I don't know whether it will ever be made into a journal quilt or not. Anyway this is how it looks:

More Fibonacci

The last couple of days I played a bit with Fibonacci numbers. My math is not very good, but in short a Fibonacci sequence is that each num ber in the sequence is the sum of the previous 2 numbers. It goes like this: 0+1=1, 1+1=2, 1+2=3, 2+3=5, 3+5=8, 5+8=13 and so on. In nature quite often you see this sequence, for instance Iris have 3 petals and Sunflowers have 21 or 34. Fir cones have their scales arranged in spirals of 8 or 13. Whenever a Fibonnaci sequence is used in a design it is balanced and in harmony. Here are some paper samples I made:

I also had made some with straight paper, but the curved ones I like much more. At the moment they are only paper samples, but it is a design I will play with a bit more.