alphabet

Both the year as well as the alphabet are getting to the end. Today it is time for the V. I decided to go for velvet which I embossed, but I must admit that not much of the embossing shows. For the embossing I used a wooden stamp. Because of the shape of the V most of the design got lost. As always size is 4"x6" (10x15 cm)

Slow progress

For my goddess quilt I am making a separate background quilt. For this I dyed half a yard of fabric first with nickle and than again with intense blue till it got the very dark blue color I wanted. To keep the quilting theme matching with how I quilted the goddess I decided to stick to spirals and I knew I wanted the quilting lines close to each other. I copied this spiral design to the size I wanted and traced it to Golden paper. I prefer to work like this because this way I am certain that my shapes stay the same size. Without the guidance of the paper I tend to get bigger and bigger spirals the longer I quilt . This pictures shows you a part of the quilted spirals with the paper still on it:
And this is how it looks with the paper removed:

I am using the same thread which I used for the goddess. First the dense quilting and now the removing of the paper is taking a lot of time. But I like the result.

journal quilts

Every month this year I make a small journal quilt (6"x12") for the CQGB challenge. I got a bit behind so this weekend I made two. The first one is Autumn poppies:
Printed on fabric, discharged/overdyed fabric and free motion quilting. This one is for October.
For November I made this one:

Both the background and the blackbird are medium transfers with additional free motion quilting.

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.