finished!!

After months of working my final assessment for the C&G diploma course is finally finished. Here is a picture of the total quilt:
I had to rearrange the living room to find a place to hang this big baby (60"x60"). Not only that I also had to wreck a garden tool to find a hanging device that did not bend down when the full weight of the quilt was hanging on it :-). The quilt consists out of 2 layers: the quilted background with the appliqued poppies. All made from my own handdyed fabric. The seed pods are painted/zapped lutrador with a layer of thin silk paper. They are stitched onto gray tule. Floating in a way in front of the poppies. During the work process I nicknamed this quilt the monster quilt, but the official name is: All beauty will perish. Here are some detail pictures:

screen printing

At the moment I am taking Lyric Kinard's screen printing class at QU. Okay, I have done screen printing before, but with any class you pick up some extra knowledge. Here are some pictures of printing with freezer paper templates. I have been working with poppies and their seed pods for months, so there was no way that I could not use their shape here as well :-)

A start, but this piece needed more:

The same screen, but used multiple times with different colors of paint. For both pieces I worked with previously dyed fabric and a combination of Golden (fluid) acrylics and Setacolor transparant paints. The fabric with the gingko leaves is about 20"x30", the one with the seed pods is a bit smaller.

atc's

One of the swaps at the atc group is with the theme chocolate. How could I refuse :-)). With some googling, an - empty - box of pralines and some ribbon I created these 6 atc's:
And as now my ribbon is finished I have an excuse to pay another visit to Leonidas, don't I?
Making those atc's does not take much time. The major part of my free time this week was used for working on the poppy seed pods. Only 2 more hours of work and than they will all be completely stitched. If I keep up this space the monster quilt might be finished by the end of this month. Would that not be wonderful!

poppies

I am making progress on the poppies, slow, but there is progress. Quilting is done, only the centre of the flowers needs a bit more. The whole binding - 240 inches - is attached, at the top by machine, the reverse side by hand. Sleeve is also attached. Actually 2 sleeves as I am a bit afraid of sagging so I decided to make 2 sleeves. This way I can hang the quilt on 3 places instead of only the ones at the end. For the poppy seed pods I zapped lutrador and made layers of silk paper (rovings plus wall paper paste). This weekend I started working on stitching the seed pods. On this picture you can see how it looked while I was working on it. With a zigzag stitch I stitched 4 times over all the lines. In total it took me about 3 hours before one of the smaller seed pods was done. I used watersoluble fleece/paper on my first one, but when rinsing it some of the fleece/paper remained behind. With a bit of acrylic paint I could hide this, but I decided to switch to Sulky fleece for the other seed pods.
This picture gives a better idea of how it is going to look like:

Stitching has been completed. The seed pod still needs to be cut out along the stitching lines and more zapping is required. In total I need 5 seed pods, some of them around 40 inch long so you can guess what I will be doing the coming week :-)

some more atc's

Today I received the atc's from the first Let's travel swap. In this swap the countries were Finland (made by Peth), Spain (made by Laffqueen) and Russia (made by Kelly). Here you can see what excellent work these ladies did:
The Let's travel swap continues with a new row of countries, Germany, Greenland and Italy. Here are the atc's I made for this swap:

They only need a layer of gel medium before they can be mailed to the swap hostess in Australia.

journal quilt and some painting

Some great titles were offered for my most recent journal quilt. I have decided to follow the suggestion Celia gave me and call it 'Whipped Cream'. Thanks to you all for helping me with it.
One of my suitcases did not survive the latest trip to the USA so I had to search for a new one. On Amazon I saw wonderful multi colored ones, but I am not willing to pay around $ 300 for a suitcase. But seeing them gave me an idea. Why could I not decorate one? I bought a solid colored hard case, selected a couple of Golden fluid acrylics and painted this funky spiral on it:
To protect the painting I intend to tape a transparant contact paper over it. This suitcase I will recognise from a distance at the baggage carousel:-).

journal quilt

This month's journal quilt is in my favorite colors: black and white. Background is a commercial fabric, quilted in straight lines. The white circles are made of commercial felt and have a white button on top. As usual this year the size is 7"x10". My inspiration could only come up with the title 'circles', but I am not very happy with that. A bit to obvious, I guess. So if you have a suggestion, feel free to let me know.

and more atc's

Another atc swap I signed up for has the theme beverage. Here is a picture of the ones I made for this swap. They are made from collaged papers covered with gel medium. Due date is October 12 so I don't have to worry that I am late :-). Making atc's is a nice break from my big c&g quilt. Most of the quilting on this one has been done and I have bought the material for the extra layer.

atc's

Last week I signed up for 3 atc-swaps, all due in October. I prefer to have those things finished before it is time, so this week I worked on the first swap. The theme is 'vintage travel'. This theme made me think of the days of the big steam ships and famous hotels like you can see in movies. A theme perfect for collaged papers :-) which I covered with gel medium. These are the atc's I made for the swap:
And as I was in the mood, I also made some extra ones:

Those last 4 are available for trading. If you are interested, please let me know.