Blogger's Quilt Festival

Amy is hosting another Blogger's Quilt Festival. The idea behind it, is that you share your favorite quilt and what this one mean to you. For this Fall Festival I have chosen my Red Pebble quilt:The reason that I picked this one, is that it was the first quilt I could create in a long time without any obligations. My c&g course has been finished, I was not making this quilt for a show. Just for the pleasure of designing and quilting. Okay, this does not mean that I will not ever send it to a show, but that was not the main reason of making this quilt.

atc's

Making atc's can become very addictive, especially when you have discovered ATC's For All where there are swaps going on all the time :-). Here are pictures of 2 sets which I finished recently. Shake your Buddha was the theme for the first picture. All 3 atc's are collaged papers.

For the theme Hearts I made these 3 atc's. Materials used were paper, micron pens, metal flakes, hand dyed fabrics and eyelets.

At the moment I am still working on the atc's for the other 10 swaps I committed myself to, so expect more pictures coming days. All swaps are due for December and early January but I prefer to send them in as soon as I can. You never know how long the mail will take.

paper piecing and art journal

Thank you all for giving me advice for the paper piecing. Roughly 1/3 was in favor of the centre position , 1/3 in favor of the corner position and the remaining 1/3 said it depended on what I wanted to do with it. This left me with no other choice than taking the scientific process of numbering the positions (centre = 1, corner = 2), writing these numbers on a piece of paper, shuffle the papers and pick one with my eyes closed :-). And the winner is ....... drumroll ......: corner position. Today I intend to stitch the quilt to the canvas. Picture will follow.

Another thing I did this week was working on my art journal. I am not a great painter, but I keep practising. Every month my friend Kelly and I make 2 art journals. This month's choice for me was pomegranates. Here is a painting of 2 fruits:
And here is one of the fruit cut open:

Is it great art? No! Is it fun to do? Yes!

paper piecing

The first of my paper pieced squares is ready to be stitched onto a canvas. I have auditioned two different ways of placing it, but I cannot make up my mind which one I prefer. On the first picture the square is placed in the middle of the canvas:
In the second picture the square is at the bottom left corner. Which one to choose???

atc's

Although I am working on several paper pieced quilts, I also made some atc's this week. As there is no stitching involved with these, they are easy to make while watching a dvd. The first 3 are made for the swap Tangled up in blue:
And these are made for the Red Hat's swap:

Normally I do not give names to atc's, but these 3 asked for a name :-) From left to right they are: Mother Nature, Oh la la and What's up? All these atc's are made for AFA swaps.

new project

It might have looked like I was doing nothing, but I have been working on a new project. For you who watch the videos of Design Matters TV it might look familiair. This collage shows the paper pieced tops I have been working on.

Their design was inspired by pictures of scaffolds. I used fabrics which were dyed with only 2 colors. Don't remember anymore exactly which ones, as I dyed them more than a year ago. Each top is 10"x10" (25x25 cm). I am working on a 4th one as well.

Next step will be to sandwich them and quilt them. Hopefully I will have time for that soon.

finished

The quilt I started last week is done! If you compare this picture to the one of last week, you can see that I added more pebbles. It has been a long time since I made a quilt just for fun, but for this one I had no obligations at all, just the pleasure of designing and creating.
The black fabric is a commercial batik, the white background is raw silk and the red is hand dyed. Pebbles are shadow quilted while the white has been quilted with little circles, or to stay with the theme little pebbles. Size is 19"x19" (47,5x47,5 cm) and the title is 'One red pebble'.

10-10-10

A special date which was reason for ATC's for All to hold an Athon: 24 hours to create something with the number 10 on it. I decided to go for 10 atc's, all with the number 10 on it. It was fun to do and I admit that some designs are stronger than other ones. In total I am happy with the result. Some atc's are still available if you are interested in swapping.

art journal

I realised today that I had not yet posted the 2nd page of my art journal. Together with my friend Kelly we are creating 2 pages a month and this one is the 2nd one for September.
I must admit that I have no idea from which tree these seed pods are, but I like them. It is a pencil drawing although I am not certain whether it will stay like that. Maybe I'll give it a light color wash or ..... I am still in doubt :-)

atc's

This time atc's received:-) I participated in a swap with the theme 'vintage travel' and on this picture you can see the atc's I received in return. It is always interesting to see how everybody comes to completely different results while using the same theme.

new quilt started

Inspiration can come from many sources. Some of which will not be the first ones you think of, like the pavement. This picture shows some pavement with pebbles.
By sketching the most important lines and enlarging it to the size I wanted (20"x20") I ended up with this line drawing:

Which in turn led to this starting point in fabric. The white is raw silk, the red is a hand dyed one and the black comes out of my rather large black and white stash.

Right now there is still too much white showing, but that can be changed easily by adding more pebbles.

Award

I have shown pictures of this quilt before, but this time I can show you a picture of the quilt with a ribbon attached to it :-). I participated in the Harvest of Quilts Show X organised by the Country Quiilters Guild of New York and my quilt got awarded with the Vendors Choice Ribbon!
Ddoesn't it look good?

journal quilt

A bit late, but here is my journal quilt for September. Not surprisingly it is a screen print on a handdyed piece of fabric. I am not certain whether it is completely finished by now, because I think that the big seed pod at the left would look better with some seed beads on it. As usual this year the size is 7"x10" and the title is: After the flowers.