Wil's art

funky trees

2012-02-15T15:47:00.000+01:00

This week lesson was about the effect colors have on each other. I presume that you all know how misleading the effect can be of a piece of fabric on different background colors. The size of the fabrics on top is the same, but depending on the light or dark color of the background it will look bigger or smaller. For this excercise I made this quiltlet using colors in the range of greens and purples:

Size is approximately 11"x13". I have to say that I like this one so much that it will probably be my inspiration for coming year's SAQA auction.

black and white quilt tops almost finished

2012-02-12T11:29:00.000+01:00

The last couple of days I worked on the quilting of the two black and white quilt tops. As the design has not changed I am showing you detail pictures of the back so that you can see how the quilting was done. I like to find a quilting design which goes with the fabric and you can see this especially well with the vase. The quilting lines follow the design on the fabric.

The only thing which now has to be done is to finish attaching the binding and sleeves.

black and white quilt tops

2012-02-08T19:46:00.000+01:00

The coming four weeks I am taking an online class with Pamela Allen. And yes, I am addicted to her classes :-). This time the class is all about contrast and the first lesson was about creating a composition using a monochromatic palette. And people who know me, know that I love black and white fabrics and have rather a huge stash of them. I created two quilt tops, one starting from white fabrics and the other one starting from black fabrics. Both tops are around 12"x20". The pictures show the tops with the fabric only glued together:

At the moment I am machine quilting them. For me the fun of using commercial b/w fabrics is to fuzzy cut them in such a way, that you take as much advantage of a design as possible. The flower you see on this detail is made from small circles cut out of fabric:

And this is the picture of the original fabric:

Who would have thought that such a lineair fabric could create such organic looking flowers.

pounded fabric

2012-02-04T11:51:00.000+01:00

As I wrote in my post of January 29, I prepared a piece of fabric with the technique pounding. Setting this up does not take much time - place a piece of crunched fabric in a plastic bag and use a bristle brush to apply diluted paint over it - but to see the result you really have to be patient. The container has been on top of the radiator for a week before I could take out the fabric to iron it. But I have to say, the result is worth waiting for:

It looks like the fabric is still crunched, but it is really completely flat. The pattern just look like folding lines.

painted shibori

2012-01-30T19:14:00.000+01:00

One of the pictures I showed in the previous blogpost was of fabric wrapped around a pole. The traditional way of doing shibori is to put the pole into a dyebath. The layers of fabric closest to the pole will absorb less dye than the layer at the outside. If you want to avoid that you can use a big pole or use paint instead of dye. I did not have a pole big enough, so I used paint on this piece of fabric. To do that you have to prepare your pole. When the fabric is scrunched down like you want it, you soak the fabric with tab water and let this dry completely. The next step is to unwind the thread and remove the fabric carefully from the pole and place it on top of a flat surface like this:

With a foam brush I lightly applied turqois fluid acrylic paint from Golden on top of the fabric. As long as you do this carefully only the top ridges of the fabric will be touched by the paint. In this picture about half of the fabric was done:

When the paint had dried, I ironed the fabric and this is how it looks now:

ice dyeing

2012-01-29T09:36:00.000+01:00

Earlier this week I realised that I had not dyed in months. Time to do something about that. I soda soaked half a yard of fabric and crunched that into a container. Placed the container in the freezer till the next day. As my stash of blues and greens is getting a bit low, I decided on dyeing blue. There was a bit of cerulean blue in a container and I mixed that with some aqua. No measuring, just playing. This mixture I poored over the frozen fabric and left it there for a couple of hours. The result was this:

Usuable, but a bit pale. It needs a bit more, so I divided the fabric into two fat quarters. One I rolled on a tube like this:

Usually you use dyes with shibori, but for this piece I am going to use textile paints. More about that in a couple of days. The other piece of fabric I placed into a plastic bag - the container is to prevent leaking on my radiator - and pounded diluted textile paints all over it. The coming days the paint will creep into the folds of the fabric as a result of capillary action. In about a week this piece will be ready. Pictures will come later.

Letter

2012-01-14T10:28:00.000+01:00

When in May I was with my friend Kelly I started a number of tops. Her studio is much more spacious than mine and it is a pleasure working there. Now it is time to turn these tops into quilts. Right now I am working on The Letter. Background is dyed a light blue to resemble an airmail letter. Size of the fabric is around 40"x50" (1 mtr x 1,25 mtr). This fabric was taped to a piece of board with duck tape. I forgot to take pictures of the process, but the next step was to apply a layer of pancake mixture over it as a resist. A messy process, but fun to do. While the resist was still wet I copied a part of a letter my late husband wrote me. I did the writing with the back of a paint brush. This was left to dry for 2 days. The resist was washed off and I got a nice craquelé effect in the background of the letter.
Now it is time to do the quilting. Using an all over design would not be fitting, so I decided to keep it simple and only outline all the individual letters. Here you see a detail of it:

It is a time consuming process. Especially as I don't like to doublestitch at the beginning and end, but prefer to hide the thread ends. I can assure you, there are a lot of thread ends :-)). Most of my time last week was taken up by it and I am not even half way.

Another bird quilt finished

2012-01-02T20:17:00.000+01:00

And another bird quilt has been finished! This one started out as a handdyed piece of fabric which I created in May. On it I used Lumiere textile paint to paint the ruine and the palm trees. The birds are fused applique. This quilt is around 40"x40" (100x100 cm) and heavily machine quilted. I have to measure it to know the exact size. Title is: Swallows of San Juan de Capistrano, a city in Southern California known for the annual migration of cliff swallows.

On this picture you can see some of the details of the quilting I did:

Size is not everything

2011-12-31T12:53:00.000+01:00

For Sky-is-the-Limit the present theme is Size is not everything. Rather a difficult one. My first idea was not decent enough to create something with :-), so I had to pick another idea. I played safe and went with one of my favorite ideas: flowers. Whether a flower is big or tiny, to me they are all beautiful. All fabrics used are either hand dyed or hand painted ones. This is the result:

Snowy owl is finished

2011-12-26T19:40:00.000+01:00

Snowy owl is finished! The advantage of having a couple of days off is that you can continue working on it. I started this quilt in May. The background blue and brown was dyed and fused together. The snowy owl was painted with textile paint. My intention was to have only the outline of the shadow of the owl and the tree in which it is sitting visible. Because of the dark colors it was difficult to quilt it using artificial light. But I got the effect I wanted. Total size of this quilt is 41"x41" (105x105 cm).

Here are 2 pictures, a full one:

Because the snowy owl was painted it meant that every wrong stitch would remain visible. I really had to be careful when I machinequilted it. And a detail one:

And yes, I have to iron the quilt to get rid of the folding lines, and I have to remove the white cat's hair. Catrien managed to sleep on it in spite of my attempts to keep her away from it.

block

2011-12-18T10:43:00.000+01:00

When you are working on big projects, the disadvantage is that there are not many things to show. A daily update is most of the time not very interesting. So in between I work on smaller projects. One of them is the challenge for the Sky is the Limit group which is due on January 1. I will show more of this one after Christmas. Another project is the monthly color blocks. I am 6 months behind I discovered but as this project will not be swapped, not much harm is done. Here is the block for July. As you can see the color was red. All fabric is handdyed.

more than 1 project

2011-12-07T15:23:00.000+01:00

As always I am working on more than 1 project, so this time no progress on the canal houses but something else. Early this summer I made 4 tops which stil needed to be quilted. All of them are big, around 36"x36" (1 square metre) and this week I started quilting one of them. With this size of quilts I am so glad that I have a longarm :-).
Here is a detail of the quilting:

And as the quilting is done in practically the same color as the fabric, here is another picture taken from the back:

canal houses

2011-11-26T19:29:00.000+01:00

The last couple of days I have been working on the canal houses. Here are two pictures of two sets of houses:

Actually I have done more than the pictures shown. All houses are stitched together and squared. Size of this quilt will be 32"x94" (80x235 cm) when it is completed. Next step will be to add the binding and all the embellishments.No idea where I am going to hang this. It is the biggest quilt I ever made.

grey weather

2011-11-23T16:31:00.000+01:00

The last couple of days the weather here was foggy and grey. Not very cheerful and not the season I like. To compensate I looked for red items in my house and found the following combined in this collage:

canal houses

2011-11-16T16:32:00.000+01:00

The last couple of weeks I have been busy quilting the canal houses. Here are some detail pictures of what I did.

My choice of quilting design depends on the pattern of the fabric or what the fabric is used for. For example I have stitched bricks or wavy lines representing water.

Sometimes - as in this sample of water - the pattern of the fabric decided how it had to be quilted:

The canal houses is a big project. At the moment I still have to quilt 3 houses. The next step will be to stitch all the different panels together into one huge quilt.

atc's

2011-11-05T12:58:00.000+01:00

Don't pay any attention to the date of the collage, because it is not correct. Here are some atc's I made recently for swaps on AFA. For the rest I am busy finishing of a number of quilt tops. Can't really say that I have UFO's, but I am working on more than 10 quilts at the same time. Will show some detail pictures of the quilting later.

Hot

2011-10-29T19:38:00.000+02:00

Hot does not refer to the weather, but is the title of this quiltlet. I made it for the first challenge of the Sky-is-the-Limit group. The fabric started out as a black Kona with a gelprint using different Lumiere metallic paints. Second step was to quilt with red thread flames through it and the word hot. This did not show well enough to my liking so I added lots and lots of yellow/orange/red seedbeads to it following some of the quilting lines. I like the effect, but beading is such a time consuming technique that I doubt whether I will use this technique very often. Size is 12"x12".
The next challenge has been announced, but so far I have not yet come up with a useable idea.

I am back

2011-10-28T11:09:00.000+02:00

Okay, I admit it looked like I had fallen of the earth, but I have been having serious computer issues. First my main computer needed a good maintenance which ended up with a complete re-install. After that has been done, I lost internet connection. Not for a few minutes, but for more than a week. So glad that I had at least connection on my Ipad. I could read emails, but posting on a blog was a different matter as all my photo's and editing programs are on the pc.

and 2 more

2011-10-03T09:53:00.000+02:00

The SAQA auction is held in 3 parts. In the last part I managed to buy 2 more art quilts. This one is made by Pamela Klebaum and is called 'Convergence':

And this one is made by Janett Rice and is called 'Just Because':

new in my collection

2011-09-25T09:25:00.000+02:00

Every year SAQA holds an auction of small art quilts and when possible I try to buy pieces I like.Not always successful as I am not the only one who wants to buy. This time I managed to get these two quilts.

The top one is made by Meta Heemskerk and is called 'Different':

And the second one is made by Ruth Olsen and is called 'Shades of Autumn':

Sales this year have been lower than in previous years, so if you want to buy an ar tquilt for a reasonable price have a look at either the auction pages or the SAQA store. The third round of the auction has not yet started so with a bit of luck I might be able to show you another quilt soon :-)

Festival of Quilts

2011-09-10T16:08:00.001+02:00

Yes, I know this festival is over, but today I found out that the quilt I had send in this year is featured in Bonnie McCaffery vidcast no 62. Here is the link to Bonnie's blog My quilt is shown in part 1. Sorry that I cannot give a direct link, but neither my Ipad nor my laptop are cooperating.

atc's

2011-08-26T09:48:00.000+02:00

Here is a small collection of atc's I made the last month. Some of the backgrounds are made with gesso, acrylic paints, stamps or gesso, inks and salt/sand. With added collaged papers or postage stamps.

And this is a collection of photo atc's. One of the swaps I am participating in, is about interesting mailboxes.

gel printing

2011-08-22T06:47:00.000+02:00

Sometimes it is a good idea to clean your working area LOL I discovered more pieces of fabric which I have not yet blogged about. These 3 are black Kona around 14"x"14". The gel was covered with golden Lumiere textile paint and some sand/salt to create interesting patterns:

One of these pieces might be my starting point for the challenge Hot with the Sky's the Limit group.

and more soy wax

2011-08-11T17:16:00.000+02:00

I promise that I will not show you all the fabrics I created, but here are some more pictures. As fabrics I used silk, bamboo, pdf cotton and linen.

On this red piece the added white is textile paint.

soy wax

2011-08-02T10:40:00.000+02:00

In June I took a workshop from Jane Dunnewold on using soy wax and I just realised that I had not yet shown pictures of this. Oops, sorry. During these days we worked with soy wax and procion mx dyes using different techniques. Here are some of my results:

Yes, I realise that I should have ironed these fabrics before I took the pictures :-)

green

2011-07-22T19:55:00.000+02:00

Recently Joen Wolfrom started a blog all about color. In yesterday's post she talks about the color green. I followed her idea and took pictures of green things in my house. Well, I have to say it did not surprise me that I did not find many. Green is not my favorite color. Okay, I have lots of potted plants but I did not want to take pictures of only plants. With some searching I managed to come up with these ten pictures. Excercises like this really make you focus on the subject. This time it was the color green. In the past I did the same excercise with for instance lines. When you do something like this you really start seeing your subject everywhere. Why don't you try this too? It is fun to do.

Feeding the ducks

2011-07-18T19:56:00.000+02:00

In May I made a number of tops. I stopped at that point as it would be easier (read this as less weight and less volume) to take the tops home with me, compared to complete quilt sandwiches. Okay, holiday is over so it is time to start the quilting on them. I started with Feeding the ducks. The complete top is quilted. Now I (only) have to finish off all the loose thread ends. You can see on this picture that there are a lot of them.

project 2011

2011-07-10T18:03:00.002+02:00

So many things going on in my life that I completely forgot to show you the block for June. Yes, the color for this month was blue :-). It is not a surprise that this is another funky log cabin block and that the size is 9"x9". All fabrics used are either handdyed or handpainted. And some additional yarn is stiched on the block.

SAQA auction

2011-06-20T00:13:00.002+02:00

A couple of years in a row I wanted to participate in the SAQA auction, but every time something happend which prevented this. This year however I was in time to donate a quilt. If you click on this link you see my quilt. The auction starts on September 12, but my piece is in the group which is available for auction between September 19 till and including September 24.

Meet me in the park

2011-06-17T19:38:00.002+02:00

Two more tops made for Pamela's class. Each is around 20"x25" or something like that. I have not measured them as they are not yet completely finished. If you look closely you will see that both the man and the woman were originally one piece. I cut two rectangulars out of it and started working from each of them independantly using different fabrics than in the original one.

Some small changes still have to be made because certain areas need improvement. And after that of course they have to be quilted.

On the lake

2011-06-08T18:16:00.002+02:00

This quilt has a title fitting for the weather :-). It was 100 degrees F (38 degrees C) here yesterday. The idea behind this quilt was to show the relationship between two people and I found my inspiration in a picture of a young couple in a boat. Again only batiks have been used. Size is approximately 20"x23". Quilting I will add later when I am home again.

Award

2011-06-04T17:26:00.002+02:00

This quilt of mine was part of the Albuquerque Fiber Arts Fiesta 2011 show. The mail returned it to me yesterday. Not only the quilt was in the box, but also the ribbon for the Best Machine Quilting Award. And even better: there was a check with it as well!!

Brenda

2011-06-01T23:26:00.003+02:00

Another top is finished. This time the theme was to make a portrait. My inspiration came from a picture of a girl I knew called Brenda:
For this top I used some pfd fabric as I needed a white background for the hair, all the other fabrics are batiks. Size is 23"x29". Maybe I trim this down a bit after quilting.

and more tops

2011-05-30T23:45:00.002+02:00

Pamela Allen is giving another online class. This time based on figures and faces. Because I was working on my bird themed quilts I am weeks behind, but this is what I made for the first lesson:
Size: ? no idea, I have not measured it after I cropped it, but it started out as a 20"x20" piece. All fabrics used are batiks. Title will probably be Feeding the duck.

owls

2011-05-27T00:25:00.004+02:00

One of the tops I am working on, is based on owls. For this piece I dyed - and overdyed - the background fabric to get the deep blue color I wanted. On this background I fused a black fabric cut out in the shape of an horned owl sitting on a branch:

Interesting, but it needed more. Another owl, this time the snowy owl. I enlarged a picture of one and painted the surface white with black spots, just like they are in real life. My first one was a bit too small and this one ended up on a canvas:

With the second - larger - owl I had more success. It had the proper size. This I fused on the top and now the quilt top looks like this:

At the moment it is still in this state. I will work on the quilting later one.

atc's

2011-05-18T23:32:00.002+02:00

This weekend AFA (www.atcsforall.com) had another a-thon. The theme this time was use a postage stamp in your work. All other techniques and materials were your choice. During an a-thon you create atc's, post them on the forum and trade them. Here are some of the atc's I made:

canvas

2011-05-17T00:53:00.002+02:00

This time a combination of painting and quilting. The small quiltlet (9"x9") is attached to a painted canvas. I used a traditional 9 patch block, cut it in 4 parts and restitched the blocks. This became the background for some fused raw edge appliqued poppies. I have to admit that I really like this combination of quilting and canvases. No doubt I will make more of these in the coming times.

May block

2011-05-13T23:24:00.002+02:00

Right now I am working on so many projects at the same time, that I almost forgot to show you a picture of the block for May:
As you can see, the color for this month is purple and I made - again - a variation of the log cabin block.

Swallows of San Juan

2011-05-10T17:36:00.003+02:00

San Juan Capistrano is a town in California famous for the festival which celebrates the return of the swallows every spring. Hearing this story inspired me to make another one of my bird themed quilts. I started with dyeing the background fabric using intense blue. On this background I painted a part of the ruined misson using different colors of Lumiere and Setacolor paint:
Next step was to add the swallows. They are cut out of a black dyed piece of fabric and attached to the top using fusible interfacing:

Next step will be to quilt it, but that will have to wait for the moment. Like my other bird themed quilt, the size of this one will be 39"x39" when finished.

more background paper

2011-05-06T17:31:00.002+02:00

You know how it goes when you discover a new technique, or a new way of using a technique. Yes, I made more background paper :-)). And this is how the paper looks when cut to atc-size:
Aren't they gorgeous.

background papers

2011-05-04T23:39:00.003+02:00

As you might know, I have been bitten by the atc-bug and for these little cards you can never have enough interesting backgrounds. My friend and I made a couple of sheets using different techniques. The first two pictures show the result of different acrylic paints on gessoed watercolor paper. Stamps and punchinella (sequin waste) have been used to get interesting prints:

For the other two sheets we used procion dyes as ink on the same type of paper. Added some salt or sand to get interesting patterns. The first picture is done on plain watercolor paper:

The second one is done on gessoed watercolor paper. As you can see you get a more muted effect:

Even though the sheets of paper look very interesting like they are, they are even more interesting when cut up into atc-size.

Flying geese

2011-05-03T22:09:00.003+02:00

A couple of days ago I showed the compressed sponges of geese. Well this is what I did with them:
I applied different colors of decolourant plus on it an pressed the stamps onto the fabric. The colors I used were yellow/brown/bronze/gold. When the decolourant is applied to the fabric you really feel that it is on top of the fabric. After ironing it, it just feels like the fabric. That it is a discharge is obvious when you look at the back of your fabric. I could not see this from the front.
My plan was to add some traditional flying geese as well to the top, but I must admit that I forgot this completely. Guess I have to use these in the quilting design. At the moment the top looks like this:

When the quilt is complete it will measure 39"x39". The quilting I intend to do, will be around the geese and maybe add a few details to the birds. Okay, first top is done, 2 other ones are in the pipeline.

new quilts

2011-05-01T21:46:00.003+02:00

The last couple of days I have been designing several quilt tops. To be exact 3 designs, each will be 39"x39" and they will be related in a way to a quilt made some time ago: 'Do you want to come along?'. The first one I am working on will be a flying geese quilt. No, not the traditional flying geese, but these:
The picture shows 2 of my flying geese templates made of compressed sponge on the blue dyed background fabric. Today I am working with the templates so stay tuned for the next blogpost to see what I am doing with them.

atc's

2011-04-24T13:51:00.003+02:00

Progress on the Klimt quilt is slow, so showing you a new picture will not add anything. Instead of that here are some atc's I worked on the last week:

Different techniques/materials have been used for these, ranging from fabric, markers, soy wax, collage to Adobe photoshop manipulation.

old quilt

2011-04-17T11:22:00.003+02:00

Is it not amazing what you find when you are clearing up the mess in your studio? LOL A year ago I started on a quilt based on a drawing by Klimt. It is rather narrow and long so a bit difficult to take a proper picture of:

I used commercial batiks for it. At that time I had no idea how to quilt it and it ended up under a pile of fabric and other stuff. Last week I found it again and began with the quilting. Here is the design I used for the dress:

Although it looks like it is now almost finished, that is only partly true. This quilt will be part of a diptych. I have some ideas about how and what will be done for the second one, but that is for a later post.

Follow by email

2011-04-10T18:04:00.003+02:00

There are so many things I am involved with, that I do not have time every day to write a blog post. If you don't want to miss anything, you can of course visit my blog every day to see whether there is something new. But you might be as busy as I am :-). If so you can put your email address in the gadget 'follow by email'. If you do this, you get an email when there is a new post. I have not yet been able to find out how quickly you get this message, but they claim that they send it to you the same day. Well, let's say you get it within 24 hours after posting :-)

April block

2011-04-02T11:35:00.002+02:00

As you can see, the color for this month is pink. By the end of the year I want to combine all the blocks into one quilt and use them as a background. This is the reason that I will stick to variations of the lopsided log cabin for every block I make this year. All fabrics used are my own handdyed or handpainted. The decorative yarns I use are commercial ones.

atc's

2011-03-25T18:57:00.004+01:00

It is some time ago that I worked with fabric. The last 10 days I made between 30-40 atc's and apc's. Some for swaps, other for trading on AFA. Here are some pictures of what I made:

Some of the techniques I used for these cards were: collaged papers, transparency sheets, screen printing, encaustic wax, soy wax with napkins and water paints.

However I cannot stay away from fabric too long. I am working on some designs ideas for new quilts. Some of these ideas are still very premature, others are more definate. More later.

outhouse

2011-03-16T20:58:00.002+01:00

Another one of the tops I started in Pamela's class is finished. The main theme for this excercise was to take as much advantage of the patterns and designs of the fabric as possible. Originally it was supposed to turn into a city scape, but the fabric thought otherwise :-). The 2nd house at the left reminded me of an outhouse, that is the reason that this quilt got it's unusual name. Size is about 17"x17". I am too lazy to measure it at the moment :-). I used handdyed fabric, commercial batiks and other fabrics in this quilt. As long as it had a design I could use, it could come and join the other fabrics.

quiltswap

2011-03-12T15:46:00.003+01:00

I participated with 2 journal quilts in Kate's ALQS5 which means that I get 2 journal quilts in return. This week number 2 arrived:
This little beauty is called 'Starstruck' and is made by Julie Mackinder and I just love it!

March block

2011-03-05T09:44:00.003+01:00

A new month means this year time for a new block. The color this month was green and I used an other variation of a log cabin for it. The log cabin will be used in every block this year. By the end of the year I intend to combine the blocks to a big top and I dont want to have a sampler :-)'.
What I will be doing with it at that time will be something different, but that is not something I will blog about now.

and one more

2011-02-28T20:01:00.003+01:00

With the fabrics I showed on the 23rd I also made this quilt:
It is a translation into fabric of a painting of Corneille: Blue cat and sunflower. No templates were used. Fabrics are a combination of hand dyed ones and commercial ones. The black lines around all the shapes are a characteristic of this painting style. I created them by satin stitching around all the shapes. A very time consuming technique. This quilt is (again) 12"x12". Of the 5 tops I was working on, 3 are now completed. The other 2 are being quilted the coming days. And because I don't want to get bored, I will start another 2 quilt tops this week :-)

another top done

2011-02-26T13:58:00.003+01:00

Another top is completed. This quilt is limited to only a 2-color palette. Size is 12"x12". It is made of a combination of handdyed and commercial fabrics. For the eyes I used seed beads and sequins. I am not sure what to call it. Fishes is fitting, but not really an interesting name. Suggestions are welcome.
One more quilt completed. Now only working on 3 other ones.

lots of tops

2011-02-23T15:03:00.003+01:00

For the 4th year in a row February is Pamela Allen month. Yes, again an on-line workshop from her :-). This means that this month I have made 5 tops already in 3 lessons. The fabric shown on this picture I used for 2 quilts:
One of them is quilted and I called it 'Blue tree'. Size is 12"x12":

The other quilt requires quite a lot of satin stitching in black. Difficult to do with artificial light.

quilt swap

2011-02-19T09:15:00.003+01:00

This season I participated in Kate's ALQS with 2 journal quilts. Here is a picture of one of the quilts I got in return:

It is made by Ramona Bates. Thanks Ramona! The second quilt I won has not yet arrived, but I know which one it is :-)). I was just too curious to wait for the mail and Kate was willing to tell me which ones would be mine.

ice cube dyeing

2011-02-16T16:58:00.003+01:00

Ice cube dyeing is not new to me, but on Linda's blog I read about a variation to this technique. There happen to be some frozen dye ice cubes in my freezer, so time to play. No idea which colors they were. Whenever I have some left over dye I freeze it. This technique uses 2 layers of fabric. One on which you put the ice cubes:
And one which you put on top:

I must say I like the top fabric the most. If you look closely to the fabric you might see that I had placed bubblewrap under and over the fabric. In some areas there is a nice imprint of the bubbles.

yellow

2011-02-12T14:59:00.003+01:00

In continuation of my previous post her is my block for February. As you can see this months color is yellow. Chosen because winter is almost over and daffodils are beginning to pop up :-) This block is a variation of last month's only this time I made 4 small blocks before stitching them together. The colors you see here are actually the only yellow hand dyed ones I owe. In fabric this is not my favorite color.

white

2011-01-30T10:18:00.003+01:00

With one of my yahoogroups we have a yearly project. In 2010 it was a big one: the canal houses. They have been swapped although some are still in the mail. I must admit I have not yet started working on the assembling. After such a huge project, the project for 2011 is smaller. Every month we will make a block in a specific color. How big the block is, is up to the maker. How elaborate or how simple it is, the same. The color for January is white. I decided to make a simple lopsided log cabin using different white fabrics: pfd, commercial, silk and decorate it with white yarn. Here is the picture:
The reason that I keep it rather simple is that at the end of the year I want to use the blocks as a background for applique. I know how and what I want to do with them, but that is something I am not yet telling :-).
My blocks started out as 10"x10", only I made a measuring mistake and cut a couple of blocks 10"x9"from my stabilizer. That meant that I had to change all my blocks to 9"x9". The advantage of not having to swap :-).

atc's

2011-01-26T16:48:00.005+01:00

It has been some time since my last posting, I know. The last couple of weeks I hardly touched any fabric. My time was taken by trying to reduce the number of swap obligations I had for atc's. Those little thingies can be quite addictive. I don't wont to bore you with all the atc - or apc's - I made, but here are a couple of examples:

mail

2011-01-15T16:19:00.003+01:00

Look what I got in the mail today. On The Fiber Nation blog there was a embellishment grab bag give away in December and I was one of the winners. Lots of goodies to play with :-). Thanks Stephanie!

haiku 2nd part

2011-01-09T18:10:00.002+01:00

When I posted the haiku earlier this week, I made a mistake. According to the rules of the haiku-group both the haiku as well as the artwork created by it, should be posted at the same time. And all of this within 5 days after posting of the theme work. So here is the first stage of my fiber translation of my haiku:
In this stage the letters and numbers are only fused to the background. I have not yet had the time to stitch/quilt/bind it.

haiku's

2011-01-06T21:02:00.003+01:00

This year I will not be participating in the CQGB journal quilts because I needed a new challenge. I found this through Carole. She started a new group/blog for haiku's. Haiku's are a form of Japanese poetry based on 5-7-5 syllabes. The haiku will be the inspiration for a fiber or mixed media art work. The size of these will be around journal size - at least for the first year.
I admit my experience of writing poetry is limited to Sinterklaas poetry (Dutch version of Santa Clause). The first theme is 'beginnings' and this is my first haiku:

A first day at school
Numbers, letters, they call you
No more time to play?

In my mind I already see the fiber translation of this. Hopefully I have time the coming days to create it.

atc's

2011-01-02T19:39:00.003+01:00

Let me start this blog post by wishing you all a happy - and creative - new year. Okay, not very original, but it is the time of the year :-)
Today I worked on some atc's for AFA. This swap is about hand drawn / hand painted bamboo. I have a couple of bamboo in my garden, but I googled some pictures to be more certain that my drawings would look like real bamboo. I started with making these pencil drawings:
They don't look too bad, but they needed some color. I used water color because I like the way I can blend colors with this. This is the result:

Tomorrow they will cross the pond to the swap hostess.

journal quilt

2010-12-28T13:41:00.003+01:00

This is my last journal quilt for this year. After a couple of years creating monthly journal quilts I have decided to take a break coming year. No monthly fabric journal quilts. There are other challenges planned.
This journal quilt started out as a hand dyed piece of fabric. I stitched the folds and painted the fabric with Golden acrylics. When the paint was dry, I removed the stitches. This design did not need an extra overlaying pattern of quilting, so I kept it simple and only quilted along the painted lines.

mail art

2010-12-22T15:09:00.002+01:00

Some time ago I showed the envelopes I made for Lenna's mail art swap. This picture shows what I got in return. Envelopes - and cards - are made by Vicky Martindale, Sabine Schneider and Susan Stewart and by Lenna herself. All so different and all lovely. It was the first time that I made mail art, but I am tempted to do this more often :-)

snow

2010-12-19T16:30:00.002+01:00

This is how my garden looked yesterday morning. A - for Dutch standards - thick layer of snow had fallen. Not my favorite type of weather.
The only attractive part of it, is that I can snow dye. Here is a picture of one of the pieces of fabric I dyed this weekend:

There are 5 more of them, but I am not going to show you all of them now. Partly because it might be boring, partly because I have not yet ironed them:-). All pieces are roughly 1/2 yard wide.

journal quilt

2010-12-15T16:07:00.002+01:00

Again a bit late, but here is the picture of November's journal quilt. It is a handdyed piece of fabric, which I folded and stitched before I painted it. Don't ask me exactly which colors I used, cause I do not remember this anymore. But I do know that I used Golden acrylics. The quilting is very limited, only following the painted lines as they are the ones who draw the most attention. Elaborate quilting would have ruined that effect.

storage

2010-12-12T12:01:00.004+01:00

When you like surface design and art quilting there is a lot of stuff you can use. And all that stuff needs some kind of storage space. In other words when you are a pack rat :-). Not only storage might be a problem, finding the stuff when you need it might even be a bigger problem. Quite some time ago I fell in love the the ArtBin containers. They are wonderful for all the thread I have, but the other size of containers are great for smaller stuff. Only when you put them on top of each other, there is some unwritten law that the things you need are always in the bottom container. Can you imagine how happy I was when I discovered that ArtBin also has cubes? And not only that, there is one on-line shop in the Netherlands who sells them? Here is a picture of the 2 cubes I assembled yesterday:
Four containers with thread are in one cube, while 6 thinner containers fit in the top cube. The 2 cubes are attached to each other with wooden dowels. On top of the cubes is place for my Madeira box. Okay this does not mean that my studio is now nice and clean, but it is looking better. I know that I need/want more of those cubes.

atc's

2010-12-08T18:06:00.003+01:00

I will not show you all the atc's I make, but this set I am very happy with. Painting and drawing is not what I do best, but I think these are acceptable. For these poppies I used pencil and water color paint. And yes, they are made for a swap at ATC's For All :-)

snow dyeing

2010-12-04T16:11:00.002+01:00

This piece of fabric I dyed for Sally. She requested a purple color. Well snow dyeing is not an exact science. With mixed colors you will get separation of the colors which are used in that specific mix. For this piece of fabric I used blue/violet and lila, both Procion MX dyes. By looking at the separation I am presuming that lilac is a diluted pure purple color either Boysenberry MX-BR or Grape MX- GN. The separation of the blue/violet is clearly visible. This piece is 46" (1,15 mtr) wide.

snow

2010-12-02T08:56:00.004+01:00

Winter is starting early this year. When I saw the first snow flakes falling a couple of days ago, my first reaction was saying a couple of words my mother never taught me :-). On the other hand it gives me a chance to do some snow dyeing. Here are the first 2 pieces of fabric I did. The first one is dyed with Moccha and the second one with Kilt Green. As both these dyes are mixed and not pure MX colors, you see the separation of the colors.

At the moment I am dyeing two new pieces of fabric in their colanders.

atc's

2010-11-30T18:02:00.004+01:00

It is some time ago since my last blog post, but I have been busy. The last week I made approximately 30 atc's. Don't worry, I am not going to show all of them here, only a few examples :-):

As you see, they all have birds on them. That is because Atc's For All had a bird-a-thon this weekend.

paper piecing

2010-11-21T14:07:00.003+01:00

And here is number 3 of the paper piecing. Again the same fabric has been used in a different setting. One more to go before it is time to go to the next step.
I admit progress is slow, but in the mean time I have been working on zentangle christmas cards. I don't want to show them here, because then there will be no surprise for the receivers.

zentangles

2010-11-14T11:36:00.002+01:00

Last couple of days I did not see much fabric. Most of my free time I was playing with pigma pens and creating zentangles. Here are some of the atc's I made:

I guess I have found the theme I will be using for my Christmas cards this year LOL. This technique is addicting.

journal quilt

2010-11-10T08:46:00.003+01:00

I realised that I had not yet shown my journal quilt for October. When I was working on my red pebble quilt I really liked that design so much, that I desided to use it more often and what better opportunity for that month's journal quilt :-). Again I used raw silk, black batik and red hand dyed fabric.

PP progress

2010-11-08T19:21:00.003+01:00

Progress is on the paper pieced quilts is going slowly. Two of them are quilted and hand stitched to stretched canvas. Each quilt is 10"x10" (25x25 cm) while the canvas is 16"x16" (40x40 cm). Here are there pictures:

Two done, means two still to work on. When all four are stitched to the canvas I will start the next step in this process.

new workshops

2010-11-06T15:17:00.002+01:00

As you can see, I have redesigned the lay-out of my blog and added some extra pages. New workshops - both on-line as well in my studio - will be added on a regular base.
Please contact me if you are interested, or if you have special requests regarding workshops.

design a moose

2010-11-05T16:20:00.002+01:00

On AFA is a swap going on called 'design a moose' with a holiday theme. This theme gave me rather some problems as I could not find an interesting holiday. Till I came across this site on which they mention the most bizar American holidays. For the first set I used the holidays: November 10 - Forget me not day, October 4 - National golf day and January 15 - hat day.
For the second set I used: December 7 - Cotton candy day, March 14 - Potato chip day and August 3 - National watermelon day.

With holidays like this I can play :-). All atc's are made using collaged papers, water color, prisma pen and oil pastels.

mail art

2010-11-04T13:17:00.002+01:00

Mail art was unknown to me till I received an email from Lenna Andrews. It sounded like fun so I decided to join this swap. If you want to, there is still room for more participants :-)
With this type of art you can work on existing envelopes, but I decided to make my own. For this I used - bought - hand made paper for the outside and a page from my newspaper for the inside. I had opened an envelope and traced the outlines on the paper. With Bondaweb I fused these together.
Next step was to fold the (thick) paper and I used a gluestick to close the sides. Making envelopes is very easy I discovered and I am tempted to do this more often. Think for instance Christmas cards :-)

I had typed Lenna's address in a Word file, using different fonts in different sizes and colors. Printed these out and cut the adress in an irregular shape. This I fused on to the envelop.

Now the fun begins: stamping. I used some bubble wrap, a kitchin thingie, insulation tube and also some bought stamps. The paints were different colors Lumiere. This is how the front of the envelope looks like:

And this is the back:

Now I only have to add my address on it and they can go into the mail.

Blogger's Quilt Festival

2010-10-30T10:46:00.004+02:00

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

2010-10-30T10:28:00.004+02:00

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

2010-10-30T10:19:00.002+02:00

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

2010-10-27T16:34:00.003+02:00

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

2010-10-22T20:12:00.002+02:00

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

2010-10-20T18:59:00.003+02:00

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

2010-10-13T20:17:00.002+02:00

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

2010-10-10T15:59:00.003+02:00

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

2010-10-09T19:29:00.003+02:00

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

2010-10-06T16:12:00.002+02:00

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

2010-10-04T19:25:00.002+02:00

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

2010-10-03T09:48:00.002+02:00

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

2010-10-02T10:47:00.002+02:00

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.

screen printing

2010-09-29T19:42:00.002+02:00

This is work on a whole bigger scale than making atc's:-). I did not only screen print on small pieces of fabric, but also on a big piece of felt which I had bought years ago with the intention of making a coat. I knew that I wanted to decorate the fabric first, but till a couple of weeks ago I had no clue how or with what design. Till I made the templates with the fern leaves and the fiddle heads. I cut out the pattern and screen printed the different leaves and fiddle heads on it before I stitched the parts together.

The coat will probably be not warm enough for winter, but is great for autumn and spring.

atc's

2010-09-26T18:45:00.004+02:00

Last week I mainly worked on atc's. Those little things can become addictive :-)). I have signed up for the following swaps at ATC's for All:
green - I used fabric, woven paper, punchinella and felt:
winter - I used paper, fabric, lutrador, buttons, felt, paint, batting, punchinella:

doors - a photo swap. The doors are in Almere, Amsterdam and Minnesota:

postage due - collaged papers and stamps:

autumn trees

2010-09-20T19:08:00.003+02:00

Autumn trees is the theme of one of the ATC for all swaps I am participating in. I made these atc's using gift paper printed with fall leaves on which I painted trees using black paint. A little green was added to finish it. One swap completed, 5 other ones still to do :-)

ferns

2010-09-16T19:56:00.003+02:00

The last couple of days I continued working on my ferns fabric. The positions of the leaves and sprouts is so close together that I had to wait every time in between for the paint to dry. On this picture you can see the whole piece of fabric (32"x60"):
And on this one you can see a detail of it:

I intend to quilt the background with black thread and out line the shapes of the leaves and sprouts. All templates were made from transparency sheets. Setacolor white opaque and pearl simmer were used as paints. In the background the discharged leaves are still very subtle visible.

screen printing

2010-09-12T18:11:00.004+02:00

One way of doing screen prints is to use discharge paste or thiox in stead of paint/dye. On this black piece of fabric (H200 from Whaley) I started with discharge paste. After ironing it, the fern leave only showed up as a pale ghost. I had no idea how old my discharge paste was, so I screen printed again using fresh made thiox paste. Well, the result was the same. This fabric discharges to white using bleach, but it gives very little result with discharge paste or thiox.

I had to change which material to use, cause I still wanted to work with this fabric. This time I used Setacolor white opaque and a white shimmer and again the same fern leaves:

This time no ghost, but a visible print :-). At the moment it looks a bit empty, but more fern leaves will be added. The total size of this piece of fabric is 32"x60".

art journal

2010-09-12T18:01:00.003+02:00

My friend Kelly and I have given ourselves a challenge of making two pages a month for an art journal. Her theme is faces, my theme is seed pods. The rule we have with this challenge is that there are no rules! Any material, any technique is allowed. For my first page I used poppy seed pods as inspiration. I had printed these on fabric, but I also made a print in a sketchbook size roughly 8,5"x11". The screen print was a starting point.
Today I added black dots with a brush pen. Point learned: use a normal pen to create dots, with a brush pen, you get lines as well as dots :-). The dots/lines gave me the opportunity to add more details to the seed pods. With the screen print you only see the silhouettes.
Next step was to create a background. For this I used water color. Recently I have bought a pocket field sketch box. It contains 12 assorted half pan colors and a small water brush. And this little cute box is only 4,5"x3,5". This is so much fun to work with. I have never done water colors before, but making this page I had lots of fun. This is the result:

and more screen printing

2010-09-09T19:34:00.003+02:00

This week I continued screen printing. This - a bit boring - red handdyed piece of cotton got cheered up by screen printing daisies using different color combination. The daisy was cut out of freezer paper. I used different Setacolors on it, some with shimmer, some transparent. The fabric is half a yard, full width.
This purple/pink sunprint got a layer of 3 different fern leaves. Each leave pattern was cut out of a transparency sheet with an Exacto knife. The sheets were taped to the screens with wide cellotape. The leaves look similar, but are slightly different. This fq was screen printed in different layers. For each layer I used different color combinations of Setacolor transparent paints.

This same design I have used on a black H200 fabric as well. This time with discharge paste instead of paint. I am guessing that my discharge paste was too old because the design showed up only very pale. Almost like a ghost :-). I will mix some fresh thiox and see how the results are than. Expect more pictures in a couple of days.

break down printing and bleaching/over dyeing

2010-09-05T19:17:00.002+02:00

Yesterday I taught a workshop break down printing and bleaching/over dyeing. In the morning we prepared the screens for the break down printing and in the afternoon we clamped/wrapped fabric before it went into a bleach bath. After rinsing and anti chlor treatment the bundles of fabric were dyed with procion dyes. Next weekend the 2nd part of the break down printing - the actual printing - will be done. I forgot to take pictures, but luckily there are pictures on the blogs of Corinne, Mia, Hannie en Suze. Check back later, if the pictures are not yet uploaded. If you are interested in this workshop and if you are able to travel to Almere, let me know maybe we can plan something.