detailed pictures

As promised I am showing you today a couple of detailed pictures of my still life quilts. Here they are:

The pears are made from different pieces of batiks. Stitched together and stuffed with cotton balls. They are glued to the background.

And all these are detailed pictures of the other still life quilt. I like to combine different patterns of machine quilting on one piece. The bottles are made from zapped organza. To stop the organza from fraying I burned the edged using a candle flame.

The leaves are stitched with only one line to the background. This way they give a bit of a 3d effect.

And the last picture for today is not a detail but a picture which shows you better the size of the completed quilt. I have not yet measured it, but the size is roughly 23"x27". The quilt is hanging on my kitchen wall.

another still life

I promised myself that I should complete several quilts before I start a new one. Here is another still life quilt I finished this weekend. To make certain that the leaves which are outside the quilt remain in this position I have stitched them onto some Pelmet Vilene or Timtex. A little bit of green paint still has to be put on the Pelmet. I forgot to take detailed pictures. It is dark now so I will take these later this week and upload them. Including a detailed picture of the pears of my previous still life quilt.

Still life with flowers

I was told that of yesterday's picture not enough of the texture could be seen. Here are some detail pictures:

The vase is made from folded fabric. After folding I ironed it onto some Bondaweb. I did the quilting along the lines so that I would not flatten the texture.

The pink flower was made from several layers of embossed felt and a button as centre. Stems are made from rolled tubes of fabric.

For these flowers I used different techniques. The yellow one on the right is made from zapped organza. The purple one from 2 layers of fused batik. To get depth part of the petals is pushed up away from the background. The brown one is made from several layers of fused fabric. The edges are cut to give it a more frayed look. And the yellow/red one is made from different layers of hand dyed scrim. Buttons or beads are used for the centres. On purpose some of the flowers are 'outside' the rectangular of the quilt.

Still life with flowers

One of the 4 still life quilts I am working on is now completely finished and hanging on my wall. By lack of a more interesting title I have called it 'Still life with flowers'. The idea for this still life was to use and play with texture. Well I have used a lot of it :-). Part of the background fabric and the vase is pleated. The pears in the bowl are stuffed and because they are so thick I have glued them to the quilt with E6000. The stems of the flowers are rolled tubes over pipe cleaners and for the flowers I used all kind of different techniques. Buttons and beads were added to the centre of the flowers. Here is a picture of the result:

Now I can continue finishing the other 3 quilts.

still life enlarged

The still life I showed here a couple of days ago was too cramped. I added some more fabric to the background and that gave me space to give the table proper legs. Also I changed a couple of things and added some circles - balls ? - on the floor. Right now I am preparing it so that I can start machine quilting on it coming weekend. For this I have to remove the leaves temporarily as I want to quilt the background before I stitch the leaves on. To give it a bit of 3d effect I intend to stitch the leaves with only one line of stitching through the middle of the leaves. Anyway this is how the piece looks now:

And one more still life

I decided to give the still life I am working on for the 3rd lesson a break and started this afternoon working on the next lesson. For this one I want to incorporate what I learned during this class. One of these things is not to use one piece of fabric but cut it into different pieces and put these next and over each other. With this little 'trick' fabric becomes much more interesting. This picture shows you my first lay-out:

I am not yet happy with it. Background is made from black/white fabrics, bottles from zapped organza and the plant plus container is made from batiks. Right now the size is about 20"x20" and I think it is a bit cramped. Probably I will enlarge it. And hopefully by that time I also know what to add as an eye catcher, cause I think that that is missing at the moment. Any suggestions are appreciated :-)

One more still life

Another week, another lesson with Pamela. This time the focus of the still life has to be on texture. I decided to go for flowers. All the flowers you see on this picture are made in different ways. Both the vase as part of the background is folded fabric. On this picture you see my first attempt. The stems of the flower are all the same length - I have changed that now - and the setting is missing something. In other words it is simply dull. So consider this picture a work in progress :-). I have added some more fabric to the bottom and to the left to enlarge it. This way there is space to add more items and at the same time the vase with flowers is not so much in the centre of it. It is not yet ready to have a picture taken. At the moment it is placed on my tables and not all the items are attached to it. Tomorrow I will continue working on it and hopefully have a fresh picture on my blog later that day.

work in progress

I have been busy quilting my still life. Here are some pictures of it. I am posting both pictures from the front as well as from the back, where you can see the stitching lines much better.

Quilting is done, binding is halfway, same goes for sleeve, label is attached. Next step is to add some more embellishments, but that is for later this week.

another still life

This week the assignment for Pamela's class is to make a still life with muted (grayed down) fabrics patterned in a stripey or linear way. Luckily my stash is rather large so I selected all the suitable fabrics and started working on the background.

For the background I used 3 different batiks. Not one piece, but several pieces of the same color are used to. I had written down several ideas to work with and settled on an impression of a room. Focal point is the chair which is based on the peel design chair. With a chair you need a table and some light, don't you? These were added and some other extra stuff. The blue spot you see on the chair is a book. At the moment it is only made from 2 layers of fabric, but I will add some hand made paper or real paper pages before this quilt is finished. This is how it looks now:

It needs a bit of tweaking which I did after this picture was taken. Next step is machine quilting it. Size is approximately 16"x24"(40x60 cm). Title of the quilt is 'Reading'.

still life and snow

I finished the quilting on my b/w still life. As the quilting is also done in black and white showing a picture of the front would not have been very helpful. Therefore I am showing you two pictures of the back so that you can see the quilting lines. I used a variety of designs.

I was told that the last couple of days it was not possible to click on the pictures to get a larger image. Hopefully that glitch has been solved.

Another thing I did today was some snow dyeing. When I woke up this morning I saw that there was snow, not much only 0,5" or so but enough to try out this technique. Dyeing friends of mine in the US have lots of opportunities to snow dye, but for me it was my first chance. This picture shows you my tray filled with fabric, snow and dye mixture. It took the snow 4 hours to melt and at the moment the fabric is soaking. I was able to gather more snow for a second piece. Pictures will follow later this week.

Still life

About a year ago I took an online class with Pamela Allen (Think like an artist) and I loved it. So when I heard she would give another one I jumped in again. This one is called 'Still life is boring NOT'. for the first lesson we had to make a still life (not a big surprise vbg) using black and white only. Well I have a huge stash of b/w fabric as I love it. A lot of still lifes are with fruit, flowers, fish and so on, but I wanted to go into another direction. My choise was a more modern still life. This is the picture of my first lay-out:

Some things are okay but it was not complete. For an image of how a room looks after a party, it is way to neat. I am good at creating chaos in my studio, but this quilt needed it too. Pamela gave some suggestions and this is how it looks right now:

Much better. Some details still have to be changed and other ones will be added after the quilting, probably glued.