Gold vein

And here is my 2nd quilt for the theme Treasures. This time my inspiration came from a gold vein. No hand dyed fabrics this time, but all commercial ones. Size is 17"x24".

Turquoise

For Voyage this year's theme is Treasures. It took me quite some time before I found an interesting take on this theme, but finally I settles for precious stones and metal. Here is the first quilt I made, called Turquoise:

I used my own hand dyed fabrics for this, covered with a layer of zapped lutrador. Size is 17"x24". I am linking this post to Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Friday blog. Take a look there to see what other artist did.

New quilt

It does not look interesting yet, but this is the background for a new quilt I started. For Voyage the theme this year is treasures. This does not look like a treasure yet, but that will come. Size will be 17"x24". Now it is time to start quilting it.

Abstracted nature is completed

For Voyage - one of my online quilt groups - the theme this year was abstracted nature. My 4 quilts are all based on plants. Okay, I admit, plants with a twist :-). For this quilt my inspiration was cattails, not the animal type, but the type you find in the water. In Dutch we call them cigars. The fun part with the abstract is, that you do not have to follow the rules of reality. In this case I used rectangular red/pink fabric for the seed pods.

All fabrics used are my own hand dyed or snow dyed ones plus some strips of Ugandan barkcloth. Size is 17"x24". All the abstracted nature quilts will be on show in Minneapolis and Prague in 2016 and Maastricht in 2017.

Peas in a pod

For Voyage the theme this year is abstracted nature. The fun part of this theme is that the abstract gives you all the space to be bold and change whatever you want. In this case my peas are different shades of blue, a color I have never seen for peas in real life :-).

All the fabrics I used are my own hand dyed / hand painted ones. Size is 17"x24".

Cotton

For Voyage the theme for this year is abstracted nature and with a theme like that it can be difficult to determine how abstract will I make it. Do I still want it to be recognisable or do I go further? For this quilt I took an inspirational photo of a cotton seed pod and played a bit with it in Photoshop to create a starting point.

The fabrics I used are my own hand dyed  and discharged ones with a little bit of raw silk. Funny enough I had to use this silk instead of white cotton as this was too smooth for the effect I wanted to create. Size is 17" x 24" and the - not very original - title is 'Cotton'.

Glacier

Amongst my inspirational pictures for aerial views (my theme for Voyage this year) there were several ones featuring glaciers. But how to create this? One of the pounded fabrics I did recently gave me the idea. I used the black fabric with the white paint as a starting point.

To accentuate the white areas of the ice I unrolled and split a cotton ball and placed this in the areas where I wanted it. Covered this with black tulle and stitched through it. The tulle is essential to trap the cotton and black is the one which has very little impact on the colors it covers. This is how it looked when it was finished:

 And a detail shot:

Shoreline

Besides working on circle quilts I also have my aerial view quilts for Voyage. This is the latest one which I completed yesterday. I called it 'Shoreline'.

For the sand I used a piece of rust dyed fabric, for the water different hand dyed blues. Small strips of scrim are stitched down with seed beads and to complete it I added a number of buttons on it. Some time ago I had bought a set of beads in the shape of shells and starfish. They came with a shank, so I had to cut that off and than glued them down onto the quilt with E6000.
Size of this quilt is 12"x17". I am linking this post to Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Friday. Check out the link to see what other artists have done this week.

Old Amsterdam

 

Besides my circle theme I am working on my aerial views for the Voyage group as well. Here is a picture of my latest one:

 



 

This one is inspired by a map from 1593 of Amsterdam. The map is cut out of interfacing as fabric would fray too easily. The houses are colored in with ink and intensely machine stitched. A very time consuming technique with lots of thread ends. Fabrics used are my own hand dyed ones.
The title actually has two meanings. Old Amsterdam is also the name of a very nice old cheese :-)

Salt mines

This time not a circle quilt - although I might use this idea for a future one - but a quilt for the Voyage group. For this group the theme this year is Earth and I am focussing on aerial views. This photo by George Steinmetz of the salt mines in Niger was my inspiration source:

Some time ago I had bought a piece of black textured felt. At that time no idea how I was going to use it, but it was the starting point for this quilt. I applied gold/bronze textile paint to it. First I tried paintstiks on a small sample, but the rubbing reduced the texture. To create more depth I glued 2 pieces of felt together. When I started cutting the holes the second layer moved a bit. At first annoying till I realised that this would give some shadow emphasizing the depth of the mines.

 

I could not find a piece of fabric with the coloring I wanted, so I painted the batting using orange and red paint. A minimal of quilting completes this quilt.

Here you see a detail picture:

 As it is Friday I am linking this post to Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Friday.

Tulip fields

One of the themes I am working with this year is aerial views. This quilt is one of them and it for Voyage. I live in the Netherlands and every spring you can see these colorful  tulip fields. Size of this quilt is 12"x17" and all the fabrics I have used are my own hand dyed ones.

And as it is a Friday, I am linking this post to Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Friday.

Eagle's View

For Voyage the theme this year is Earth. A broad subject, lots of options here. I decided to work with aerial views of different aspects. Here is my first quilt for this theme:

I have called this quilt Eagle's View. It is a view of part of the river Nile, just a bit south of Murchison Falls in Uganda. All fabrics used are my own hand dyed ones. The quilting I did in such a way that it resembles altitude lines. Size is 12"x17".  And as it is a Friday today, I am linking this post to Nina Marie's Off the Wall Friday.

Veldhoven

The last couple of days I was in Veldhoven. I am a member of Voyage and the quilts we had made last year were exhibited as a guest collection at the show organised by the OEQC.

 

On this picture you can see my quilts, but if you check out the site of OEQC you can see a video they made of all the Voyage quilts. The shiny strip which you see on the picture is a barrier preventing people to touch the quilts.

Six trees

Last week I showed you the beginning of this piece. After the piecing I quilted it, added the shadows and finally the trees:

For the trees I used mulberry bark and some black paintstick. Only the bark was too white. Am I satisfied with this piece? Not completely, but because of the thickness of the bark I cannot applique additional leaves on it, so it will have to stay like this. This quilt is my 4th piece for this year for the Voyage group.
I am linking this post to Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Friday.

New quilt started

This is the background for my new quilt for Voyage. For a number of years I was a member of an online dyeing group in which we swapped samples of color wheel dyeing. Because of this swapping I literally have thousands of 2,5"x2,5" square pieces of fabric. I don not need these samples anymore for color references so I am using them - slowly by slowly - in projects. This top is made from roughly 270 strips of fabric, in total 90 different colors. As it is for Voyage, the size is only 12"x17". After I took this picture I quilted it so my next step will be adding the applique.
I am linking this post to Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Friday's.

Fantasy trees

This morning I realised that I had not yet blogged about this quilt which I finished last month. For Voyage my theme for this year is trees and as you all know that does not mean that they have to look like real life trees :-). I think that some fantasy trees should be included as well. Size of this quilt is 12"x17" and all the fabrics used are hand dyed ones. Either done by me or by Kelly as I was with her when I made this quilt.
I am linking this post to Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Friday.

At the pond

And here is the finished result. On Friday I showed you how I made the background of this quilt. The next step was to add all kind of applique to it. I made this quilt for an online class with Katie PM and as I am using trees as my theme for the Voyage quilts, I decided to use trees for this one as well. Because this was a class piece as well, I had to follow certain rules, for instance all colors of the 3 (12 steps) colorwheels had to be used on top of the background. That are a lot of colors! I like the idea of combining colors in a tree, but in this case the pine trees in the back don't show up that well because of all those colors. They would have been stronger if less colors were used. Another thing I see now the quilt is finished is that the pond could have been smaller. For the blossoms I used small snippets of fabric. One way of attaching this to the background is by covering it with tulle and stitch this. The disadvantage of tulle is that it - slightly - changes the color. Instead of that I decided to add a seed bead to every snippet. In general I am happy with the result. And as it is for Voyage, size of this quilt is 12"x17" and the title is 'At the pond'.

new quilt

I have started a new quilt for Voyage.  Not much to see (yet), but I want to show you how I build a quilt. My starting point is a piece of fabric which I don't like but which is excellent for a backing. Besides the color wheels of last week I had also dyed 6 neutrals which I want to use for the background. With my roller cutter I cut out wavy strips. These strips I glued to the backing.

 I know that there are special glue sticks for fabric, but to be honest I just use a regular one. When all strips are in place I made a sandwich of it and started quilting it.

Unfortunately the picture I took of this did not turn out very well, so you just have to believe me :-) My next blog post will show the progress of this quilt.
I am linking this to Nina-Marie Off the Wall Friday.

thin lines

A couple of weeks ago there was an interesting thin line technique published on the ' And then we set it on fire' blog which I wanted to try out. I used a handdeyed dark grey fabric for the thin lines - which were cut at 0,5" - and a multicolored linen which I made last year during a soy wax workshop. I love to have pieced backgrounds for my quilts, so this was a great technique to play with. Here is the result I got:

Okay, the background for my next quilt is now finished. With next blog post I will show you how it continued.

Windmills 2

A couple of days ago I posted the picture of my first windmills quilt for the Voyage group. As I made that one in the wrong size, I had to make another one. This one is done along the same idea and this time it is the correct size 10"x20". I double checked :-)). Here is the picture:



I added some other colors beside blue, because although I have a lot of fabric squares, I am running a bit low on the blue ones. Windmills are printed on Lutrador, the modern windmill is made from felt and all the other fabrics are handdyed ones.