journal quilt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.