New project - almost done

Progress on the new project is steady. The whole quilt has been quilted and is now ready to get the facing done. I could not take a proper picture of it while it is on the tables as the actual size of this baby is 27"x48". Bigger than the quilts I normally make. My intention for the next blogpost is to show you this quilt - from the front this time - when it is hanging.

Happy Holidays

Happy Holidays to all of you and a good  - and creative - New Year!!

New project continued

After a number of hours working with this HQ all 135 strips are stitched to the background. Now to get rid of all the thread ends. Mmmmm, I might need to watch a good movie while doing this.

new project

I started with a new project. When it is finished it will be around 25"x45" and here are the ingredients:

126 strips of commercial black fabric and 9 strips of hand dyed fabric:

 The strips will be stithed on white raw silk:

 No idea why I ever bought this shiny fabric. It is not my taste at all:

 But it looks much better when you look at the other side of it:

Stay tuned :-).

Caught anything yet?

Another quilt which needed some final touches. This one was started in a class with Pamela Allen as well and the subject was scale. As you can see tiny fishes and a huge fishing hook. Size is 11"x21" and only hand dyed fabrics have been used for this one.

Now I have finished these old ones, I can start working on a new one. I have an idea - well actually I have several ideas - one of them will be done in black and white with a bit of red. Stay tuned :-)

Not in the Zoo

Okay, I know it is futile, but now and then I try to declutter my studio. While I was doing that this week I came across 2 almost finished quilts. Not much had to be done on them, so I told myself that I had to finish them first before I could start working on a new quilt.

This quiltlet I made for the last class I took with Pamela Allen. The challenge was to use the same fabric I had used for the previous quilt in her class but create a different scene. I used a mixture of commercial and hand dyed fabrics for it. In reality it is square, although the picture does not show this. Size is 12"x12". Not a serious theme, but just having fun :-)

Fabrications Nine

Fabrications Nine opened on Saturday with an artists' reception. I was not able to attend, but my friend Kelly did and she emailed me the following pictures:

In total there are 5 pieces of my work at the show. Not all of them are hanging right now. When empty places show up because work has been sold, the extra's will be added to the show. If you are in the neighbourhood of Zumbrota MN, the show is open till December 31.

Snow flake

The theme for Sky is the Limit this month is snow. I confess that when I picked the theme snow I had no idea that we would get snow that quickly. Don't blame this weather on me :-)).

For this theme I decided to focus on snow flakeand to keep it snow related I made the background from a piece of snow dyed fabric. After I made the sandwich I stitched the outlines of a snow flake. The snowflake I painted with pearl white Lumiere textile paint. Added some snow flake buttons and the quilt was complete. It is very early in the month - due date is December 31 -, but this quilt was a quick one.

Silent Water

For the Free Spirit Artists group my theme for the coming year is lines. This may sound boring, but there are many ways in which you can use lines. Late 2010 I made a journal quilt using stitched lines and paint. The fabric was folded and stitched like that, next step was to paint the fabric, let it dry and remove the stitched lines. This is how the journal quilt looked when it was finished:

I really loved this technique and wanted to do it again on a bigger scale. So I picked a half yard of fabric which I had dyed. Don't ask me which color I used because this was somewhere in 2011. Stitching all those lines was so boring that regularly it was put away to do something more interesting :-). After many months the stitching was finally done (July 2012) and this is a detail picture of how the back looked like:

And this is how it looked from the front:

Finally it was time to play. I pinned the fabric on top of a foam board and opened several Lumiere paint bottles, shimmering pearl, blue, turquoise and a bit of pale green. This is how it looked after the painting:

And now the fun part, removing all the stitches and ironing it. At last you could see how it was going to look:

Time to start quilting. As the main focus of this top was lines (and this was months before I decided to work with this theme) the quilting lines just followed the painted lines. Interesting, but it needed a bit more. I decided on adding turquoise beads on it. But before I could add these, the quilt had to be blocked and sleeve added as well. I did not want a traditional border around it, but decided to do a facing. This made the quilt a bit narrower, but that was okay. When this was done I ordered several different types of turquoise beads - and of course did not use all the different ones - and this is how it looks now:

From beginning to end it almost took 2 years to complete it, but I am happy with it. The title Silent Water refers to the reflection you see on water, not knowing that the falling beads will disrupt the silence quite soon. Who said that lines were boring? :-)
This quilt is the first one in my series of Lines. Size is 17"x37".

Mixed media show

Coming Saturday Fabrications Nine opens in Zumbrota MN, a mixed media show in which I have 5 pieces. If you are in the neighbourhood, I would suggest visit it. Besides my work there is work of 26 other artists.

 

Finally

Finally is the only proper title for this quilt:-). Long time ago - early 2010 - I started working on this quilt. Together with a couple of friends we all made 10 different canal houses using our own hand dyed fabrics. When they were completed, we swapped them all out so that each had her own set of houses. I am now talking about early 2011. During that year I started quilting each house independently and then life happened. The canal houses ended up into a big bag in my studio. And here they stayed for another long period. Shame on me. Finally earlier this year I started stitching them together and last week I completed the last embellishments on them. And now at last it is hanging. This was another reason for delay because the whole quilt measures 92"x32" and I had to reorganise some stuff to find a hanging space that big. The size is also the reason that I could not get a proper picture from the front. The only way I could get the whole quilt on a picture was by standing in the door of the guest room and take the picture from that angle.

 

 

Here are some details of the houses:

 

It has taken quite some time but I am glad the the Amsterdam canal houses are finally finished. Besides my own house, there are houses in this street which are made by Kate, Sheila, Dawn, Karen, Kelly, Ellen and Gena.

Text

As every month I worked on a quilt for Sky is the Limit. The theme for November was Text (me). My first idea was to use something with auto-correct, but that looked too static. For who does not know what auto-correct is, when you type in a text message in your phone, your phone suggests words while you are typing. Quite often those words are not the ones you want and can give a whole different meaning to what you are typing. Can you imagine how those messages turn out if you use both Dutch as well as English on your phone ????
Anyway, I was not happy with how this looked, so I had to take a different route. While I was at Kelly I had used her Egyption hieroglyph stamp to stamp on some fabric. I decided to use that, but had to find other text as well. In my studio I found a background which I made a couple of years ago which still needed some applique on it. On google I found inspiration in the mean of a dancing couple and with some word bubbles I came to this quilt. Text - or in general communication - is so important that it can be very akward if you do not understand the other party. Speaking the same language is essential. This is the idea behind my quilt for this month.
All the fabrics used are my own hand dyed ones. And as always the size is 12"x12". Now I only have to find a title for this quilt.

ALQS7

As I mentioned a couple of months ago, I participated in the ALQS7 quiltswap organised by Kate. The quilt I made for this swap:

 

is on it's way to Australia to Andrea. And this is the beauty I received from Sabine in Germany:

 

 

Kate, I want to thank you for organising this swap and no doubt there will be a next one in the future. If you want to participate, check out Kate's blog on a regular base.

And one more tree

Here is the latest tree I made. The picture is not the best, in reality it is square and not like the picture shows. As with my other trees I used hand dyed / painted fabric for it and a facing. This one is called Weeping Willow.
More trees will follow in the future, although I have to admit at the moment I am not working on one. Some other commitments and ideas for shows will have to be done first :-).

Update

It has been some time since I last wrote on this blog, but that does not mean that I have been idle :-). I completed several of the tree quilts I started last month, as you can see on the following pictures:  

Besides the 3 finished ones, I am still working on 2 other ones as well. After those 5  I am certain that more will follow as I have more ideas for these funky trees.

Usually I do a 4-part binding on my quilts, but recently I have been playing with different types of 'edge finishing' . After all, a strip around the quilt can reduce the impact of the quilt. Here is a close up of the spiral tree quilt:

As you see there is nothing at the front which shows of the binding. When the top was complete, I measured the back of the quilt and marked the 12"x12" size with a black marker. Next step was to cut away the backing and the batting. This is a tricky step as it is very easy to cut into the top fabric as well. Now there are 2 ways of continuing. If there is enough fabric from the top, it is a matter of measuring this and folding it back. In my case there was only a few millimeters of fabric so I had to add 4 strips, one to each side. These strips I stitched to the top,  folded them to the back so that the stitch line was exactly at the edge of the quilt. I pinned this down and hand stitched it to the back, as you can see on this detail picture:

 This new technique made me realize that in future I have to cut the top fabric a bit bigger. It is much easier to just fold back the 4 sides than adding strips to it :-).

Reworked

Sometimes when you are not satisfied with what you have created, it can be worth to pick it up and rework it. Originally this was a journal quilt using felt and metal. The background was black fabric, but the total composition was not really to my liking. But what exactly was wrong, was difficult to pin point. So I decided to do something drastic :-). I removed the background and painted a canvas with a pink metallic. The flash of the picture does not really give a good color idea, but the color of the left bottom is the most accurate. On this canvas I stitched the woven top. And I have to say it looks much better now. In the picture you cannot see much difference between the felt and the canvas - especially at the top -, but the color contrast is more like it is in the lower area of the canvas. Now at least I can hang this instead of hiding it in a pile :-). If you are interested in it, it is available for sale through Galleriba - see right bar.

Compositions

As I mentioned in my previous blog post I was not happy with the result of the blue composition. The shapes were not as defined as I wanted them to be. I have some textured felt in my stash and this I used for the shapes. Okay, it is not what I wanted to de - make the negative space the focus - but the way it is now, I like it much more :-). And it gives me a reason to make another Composition.

Compositions

Making Compositions is becoming a serious addiction LOL. Here are my latest ones:

For the yellow/green one I crunched a commercial batik when it was wet. Placed it like that on my ironing board and pressed it with the hot iron. Normally you iron to get the wrinkles out of fabric, this time I wanted them. When the fabric was dry, I ironed bondaweb under it, cut into the shapes I wanted. Cut out these shapes and fused them to the quilted background. Last step was to stitch them to the quilt. I am happy with how the final result is.
With the blue one I am not happy. This one was supposed to focus on texture as well. I zapped a piece of blue lutrador, cut out the shapes and quilted this onto the light blue background. Because of the zapping the shapes of the circles and lines is not well defined so I added stitchlines to put more emphasis on the shapes. Still not looking good. The zapped effect gives a bit of a textured effect, but the quilt is as flat as a pancake. But I have an idea which can change it. Stay tuned for the next blog post. Hopefully I can create the textured effect I am thinking of :-)/

Cubism wine is finished

And here is the finished result of Cubism. I called it Cubism Wine. As you can see because of the squaring up, I lost part of the wine glass stems at the top and the left of the quilt. That is a point of attention I have to keep in mind for whenever in the future I use narrow objects close to the edges.

If you want to see how you can make a Cubism drawing, check out this link. It looks so easy, but no doubt is more difficult in reality: http://www.ehow.com/video_8040264_draw-cubism-art.html

Cubism

Cubism was the subject of the latest lesson of Pamela Allen's class. And although the Cubism paintings look so simple, making a Cubism composition is very hard to do. At least it is for me :-).

The first picture shows my starting position. Well starting position is the proper word, because a lot had to be done to it to make it Cubism style.

 First of all, it was too empty. More repitition was needed and the composition was too flat. I started with cutting the top into pieces. Oh boy, that is scary. The first cut was through the wine glass from top right to bottom left. I moved one part a bit higher than the other one and it looked already much better. Sorry, but I forgot to take a picture of that. The second cut was from top left to halfway bottom right. I used some of the cut of fabric and added some more green. Also I added more wine glasses and more grapes. And I changed some of the colors of the word wine. After these changes the composition looked much better:

 But it needed some more definition for which I added a piece of black fabric at the left. This really showed of the glasses much better. With this composition I am happy. I have started quilting it and will show the results later on.

Compositions

Making these compositions is addictive :-). Here are my two latest additions:

Both of them are different than the black/white ones I showed earlier. Not only are they in color, but I changed the size of the big circle and some of the shapes are now overlapping. In stead of commercial fabrics this time I used hand dyed/painted only. The background of the top one is a confetti / ice cubed dyed piece of which I was not really happy with, but in combination with the very dark red fabric it comes out well. I do not remember anymore how the fabrics for the second one were made as I picked these out of my stash. Again size of these quilts is 12"x12".

Compositions

Working in series can get very addictive :-). Not only did I start a series with trees, but as you can see from the pictures here, also one on abstracts:

As they are the first of a series, I have called them Composition 1 (black background) and Composition 2 (white background). Size is 12"x12". And as I recently joined Galleriba, they are for sale. Maybe an - early - idea for the coming December month?

working in series

I am taking several on line classes at the moment - yeah overlapping in time - about working in series and when something like this happens, the subject pops up everywhere. Even in Pam's class - which is actually not on working in series, a series developed :-) Here are some starting points for tree quilts.

At the moment they are only pinned or glued, so maybe I will make some changes to them. And no doubt more will follow :-). All tops are 12"x12".

SAQA

My quilt collection keeps growing :-). I also managed to buy this one:

It is made by Tiziana Tateo - an Italian artist I have not heard off before - and is called 'Alice'.