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.