Linking up today

I'm linking up today with Nina Marie Sayre's Off The Wall Friday -- here are two quilts that I've been working on.

This first one is done, so it's officially off the design wall now.  I used my hand dyed fabrics, some shibori (that I just loved making) and I finished sewing the binding on this week.

And this is a piece I'm nearly finished working on.  Just have to hand sew the facing around it, hopefully this weekend.  Both of these are pieces that I might enter in "Art Quilts Water"--the deadline for entries has been extended until November 1st, which gives me a little more time.

The blue and rust fabric is some that I rusted by wrapping around the burn barrel in my backyard a few weeks ago, then dyed it with a Mixing Blue MX dye.   

It's pretty heavily quilted now, and I'm trying to decide if the orientation of the piece should be vertical or horizontal.   I took a picture of the whole thing, but it turned out too dark, so I can't post it.

So, that's it for me this week.  I know that Monday is Columbus Day, but here in the south, it's just a regular working day.  And it's Thanksgiving in Canada, so Happy Thanksgiving to all Canadians out there!

September Free Motion Challenge

 

This month's FM challenge was presented by Paula Reid, and I really hoped it would include some trapunto, but it didn't.  The challenge was very similar to the one presented by Don Linn a few months ago, I used the technique he taught to transfer the design to my fabric (like I'm sure a lot of others did).

 

Instead if spending money on the bats that Paula used, I found a piece of rubbermaid shelf protector and cut a small piece off.

  

This worked really well, I didn't even need my gloves for quilting this small piece.  This idea wasn't mine, I had seen it a couple of years ago on some other blog.

  

 Anyway, here is my finished challenge piece, the thread I used was a buttery yellow Aurifil 50 weight, and I used a green chalk pen to transfer my design.  Once it's washed out, the yellow should should up better!

 

TGIF

Well, I'm trying to rust some fabric using the burn barrel in my yard.    I got the idea off of another blog, can't remember which one, but have been thinking about trying it for a few weeks now.  I tied some fabric around it yesterday, then sprayed it with vinegar and covered with some plastic.

The plastic blew off a couple of times before I secured it really well, I think I might leave this out there for a week or so and see what happens.  I ran out of vinegar, and went to the store to get some, plus a few more groceries.  When I got home, I couldn't find the vinegar, or some other items I bought--I left one bag at the checkout counter, apparently.  Since it's a 10-mile round trip to the store and home, I picked it up on my way to work this morning, so I can re-spritz it tonight after work.

I've been doing some experiments with textures and creating fabrics, too, using soluble stabilizer and layering pieces of fabric and stitching like crazy.  A friend of mine told me about Jan Beaney & Jean Littlejohn, who write books about creating texture, hand embroidery, and all kinds of other great stuff.    She let me borrow two of her books by them, Fragile Fabrics and Creative Embroidery, which have been inspirational.

This was my first attempt, I stopped too soon:

 This was my second attempt, I added lots more layers and some eyelash yarn and a bunch of different colors of nylon netting.  Really liking how this turned out--I definitely can see myself continuing with this.

I'm linking up to the Off The Wall Friday today, hope you check out all the links there!

Works in progress

Some pretty terrible pictures here, I apologize, but my camera is definitely on it's last legs.  This is a piece I'm making for the PAQA-South juried exhibition, which has a deadline approaching early next month.  I don't have a lot of experience entering competitive shows, but hey, you have to start somewhere.

The background is a bunch of shibori fabrics I've dyed over the last few months, and I've made around 20 leaves using my hand-dyed fabrics and satin stitching the edges--now I have to decide whether to sew them on by hand or if I should machine sew them on.  The quilt sandwich is done and quilted--maybe I should have sewn the leaves on before quilting it, or maybe I should fuse them on?

I'm not a huge fan of sewing by hand, I find it too tedious and when I sit down on the couch in the evening after work, I tend to fall asleep rather than get anything accomplished.  It's easier to stay awake after a long day at a boring job when I'm at the machine!

Here's a brief look at another piece I'm working on for the same exhibitition.  I need to start the quilting on it, but always seem to find the first stitches difficult to take.  Once I get started, I'm fine.  Do I quilt the orange sky in a wavy pattern, a straight line pattern, or go crazy with swirls and twirls?  I drew some of the various lines on the quilt top with a chalk pencil to see what might work best, but I seem to always change my mind when I actually start sewing.  (This fabric looks REALLY ORANGE here, but it isn't that bright in person).

Another project--a flower petal pillow top that I started with a blue fleece fabric.  Just have to finish the center, maybe with a yellow fleece and it's all ready for a backing fabric and a pillow form. 

Ok, and here's the reason I didn't join the Off-The-Wall Friday link-up last week, a birthday party for my granddaughter in New York that I attended, and got to spend some time with her over the long weekend.  Of course, the onesie with the "1" and the ladybug was done by Grandma.

Free motion challenge - August

I worked on this last week but only two of the pictures I took turned out.  (Think it might be time for a new camera, I'll have to put it on the list of things to get when I win the lottery).

This design was a little different, and I kept finding myself stitching it large, so I had to scale myself back and make it smaller to fit into areas that I was quilting.  It was a fast design to sew, I probably did this 30 x 30 " square in about 20 minutes.  The thread was Aurifil 50 weight on top and in the bobbin.

The stitching shows up better on the back. 

I understand why people felt this was a harder design to master, as it wasn't as intuitive as some designs are to stitch.  But we're not doing this for perfection, we're doing it for practice and to be more comfortable with free motion in general, which made it a great design for the month.  Thanks, Wendy!

Marbling experiments

About a year ago, Kathy Molatch sent a mini marbling kit for me to try it out.  There are lots of things you need in order to marble fabric, and this kit contained almost everything (alum, methocel, paints) except for the fabric and a tray or pan to do the actual marbling in.  Also, last week Jenny Williams let me watch a video she had downloaded from Quilting Arts about marbling.  It was fantastic--after watching it Friday afternoon, I really couldn't stop thinking about trying this out--by Sunday I was ready.

First, I had to find a pan big enough for marbling.  I went to Tractor Supply and found a "droppings pan" made of plastic that measures 24"x24", and it's about 3 inches deep.  This allows me to marble a piece of fabric that size, which is actually a pretty good-sized piece.  (If you're going to try this for the first time, it might be easier to start with a smaller piece of fabric, which I learned the hard way!)

I mixed the methocel according to directions and poured it into my pan.  The directions said it should set up firmly in 1/2 hour or so.  While I was waiting, I cut some pieces of fabric into 24x24" pieces, soaked them in alum, and hung them on the clothesline to dry.

After over 2 hours of waiting, the methocel hadn't set up, so I took my blender out in the garage, set it on a stool, and scooped all the liquid out of the pan a few cups at a time and blended the heck out of it.  That seemed to work, because it set up within an hour or so, and looked good. 

The Quilting Arts video said to thin your paints out half-and-half with water, so that's what I did.  I then proceeded to drop the paints on the surface of the methylcel, and nothing happened.  The paints didn't sit on the surface, they sank right to the bottom.  Different colors of paints behave differently, so I tried each one, but all of them sank to the bottom. 

I then got the idea to squeeze the little bottles of paint directly onto the surface, not water them down, and it worked.  At least the red and blue colors worked wonderfully, the black and green didn't.  The yellow had a mind of it's own. 

If you look closely at the two pictures below, the blue paint spread out into big blobs, but the green and black are just little dots that didn't do ANYTHING but sit there. 

This was my first attempt at marbling, and there are so many variables involved.  The videos make it look SO easy...it really isn't, but it was a lot of fun.

Tiny Sunset quilt

Last summer my daughter sent me this picture of a sunset on Martha's Vineyard:

I've been thinking of ways to use some of my shibori fabric (and tons of other fabric that I have dyed) and came up with this little picture (about 10" x 15").  It doesn't quite look like the photograph, however...

I got a thread-painting lesson over the weekend (thanks, Jenny!) and added a bit of it to this picture.  She showed me how to use 2 layers of a water-soluble solvy material, with tulle in the middle, and build up lots of layers.   

So, while it really doesn't look anything like the original picture, it was fun, fast, and easy (except for the thread sketching, which took a while to do).   Lots of people make smaller sample pieces before committing to a larger piece, and I think I'll start doing that, too. 

Another topic--totally different.  Jane Sassaman has a new book out, Patchwork Sassman Style, and there have been about 100 giveaways this month on blogs, but I gave up trying to win and actually bought the book last week.  For the past 2 years or so, I've been buying her fabric on clearance on-line and in stores, wherever I saw it.  

Her fabric is kind of unusual, and I think it doesn't appeal to everyone.  Large prints are kind of hard to work with sometimes, so her book is full of patterns and suggestions for using these prints--one is by finding other patterns using the two-mirror technique, as shown in the next two pictures.

Another with the fabric alone:

 And with the mirrors:

I'm not sure I'm up to this, as it looks pretty complicated.  According to Jane, it really isn't, so maybe I'll give it a shot.  I'll just have to decide on one of the patterns in the book and try it out.

Hot pink for hot days

Thank goodness I had something to work on inside this weekend.  Another day in a seemingly endless string of 100+ degree F days.  I've been wanting to make a Ricky Tims convergence quilt for a while now, and found a great piece of rainbow colored hand dyed fabric in my studio (garage) that was just waiting to be sliced up.

This technique is really simple, and goes together quickly.  It's a little busier than I would have liked, but acceptable for my first try.  Without the border, it measures around 27 x 27 inches.

For my next convergence quilt, I think I'll use a hand-dyed piece with fewer colors and see how it turns out.

Anyways, I quilted this on Sunday for the SewCalGal free motion quilting project of the month.  For July, Angela Walters had a tiled method of free motion quilting, where you divide the piece into separate "tiles" or areas and quilt each section, then move on to the next.

This was almost too easy after the last few challenges!

The thread I used was a Madeira Neon Pink in a 50 weight.  The spool was just a tiny bit too big for my machine to fit comfortably in either the vertical or horizontal position, but I finally hit on a combination that worked.  Lots of broken threads to bury.  I have to get better at burying them as I go, instead of waiting until the end.

The only picture I took of the whole piece was out of focus--that's what happens when you try to rush things at 6:00 a.m. while rushing around getting ready for work.

It's actually supposed to cool down into the 90s today and tomorrow, and maybe be in the 80s later in the week.  What a relief!

FM Quilt Challenge for June

Getting in just under the wire for this one!  I started by drawing some shapes and doodling in lines and designs like Cindy Needham suggested in the June SewCalGal FM quilt challenge...

Then I got a piece of hand-dyed fabric that was about 45" long and around 18" wide and divided it up into sections and started filling them in after sandwiching it with some batting and backing.  I started on Sunday morning, and worked on it about 5 hours that day, and wasn't anywhere near done by the end of the day. 

It seemed like an endless task--I think I used about 9-10 bobbins altogether in this piece.  Thank goodness I have some large spools of thread!  The thread here was Isacord, in a periwinkle color.  It's a very nice 50 wt. thread, and my machine really likes it.  I bought it at my LQS because they only carry the basics in Aurifil (black, white, beige) but carry hundreds of Isacord colors.

Some close-up pictures of the various designs I used.  Of course, they weren't too much like my original drawing, I like to change my mind while I'm sewing.  I kind of sketch them in with a chalk pencil so I have an idea what I'm going to do in each section.  Sometimes I follow the lines, sometimes I don't.

I sewed for about an hour before work every day this week, then at least 1-2 hours each evening.  Lots of stitches... 

  

This is the only picture that shows the true color of this piece, maybe because I've been taking pictures at either 5:30 in the morning or after 6:30 at night.  

I still have to trim it up, bind it, and wash it to get all of my chalk lines out of it.  Then I'll take a picture of the whole thing during the daylight this weekend.  It'll probably end up as a table runner, since it's definitely big enough.  This was fun, but I should have done a smaller piece!  

Too many projects

This is Leo, a foster dog I got on Saturday--he's available through the Lab Rescue of NC

As far as quilty projects, it seems that lately I'm all over the map.  

Fusing: 

Sewing: 

More sewing:

Quilting: 

And more sewing--

The only thing I forgot to take pictures of is my dyeing efforts--.

I think I have so many things going on at once because I think about making things all day at work and try to get as many started as I can on weekends when I have lots of time.