Even bad photos help…

I’m trying to make decisions about my next project. I’ve found it very informative to use my camera to help with those decisions, especially since I am notoriously bad at decisions anyway! This part of the design wall has the least light in my studio, but I took dark pictures rather than move everything. It works…I can tell what’s what and where.

Black and white—the blocks are the results of an exercise I did with my wacky quilt group and I really like them.I’ve actually even got a title for the piece and it’s not even sewn! I’m calling it My Eight Days This Week. At first, I wanted to screen paint designs on top of the black and white. I held off on that because I really don’t have a design that looked ‘right’ on top of the black and white. I may do some thread work along those lines.

My eight days are spaced on a twelve block grid, so I have four spaces to fill.

First selection option: black and white graphic prints, separated with a bright orange sashing?

Next: saturated orange/red blocks of color, with or without an orange border?

I’m leaning towards the bright orange blocks, but I DO  love black and white graphics…

The one thing that even bad photos can’t do is make the actual decision for me. They only help me to see what I like better. Deciding is never easy for me. I do welcome your comments and opinions, even if you hate orange!

Hypotheses Pretty Well Proved

I was determined to find out if my recent problems with my sewing machine truly were a thread issue or if I had a machine issue. I tried a bunch of different threads with my “challenging” sewing machine today.

Not one bit of breakage or skipping.

The machine just does not like thread that is slightly thicker…or I didn’t find the right settings to make it happy. But after fiddling with it for half a spool of thread, I’m pretty sure there are NOT any settings that would work. So, I will resign myself to the fact that my higher speed machine can’t eat the thick thread correctly and will have to stick with a diet of low-fat thread…but that leaves a whole bunchof thread to happily choose from!

And nice to know that I really can manage my machine. It’s just my threads that need more adjusting than I thought.

Uh-oh–baaaad quilting!

I used a machine that had an automatic thread cutter when I was quilting my last piece. So, so easy to just push that button and have the thread cut.

However, that leaves short threads to start the next spot. DO NOT try to back stitch when starting the next spot, particularly in the middle of a section. This is what you get, and these pictures are after some of the thread piles have been trimmed!

It’s real messy on the back of this piece and this, combined with all the stops and starts from the thread breakage, make this a technically baaaaaad piece of work. But visually, I still really like it and you don’t see the back when it’s hanging on the wall. I believe it will be staying in my ‘personal collection’ and there may be another version in the future…without all the technical problems!

Doesn’t look too bad laying on the grass, does it?

Quilt As You Go

Yesterday was spent finishing the quilting on the three sections of my Scrapbox City project. I had so much thread breakage and skipped stitching on the machine that I use for quilting that I just walked away for a while in frustration. After all the problem solving solutions that I know to try, I finally came to the conclusion that that machine just does not like that thread. I’m about ready to declare that machine a paperweight, except that when it works, it’s so wonderful! Okay–enough griping! Between my two machines, the quilting is done.

I kept my quilting quite simple. Spiral boxes in the “buildings” and straight lines on the white background.

Now it’s time to join the sections using the Quilt As You Go technique, as shown by Marianne at The Quilting Edge. I’m joining the sections with narrow strips. The top (white) strip is 2″ wide and the back (plaid) section is 1 1/4″ wide. The length of each section is 56″, so that’s how long I cut the strips. That should prevent any unwanted stretching on the sides.

By the way, I’m not going to reproduce Marianne’s tutorial here. I’m just going to show you my in-progress pictures. Her tutorial is the place to go if you really want to learn this technique.

Attach both the pieces to the first section.

Join the back piece to the second section.

Press front and back. And this shows that tiny little gap when the seam allowances should be meeting. I’ll take a tiny bit more generous 1/4″ seam allowance on the next one. I used quite a few pins at every step, just to be sure my edges lined up top and bottom.

Press the front section over and topstitch. This is what the front and back look like when they are joined this way.

I quilted a couple of additional lines right down that front section and you can barely tell where the sections are joined…back, too!

Repeat for as many sections as you have!

Ready to bind!!

What did I learn? It’s just as easy to join big sections as it is smaller blocks, but it’s harder to get accurate squaring up with long pieces. That fabric can stretch a lot but it’s also forgiving when you need it to be! That this made quilting so much easier, because I could do it in small sections. That if I wanted to add more to this, it would be easy to do. That I love this technique and I’ll be doing more of it! It’s integrated into the design and that’s what makes me like this technique over many of the others that are out there.
Please give it a try and I really want to thank Melody Johnson at Fibermania and Marianne at The Quilting Edge for introducing me to this technique!

I’m linking this to Nina-Marie’s blog, too.

Today’s beading lesson is…

Outlining–creating a nice, smooth curve–not as easy as I thought it would be. There is, of course, more than one way of doing this, but I have chosen to use a backstitch. It feels like I’ve done about 20 miles of outlining on this piece and I still make errors.

Part of the problem is that I’m beading on an already quilted piece, scrunched up as I work, so the surface is not nice and smooth. The ideal technique is to thread on your beads, snug them up to the previously set beads and insert your needle straight down.

When you are holding that scrunched up, quilted piece, often at a weird angle to reach the center of the quilt, you sometimes lift the beads a little and your needle gets off target.

For me, it’s usually too close to the previous beads and that results in beads sticking up and not laying nicely in a smooth row. A smidge too much thread is better!

Sometimes it looks worse while you are working on it. When you smooth out your piece, the lines smooth out, too! If they don’t, there are a couple of solutions. You can get out your pliers and crush a bead or two to give the others more room to lay flat. You can take out your beading and re-do it more carefully. Or you can leave it alone and live with it. That’s my choice on this piece, because in the overall picture, it’s not really that noticeable!

But when you get those nice smooth lines…

sweet!

Wacky Quilters Today

Yes, I know, the group is really the Knot Even Quilters, but I still think of our beginnings when we were a tiny group doing wacky work! Not many people in the area were interested in art quilts, so we were really the oddballs. I’m not saying that we aren’t still oddballs, but there is a lot more interest in art quilting now.

We have been trying to inform ourselves of design principles and apply them to our work. Today we did a black and white exercise, to use just those colors, mostly lines, some shapes and curves and make designs. No color distractions.

I didn’t take pictures of everyone’s finished projects…just a couple, but I love the exercise!

So I took my black and white as far as I could…at least as far as I had fabric cut for! I happened to have 8 fat eighths of white, and I decided to just make them all up with black.

As I was making them, I decided that it was an 8 Day Week, either a series of little pieces or a set of ‘blocks’ for a larger piece. I’m fantasizing about what else I might want to do with them. Like screen print a design or pattern over the top of each one, in a single color or a different color for each one. Or add an identical ‘something’ to each one, maybe a fancy bead or a colored shape or perhaps the same type of stitching…for a simple little design exercise, this has given me a wealth of ideas.

It was a happy wacky quilters day!

Paint in a Bag…can’t get enough!

As promised, here are the results from my paint in a bag experiments. I am totally hooked on this simple little technique now. Immediate gratification is part of it—there is none of the chemical process of mixing as when using dyes. Much less control of the results, still have to wait for the fabric to dry, but it’s just fun!

Smaller piece in the bag first, not too damp, bright results! Larger piece, quite damp, lots of squishing and moving around and I added a little blue, but there was no added paint in the original colors. Just used what was left from the first piece.

The pieces on the left are kind of interesting, and I got the resulting horizon-like lines just from rolling the fabrics in plastic while they dried. The fabric was quite wet and paint looks like it migrated to the lowest level while drying. I will try to do this on purpose next time!

The paler fabric on the right was left in a scrunched up pile to dry and again the paint migrated to the lowest level and left some cool texture lines.

This next piece of fabric was not done in a bag. It began as a damp piece of fabric.

Then I folded it loosely in pleats and ran it through the paints on my palette to clean it off!

After running the folds through the paint on the palette, I spread the fabric out over the palette and kind of squished it around to pick up whatever paint was left. Great way to use every bit of paint and clean up, too!

Then I used some of my already ‘bagged’ fabric and stamped on them. Remember the bright fabric from the other day that I wanted to stamp with a fern? Well, I found a stencil and used it to achieve the effect I wanted.

This will probably end up as a thread sketched and beaded pocket on a tote bag!

I love this next little stencil and just wanted to use it–on anything. I like the result, but don’t have a plan in mind, yet.

Last little stamping…

And then……….I was too tired to do any more!!!! But it was tired with a smile!

Planned Play

Whenever I experiment with something new in the studio, I refer to it as playing. Today was open studio at USArtquest and I knew that it was going to be one big experiment for me, so definitely a play day. However, I had a plan for what I wanted to learn more about…paint on fabric.

Duplicating an earlier effort, just to see if I could!

Stencil, stamp and fine liner design–things that I don’t have much experience with and really wanted to explore in greater depth. But there are always so many distractions when working in a small space with lots of other artists…it’s hard to concentrate on your own work when you want to see what everyone else is doing. I’m feeling pretty proud of myself–I did a bit of all that I wanted, but look what else I  saw…

Kat Campau was one of the artists working today and she brought in black and white drawn and stitched funky animals and worked on painting them. They turned out so cool! It’s one of those ideas that you say, “I wish I had thought of that!”

Someone else was working with a Gelli Plate when Sue came bouncing in with some brand new, just-came-in-the-mail stamps! They put them to use right away and came up with some great prints, but of course I didn’t get pictures of those. However, I did manage to take pics of the stamps themselves and I really like them. Large, soft acrylic and interesting designs…

There are some pieces of fabric drying right now that I can’t wait to see. I did some more paint in a bag, lots of water and soft colors on most of them. Added some stamps to other previously painted fabrics and I’ll show you what I get tomorrow! Just the thought of two play days in a row is going to my head…hasn’t happened in way too long. Woooo-hooooo!

New Beginnings

Since I have not been extremely active in my studio for soooooo long, I almost feel as though I am starting a whole new chapter in my life. I’m planning on exploring in two directions, that may overlap in many instances. Just sitting here typing up my intentions gets me itching to go!

Series are often talked about and definitions debated, but I’m of the opinion that a series is any body of work that you feel is connected! That’s what I’m planning…a series using more solids, my normal improv techniques and putting them together with traditional designs. The other direction is to explore more surface design, painting, stamping, inks, hand stitching and beads, of course.

Now, just talking about this isn’t getting it done! But it does help me to define what I need to do when I get off this computer and get down in the studio. Ready, set, go!!!!!!!

How disappointing…I went through my stash to get all my solids and start working with them. THIS is what I found, including a few tone-on-tones and barely there batiks and two sets of hand-dyed gradations.

I just don’t have solids. This either means a shopping trip or a dye day. Hmmm….so for today I worked with paint and I’ll tell you all about that in the next post.

Mixed Media Weekend

I’m the program chair for my local guild and this weekend was my first “duty weekend.” Our guild has a workshop on Friday, a lecture at our Saturday meeting and a workshop on Sunday. My responsibilities on the guild weekends include making sure the instructor gets to the right place at the right time, gets fed, gets help with anything she might need. I decided that for this first one I would not try to take the workshops, too! That was a good decision.

The guild meeting also gave me a chance to work on making powerpoint presentations. I’m not too experienced there, but I made one for our summer program and one to present all of this year’s workshop instructors. I was more nervous about that than anything and they worked just like they were supposed to…whew!!

Workshop fun…

Our instructor was Sherry Peterson of SLKP Designs.

During class I had time to work on my own stuff so I got a big backlog of paperwork type stuff done. It feels good to be caught up with that.

Chatted with the woman who photographed our quilt show and she sent me some shots of one of my quilts…the quilt I love the most because it’s a beaded piece. So happy to have her good photos!

See what I mean about a mixed media weekend, though. A little bit of everything.

I even had time to work on another sample piece for my upcoming beading class. Almost done…

This has been fun–like a 3 day retreat–and I get to do it 5 times more this year. There is a lot of work that goes into coordinating everything, but our guild has been doing this a long time so the template for how everything works is very well set.

However, when Monday comes, I’ll be glad to get back to my own little studio!