Best art/experiments of 2014

This week I have been looking at some blogs that re-cap their favorite projects of the year and I thought it was a great idea.  Then I got somewhat depressed because I didn't feel like I have been very productive this year. 

I figured I could find at least a few projects to highlight, and went through my blog posts for this year. Looking through my posts actually made me feel like I had accomplished a lot, especially since we moved to a different state this summer and we have been spending a lot of time on home renovation projects. So here are my highlights...

Here are my favorite experiments from 2014:

Marbling on fabric

Sunprinting with branches and leaves

Sunprinting on interfacing with stencils

Painting over a quilt

Textile art (inspired by the Cas Holmes class I took in the spring)

Here are my favorite finished projects from 2014:

Fabric/paper collage

 

 

 

Coral art quilt

Storage box with gelli prints

Gelli printing

These are just the best examples of these techniques and art pieces. I really enjoyed gelli printing this year and have a home decor project lined up for a gelli printed collage.  I also would like to complete a lot of my unfinished projects in 2015 as well.  The basement renovation should be complete around the end of January and then I can move into my studio space and unpack all my supplies. We also will be done with home renovations for a while, so I hope to have more time for making art as well.

Wishing you all a great New Year!

Painted art quilts

I have a bunch of ice dyed fabrics, but was kind of stumped what to do with them.  I thought I'd make some quilts (roughly 16"x 20") and brayer paint on them.  Could be a tragedy, or could be cool, right?

Here is my first one, I really hate this Jade Green color. I do not free motion quilt very often, and I can tell how rusty I am, on these jaggedy looking swirls.  I drew one line of the swirls before I started quilting (not that it helped), but I didn't have much of a plan other than that.

I did measure these circles vertically so they would go from big to small (I drew lines with spacing at about 1 3/4" at one end and 1" at the other), but did not draw the circles ahead of time, or the horizontal spacing.

Here is my work station. I just brayered the paint on. I did not clean the brayer between colors. This took a lot of paint. The amount shown in this picture is laughable, it would probably only cover 2" x 2".

It looks pretty cool.

Here are the swirls. I really like it and think my swirls look better painted, for some reason. When I started, I thought I'd make them white with a hint of color, but I really liked the mix of colors. I may add more paint, and/or hand stitching.

Here are the circles. I do like the mix of colors, but find the pattern kind of boring.  I am thinking of making a much smaller art quilt and mounting it in the middle, leaving about a  4" border all around.

I really like the look of these, but I am somewhat sad that more of the ice dyeing isn't visible. I thought more of it would show adjacent to the stitched lines.

I already have two more quilts made, but think I will try another technique with them, maybe break out the Shiva paint sticks for those.

What do you think?  Do you think the swirly one needs a bit more work?

Updating the color on a whole cloth quilt

I had made this whole cloth quilt two or three years ago.  They are supposed to be "layered" houses but the color is too uniform.  I did not include any perspective (the houses in the back should be smaller) because I want it to look like a pattern as well.

I used Elmer's washable gel glue to create resist lines, and colored the houses different colors with thickened dyes.  The problem is, I did this on a previously snow dyed piece of fabric, so the color looked very uniform and the division lines didn't stand out.   I painted the roof lines, and window and door frames with Tsukineko white ink.  The whole thing still looks flat and blah. I thought adding different patterns and textures to the houses with the white ink would help, but it didn't really do much.

I pulled out my Setacolor transparent paints and have started adding more color to the houses.  I still have some more color to add.  I am thinking I'd paint all the doors and windows the same color, and use markers and pens to add more details to the trim and roof lines. It's definitely an improvement.

Patchwork fabric backgrounds

The other day I posted my Coral art quilt but did not have pictures of the background patchwork before I attached the "coral".

I had made quite a few background pieces, while I had all these turquoise blue fabrics out, so I thought I'd show these before I added more to them.  All of these will either be cut to 16" x 20" and mounted to canvas, or will be wrapped around (a smaller) canvas. The fabrics were attached to a heavyweight muslin with a straight stitch around the edges.

I really like the coral print on this one and plan to do some hand stitching around it. 

This one is going to have a felted wool tree trunk and branches appliqued onto it.

I plan to add goldfish on this one, so it looks like a pond. The color looked a little blah since it was so solid, and the fish will be roughly the same value. I decided to add some paint to make it darker around the edges.

I used Setacolor transparent paints in sky blue and ultramarine, leaving the center area the original color. The two tan pieces are upholstery fabric and must have some kind of Scotchgard on them, as they resisted the paint.  I don't think it looks bad, but if it bothers me later, I will add some thicker opaque paint on top.

I really like the painted piece and am thinking of painting the background for the tree piece as well.

Coral art quilt

I've been working on a series, which is mainly water themed, using fabric, felt, and hand and machine sewing, etc.  I don't really consider these quilts in the true sense of the word since I don't plan to have a batting and backing fabric. I also plan to permanently mount them to canvas.

I thought I'd taken photos of the patchwork backgrounds but I couldn't find any, so I guess I forgot and will include some in a future post. I attached rectangles of fabric to a base fabric (it's either light canvas or heavy muslin). All of the fabric edges are exposed, and I just used a straight stitch to attach them, following the fabric edges.  I made about four of these patchwork backgrounds. One has coral made of red felted wool and is finished, photo posted below.  One will have a tree in winter with detailed branches, another will have koi fish, and the third has a coral stamped image on it.

For the finished coral piece, I did add batting and a backing fabric so the free-motion stitching would stand out.  I just did a wandering free-motion horizontal line with a very shiny blue/purple iridescent thread.  I then added the seaweed/plants using two colors of blue sheer polyester that I had.  I then hand stitched the coral on using a long blanket stitch.  I am glad I hand stitched the red coral since it really makes it more dimensional.  It took a long time though, and was hard on my hands with all the fabric layers I had to go through.   I then wrapped the "quilt" around a  14" x 14" canvas and stapled it to the back.  I really like the way it turned out.

Fabric collage

I am working with layering fabrics for an art piece, but I don't know if I really need to make it three layers like a standard quilt. I plan to do some free motion stitching, but the canvas is so stiff that I don't think a layer of batting will have any affect. So I am calling this a "fabric collage" since I don't consider it an art quilt.

I am mainly using fabrics that I painted on Saturday which I showed on yesterday's post. As you can see the bottom piece curves in at one end so I end up cutting it to be a rectangle. The fabric layout in this photo is the one I use. I haven't attached the three small rectangles in the middle yet.  I pinned and then sewed down the edges of all of the pieces using a straight stitch.

Here is the piece with the fabrics sewn down.  I do think I need to add the three small rectangular pieces is the middle.  In addition to the painted canvas and lace, I also included a piece of Setacolor painted polyester organza (center panel), and some ice-dyed cotton (at bottom, right side towards bottom, and 2 pcs on left side).

My original plan for the big canvas piece I used as a bottom layer was to eventually cut it and attach it to some 10" x 10" canvases, but I love how this turned out and it will remain one large piece.  I hope to do some free motion stitching soon!

Handmade Christmas pot holders

I've been having computer problems, but it's been so long since I've posted,  I decided to do what I could with our laptop. Unfortunately I don't have any photo editing software on it, so I had to use Picasa to crop and lighten photos. I do have a handful of posts to put up so will be blogging a lot this week.

Last year for Christmas, I started making hot pad holders for my Mom but they did not get finished. All they needed was binding, so once I finished them up, I decided to make some more.

 Front side, finished:

Back side shown on left:

I had made my Aunt some Christmas place mats and thought I'd pull out those fabrics and make some matching pot holders. See the place mat post here.

I already had some strips left over from the place mats, but had to cut some more. 

I sewed the strips together and ironed the seams. Then I cut on a 45 degree angle from the seams and cut 4 1/2" wide strips.  I then cut them into 4 1/2" squares.

 Here are all my squares. I played with the alignment and which square would go where.

Here is my final arrangement.  I decided the best finished size was 6 1/2" x 9". The first (purple) set was only 8" long and it left the wrist exposed, which I did not like. 6 1/2" wide let my fingers reach the side edges of the hot pad without them swimming around in the pocket. I cut two edges of my quilt top so the middle seam was still centered.

 So here are my layers: quilt top, heat resistant batting, cotton batting, back fabric and pocket (which is 16" long and folded/ironed in half, so the pocket piece is roughly 1" shorter than the rest of the pot holder).

Here are the finished pot holders. I could have done some free motion quilting on them but decided they may be more heat resistant without it.

 Back side shown on the left:

 I used this tutorial for doing the binding. There are things I liked and things I did not like about it, but it did the job. Hers looks way better than mine did. When sewing the front side, if I sewed it close to the edge of the binding, it did not catch the binding on the backside, I ended up sewing farther in from the edge than I would have liked. If anyone has a good all machine binding technique, please let me know. I did zig zag stitch all the layers together before adding the binding.

Then I made a pair for my sister. I think these are really fun. I just made a strip of different fabrics, each 2 1/2" high, width varies from 1" to 2 1/4" wide. I sewed a 3/4" strip to the top and bottom of the pieced panel, then added the larger pieces at either end. The purple ones at the top of this post were done the same way.

These were pretty quick to make and were well received at our Thanksmas (Christmas at Thanksgiving) celebration last week!

Handmade pillows for Christmas gifts

I decided to make my Mom two pillows for Christmas, back in June, when I found this dogwood (or is it magnolia?) fabric at a sewing expo.  I knew she would love this fabric.

I looked in my stash for fabrics that would go well with this. I had a bunch of "linen-look" fabric in a yellow-beige that I had inherited from a friend.  I also pulled out some fat quarters for accent fabrics and bought some dark brown as well.

Here I am auditioning the arrangement of the fabrics for the mitered corner pillow. I went with the second one as I liked the contrast of the brown with the floral.

Here are my finished pillows.

 For the mitered corner pillow, I sewed the yellow-beige, polka dot, and brown fabrics into four matching strips. Then used I used this website to figure out how to miter these to the floral fabric. The fabrics aligned pretty well with this technique.

For the other pillow, I sewed strips of my accent fabrics to together. I used the bird template from a book I got at the library. I will amend this post when I am home and will add the book name. The book is Mixed and Stitched by Jen Osborn.

I ironed fusible web on the fabrics for the bird, traced the template on each fabric (traced on the paper protection on the backside fusible web, remember this will be reverse of the finished piece) and cut them out (cutting the brown one bigger than the polka dot one). I ironed the polka dot bird to the brown one, then ironed them both to the floral fabric. I free motion stitched around both bird shapes twice (with matching thread). I then sewed this piece to the accent strip.

I backed both of the pillow fronts with Warm and White cotton batting to make them a bit more durable and stitched in the ditch at all the seams.  I then added a zipper and the the pillow backs and was done. The birdie is super cute! We are having our family Christmas this week and I am sure my Mom will love these!

Christmas quilted placemats

In the last few days, I made patchwork placemats for a Christmas gift (to be given this week).

For these placemats, I made patchwork blocks on the diagonal, which were then sewn together.  My patchwork squares were roughly 6" x 6" for a finished placemat size of 12" x 18" (six squares). This design is similar to the patchwork trivets and table runner in Quilting Arts TV episode 711.

All my fabric strips below are sorted for each block. (Yes, there is some organization here even though it doesn't look like it!)

Here are the fabrics laid out for a block.

I sewed one block.

I put the sewn block on my cardboard template, and it is wayyyyy to small.  I added a solid red fabric and cut a strip of red for each block so they would all be big enough.

Here are most of my blocks sewn and ironed.

I tried different layouts for my blocks. The instructions (that I was semi-following) said to make diamond shapes but since I had 6 blocks per placemat I only had one and a half diamonds.

I thought about putting them in a Chevron type pattern.

Here are the final results. I cut two blocks in half (for each) and moved my diamond shape to the middle.

Lovely!

12/2/2013: See here for matching hot pad holders.