Tag: art quilt

Feather Overboard

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I am happy to say that the Charity Quilt I was working on last week,  is done.  Yeah!!  I think that I put over 60 hours into that baby.

I wanted to do something special for the Guild and give back something ,so hopefully, they will like it.

Here are some more of the completed blocks:

Cube-with feathers.

Cube-with feathers.

Again, more feathers.  They fill a space so easily and look so good.

Less feathers this time.

Less feathers this time.

I tried to mix up the stitching a little but still keep the designs the same over all the quilt.

One of my favorite blocks

One of my favorite blocks

Just a few more blocks to go.

This one reminded me of a picture frame.

This one reminded me of a picture frame.

More feathers.

More feathers.

And finally, we come to the inside border.  To be quite honest, I didn’t know what to stitch in this area.  I felt all my creative juices were stretched already so….

guess what I put in that area?

You got it…. more feathers!!

Inside border-yes, feathers!

Inside border-yes, feathers!

I know, I have a serious problem.

inside border area

inside border area

I really hope that the person who wins this quilt really likes feathers.

Whew!  Life seems a little boring after being so engrossed in completing this quilt on time.  I feel a littel deflated but yet excited, all at the same time.

Now, I can actually work on something for ME.  What a novel thought.

To change up this “feather” update, I will show you an art quilt that  I created after taking a class, last year, with Elizabeth Alexander.  She is an amazing art quilter!

My piece is of trillums growing in the pine forest near my house.

The photo is one that I took and Elizabeth helped me with everything:  placement and size of the Trillums,

color of fabrics to use, and how to lay out the whole design.

It was quite a challenging class but I learned alot.  I think it turned out ok.

What do you think?

Trillum art quilt

Trillum art quilt.

A few more  close up photos of the Trillum art quilt.

Flanges made to resemble fallen pine branches.

Flanges made to resemble fallen pine branches.

Originally I had made flanges out of grey fabric but they were ugly so I had to rip them off and make new ones-alot better!

Large Trilum

Large Trilum

The Trillums were made different sizes, just to add interest to the piece.  Tulle was used to create the shadow behind the flower.

If you look closely, you can see that there are pine needles stitched in, hanging down from the flanges.

And beads were added to represent the sunlight glimmering in the trees and on the pine needles on the ground.

Maybe my artistic side will grow a little  from this exercise. Here’s hoping!

Have a good week!

Ruth

Playing Catch Up.

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Hi again,

I hope that you had a good week.  Easter is quickly approaching and I was panicking yesterday about not having a turkey yet.  As usual, the grocery store had lots so I am not so far behind in preparing for this upcoming weekend.

Again, I am trying to catch up on orders that are coming in-which is a great thing;  no complaining here.

For those new to my blog, I am a longarm quilter.  It has been 8 years now since I began this journey.  There is always so much to learn, practice, see and do.  It never gets old or boring-too many techniques to try  and learn.

This past week saw me completing 3 customers’ quilts so I am catching up somewhat.

Here is one that Nathalie completed, just in time for spring.

Nathalie's Spring Quilt

Nathalie’s Spring Quilt

Nathalie is a new quilter.  She wanted something for spring and this fits the bill perfectly.  The middle of the blocks have flowers in them and I quilted leaves all over the top to finish off the piece.  Very nice indeed, Nathalie!

As I mentioned before, here are some of my completed art quilts.

The first two are of  the tip of a peacock’s feather.  Isn’t it amazing how something so common can be turned into art? Again, Susan Brubaker Knapp is the designer of this piece.

Peacock feather using Tsueniko Inks.

Peacock feather using Tsueniko Inks.

Here I am using Tsueniko Inks to paint the feather onto the white fabric. As you can see, the paint bled into some of the neighbouring colors- not quite sure if I did something wrong there. Maybe I should have waited for one color to dry first and then painted the next color.

Stitching was then added for the details of the feather.  Not bad but lots of room for improvement here. The next one is a little better.

Peacock feather using Jacquard paints.

Peacock feather using Jacquard paints.

Here is the same feather but using different paints. I really like these paints- they’re very bright, easy to work with and thick.  My only dislike was that it makes the fabric very stiff when the paint dries.  Pellon was used to stabilize the

piece so that it would not become distorted with all that stitching added to it.  I like this one the best out of the 2 that I completed.

Which one do you like the best?

I also tried another subject for thread sketching.  Can you guess what this is?

The proverbial apple.

The proverbial apple.

Again, Susan Brubaker Knapp is the designer.  Pieces of fabric were fused onto the cream background.  I think that I used red and yellow, that was it. Then, all the stitching was added and the thread colors and the stitching created the

shading and the shadows.  I think that I used some colors of thread that I would never had thought about before.  For instance, there is purple thread in there and brown, not black was used for the shadow-I think

that black may have been too harsh or extreme of a color for that area.  It was a fun thing to do and you always learn something when it is finished.

One last picture:

Frilly bag

Frilly bag

Our local school is holding a fundraiser in June so I had to put this in the silent auction section.  It is a frilly bag that I just had to make.   Hopefully some young girl will think so too. There are cats hiding out under the frills.

Have a great Easter and don’t eat too much turkey or chocolate.

Ruth