Improvisational Surface Design

Very rarely do I abandon other projects to work on something new. Recently, an opportunity presented itself that caused me to work on something unexpected. This recently happened because of a challenge posed by the Improv group of the Portland Modern Quilt Guild. The July prompt was 'Surface Design'. My piece incorporated both improvisational quilting and surface design. This piece is mainly green because I am also working in a series with color as the focus. It felt like green should be used this time. 

This project inspired me to try a bunch of different things in one piece. For me, this is part of the fun. What starts as an experiment with materials to learn how they work together becomes an exploration of techniques and outcomes.

The first step was to see how a variety of media would work with this stencil on a piece of PFD Kona cotton. The Stabilo chunky pencils and the Derwent Inktense pencils worked as expected with no bleeding. Once the Inktense pencils and Inktense blocks were activated with GAC 100 the color did move. The Crayola Fabric, Marvy, Sharpie Stained, and Jacquard Tee Juice markers bled slightly but were easy to control. The Dye-na Flow is more challenging to control. I use water brushes filled with the dye and this can saturate the fabric quickly.

Next, after digging in my scrap box, I found several strips to sew together. Then, Pellon fusible web was applied to the back and a circle was cut using an Accuquilt die. This process was repeated on the stenciled piece. In order to have some variety with the circle sizes and fabrics, I used a set of smaller circle dies (Hero Arts) that are usually used with paper. They worked great. Both the large pieces and the additional smaller ones were attached to a larger piece of solid white fabric. Additional stenciling of circles and partial circles offers visual continuity. Adding stitched circles to the piece continued the theme. These circles were made with an embroidery sewing module using a wide range of thread colors.

I got a little carried away with adding circles and the finished quilt was too busy for my liking. It measures about 16 x 17 inches. The picture above shows it on my design wall.

Close up

The busy little quilt needed to be mounted onto a solid background to give it some space. After auditioning a number of options, I decided to use a previously painted wood panel, measuring 24" square. The sides are now painted black. I layered a piece of batting and black fabric together and quilted it enough to hold it together. The edges were turned prior to quilting. Then I attached the small art quilt to it and glued the entire thing onto the wooden frame.

The finished piece on a blue wall in my kitchen

Next month's prompt is "Sunshine". I am excited to try something with Tyvek for this challenge. What encourages you to work outside your normal process?

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Products Used:

Inktense Blocks

Inktense Pencils

GAC 100

Stabilo Woody 3 in 1 Pencils

Crayola Fabric Markers

Marvy Fabric Markers

Sharpie Stained Markers

Jacquard Dye-na Flow

Pentel Water Brushes

Jacquard Tee Juice Markers

Extra Deep Cradle Panel

Bullseye Circle Dies

Studio 2 Fabric Cutter

Hero Arts Circle Infinity Dies

Hero Arts Stacked Circle Stencil

Hero Arts - Stencils - Stacked Circles
Scrapbook.com

Cat Hand Tree Collage Quilt

 You may be saying, "What in the world is a Cat Hand Tree Collage Quilt?" or possibly, "Why would anyone want one?"  I wanted to make an original collage quilt. It started as a tree. I feel like there is some powerful symbolism in hands and like to incorporate them in my work when I can. And, I have a lot of cat fabrics. And that is the shortish answer to those questions.

Emerson As A Pillow

Many years ago, I took a collage quilt class with Laura Heine and made a very cute puppy, named Emerson. Her use of bright colors fused together makes for a happy project. The pattern is available through her website, here.  It was patterned as a wall hanging but I turned mine into a pillow and see it every day, as he sits on the mudroom bench. 

Tree Collage Quilt

Using the collage technique, that I sort of remembered from the class, I drew a tree-like shape and then searched for fabrics in my stash to cut up. Rainbow colors are always fun to use and ROY G BIV placement is usually successful.  

Some help

My cat routinely tries to supervise. Does it look like there is a halo over his head? He is not as angelic as he appears and, in fact, moved some of the pieces around when flicking his tail.

Cat Tree Collage Quilt

For my first attempt at an original collage design, I am not unhappy with it. 

Thanks for stopping by today!

Sometimes I just want to sew!

I just want to sew something!

There are times when I just want to sit at my sewing machine and mindlessly run the fabric under the presser foot. I do not want to have to think too hard about what I am making. Nor do I want to pay attention to a technique that is more challenging than a straight stitch on a straight seam! This does not happen frequently, but when it does I like to use up scraps of fabric and make "new" fabric by sewing small pieces together. And then, of course, I usually cut them up again to make a quilt or maybe even potholders.

Sewing a one-block quilt

Alternatively, I will use a simple quilt block and repeat it to make a quilt.  Oftentimes, I make them out of scraps. And almost always I use the fabric from my stash. This quilt is an example of the same simple block repeated with different colors, to make it a bit more interesting. It was a very quick and easy quilt because I used a steel die from Accuquilt to cut the Tumblers and then quilted it with an allover quilt pattern that I purchased from Urban Elementz. The binding was made from a new fabric but the rest have been around for a (long) while.

Quilted with Apex 2 Design from Urban Elementz

If this quilt looks familiar, that is because it is the second one I made using a rainbow colorway. I posted about the original (here) and another, scrappy one using the same die last summer. Those two were made for charity. The one above, my teen-aged daughter claimed. 

More fun ways to 'just sew'

Making a fabric collage - of sorts

This past February, the Portland Modern Quilt Guild hosted Tricia Royal. I was fortunate enough to get a spot in her virtual class and learned new ways of using up small pieces of fabric. She introduced me to another way to just sew without too much pre-planning. I loved the class and was very inspired by her work. We made two small pieces. I combined them because I loved the busyness of one of them and the open, negative space of the other.

Quilted shapes

The photo below shows the two pieces, one on top of the other, prior to me quilting them together.

Layered pieces

Thank you for stopping by today. It has been a long break for me, from blogging. I was not ready to share what has been keeping me busy. Partly because this has been a time of introspection and re-grouping for me. I have a few more projects that I have worked on over the past few months, which I will post soon. Sending you all lots of love and light.

Beverly

Creative Roundup - Lots of Photographs

For lack of a better post title, the following is some of what I have been doing the last few months.

Dyeing scarves

Chenilled a puppy quilt from hand dyed flannel

 The puppy quilt was for the little fellow pictured below.  We got him from a rescue and he turned out to be sick.  I spent several weeks tending to him and cleaning up the evidence of his tummy troubles.  I am happy to report that he is doing great, now. 

 

New Puppy

 It has been a long time since I dyed fabric, maybe more than a decade! The process is really fun.  It was nice to ease back into it with some scarves and a little bit of cotton yardage. Because of the dyeing success, I decided that I would like to try painting on fabric. This shirt was very plain and off-white is not a very flattering color for me. Jacquard paints to the rescue!

Fabric painting with Stencil Girl stencils

Front of shirt was done with a tiny stencil from the March Stencil Girl Club set that I moved around a lot to make it into a flower-like shape. The back was from another stencil from March's Club set.

Back of shirt painted with Jacquard Dye-Na-Flow

There isn't a lot of continuity in my workflow, but here is some more evidence of how I spent my time since the start of the year.

 

Art quilt bed topper for my mother's 80th birthday

 The bed topper pictured here was a work based upon what I thought were important moments or objects that formed part of my mother's life. Like so many things in life, it isn't the entire story, but hopefully part of a good story.

Freehand cut orchid applique for the quilt

3 dimensional aspects to the quilt include this little pillow

Photos printed on fabric make up part of the background

 

My helper needed to pre-fur it 

 For the most part, I feel the time was well spent.  It is nice to be able to spend time following creative pursuits.

And playing with animals.

 

Happy Puppy

House cat playing with daughter

 
Thank you for visiting!
Beverly