Friday, November 13, 2009

Follow Me Blind

Here's a new piece I've been working on. It started as part of a 5 day Follow Me Blind Challenge on Fiber Art Traders. Each day we had directions to follow without knowing what we would be doing the next. Day one we picked a piece of fabric and had to do some sort of surface design. I just used a piece of my hand-painted fabric. The second day we layered it with batting and quilted a piece of synthetic sheer fabric to the top. Then we used a heat gun to melt the sheer. I have been wanting to try that for a long time but never got around to it until now.
Day 3 we cut it up, rearranged it and sewed it to a backing fabric. Day 4 we embellished. I beaded it and made little green x out of some silk embroidery thread. Today is day 5 and we are now supossed to put a new backing on to cover up the stitching and then fold and manipulate it into some type of vessel. I'm not going to do this since I'm not really into make vessels. Maybe if I had a place to display stuff but I don't so it would just get put away and forgotten. I think I will cut the piece out of the felt and then mount it somehow to an artists canvas. I don't know if I will get a canvas that is already stretched and paint it then attatch this or get stretcher bars and sew this to a piece of black fabric and then attatche the fabric to the stretcher bars. I'm also thinking of extending the beading and x's off of the quilt and onto the background.
I really like the way this has come out and want to try doing some more pieces like this. It looks much better in person.

Friday, November 06, 2009

More Playing


I spent some more time playing. This piece turned out sort of balh, but at least I'm playing and trying some new things. I used 2 layers of white fabric on this quilt. The bottom layer was a heavier fabric. After stitching the design and practicing more free motion quilting, I cut out the top layer of fabric from the circles. Then I dyed the quilt by applying the colors directly to the quilt surface. Once I rinsed it out, I found I had tried to use too many colors and they didn't blend well. Decided to dye the whole piece in red dye. It helped but I still didn't really like it. I decided to cut the fabric out of the "stems" don't really know what to call them. I found it interesting that the fabric that was on the bottom, didn't take the red dye a lot. I'm thinking of experimenting with oil paint sticks to color the circles or maybe I'll try rollering color on like Linda and Laura Kemshall show in their book "The Painted Quilt".

I'm really trying to let go and experiment with different techniques and not worry about if they will turn out or not. I need to learn to let go and try new things or practice things I don't do well, like free motion stitching.

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Play Time


I've just been playing the last couple of days. No finished projects. In the top piece, I practiced free motion quilting. Need lots of practice with that!!! I decided to use a drawing from my sketchbook that I'd like to turn into a hanging. I used white fabric and with inspiration from "Stitching to Dye in Quilt Art" by C June Barnes, I dyed the piece after doing all the free motion stitching. Even though this isn't a great work of art, I decided to add the beads to start getting an idea of where I want to go with it. On the right hand side, I used some spacer beads from a bead shop that was in town that is now out of business and now I used the last of these. I tried to find some on-line but haven't had any luck. These ones were gun metal gray. I also picked up some in bronze and one other metal color. I love using these in small projects and wish I had some more. I did find some that are similar in gold and silver but nothing like what I have here.



This piece, I was just playing with my hand felter. I really would like an embellisher but I will make due with felting by hand at this point. I used wool roving, sheer fabrics and yarns. I wanted to just practice blending them together to see what I could do other than just making rows like I did in these hangings. One of the things I like about felting with different materials is all the different textures you can get into a piece.