Painted Applique

Here is a queen sized quilt I recently finished and sent off for my sister and her husband. It started with a 5" charm pack of Moda fabrics that she gave to me. I set them on point, added solid blocks, surrounded all that with red, added a pieced strip on 2 sides to set it all off center, added an outer border with 2 different widths, painted an applique (inspired by Helen Stubbing and her book Faux Applique) added pieced blocks in one corner for variety. For quilting, I used an allover flower/leaf and a quilt technique from Helen Stubbing's book in the border. Quilting detail and the quilt on a bed are pictured below. And all this in a week!!!

Pieced Window - plus Another Portrait

My sister and her husband own a beautiful home in Colorado - on one wall are two wide, short windows. Rather than plain glass, they are pieced - I don't call them stained glass as there is no color in the glass. For their Christmas gift, I have made a version of one of the windows in cloth. (Detail above, full piece shown below.) It is machine pieced and heavily machine quilted. The final piece measures 18" by 36" - I hope they will use it for a tablerunner on their dining room table, below the windows.

I chose to reproduce the window without 'color' = I used 4 grey fabrics. One of those has some subtle yellow in it - emphasized by using a pale yellow thread to quilt it. This is my first 'larger' piece using wool batting - what wonderful batting!!!

Trying to understand the differences between artquilts and traditional quilts - as I was working on this piece, I thought to reproduce the window in a painting would be boring. But to reproduce the window as a sculpture would/could be truly beautiful. And I think reproducing it as a quilted piece works really well. So, is the art of quilting more like sculpting?

This is a portrait of my daughter, painted in acrylic - from an Easter picture when she was about 8 years old - she will turn 30 in January. My painting shows her sitting on the bank of the Cacapon River - a scene from my imagination only.

An Independant Life

Meet Kristen, she is 11 now and she has Down Syndrome. Her parents (my niece and her husband) are trying to make sure that as an adult she can live a strong, independant life. So they have to setup a trust fund for her - and just getting the help of an attorney to do this is an expensive venture.

To help, I now have an etsy shop, http://www.inallthingsart.etsy.com/. (Link is on this blog.) 30% of all sales will go to help Kristen. And I have a basic machine quilting service (ie...3 allover designs offered). From that service now thru Feb 09, 30% will also go to Kristen's trust. (Leave a comment with request for information/pricing if you are interested...thanks.)

This is what my niece shared with me.....

"We are having to set up a special needs trust for her when she turns 18, b/c the way the laws are set up, she can not have any more then $2K to her name otherwise she loses all of her disability benefits. So we spoke with a special needs planner that got us in touch with a special trust lawyer that will set it up for us- but its not cheap. So we are hoping to at least get enough $ going to pay for the lawyer to set up the trust. There are so many things that we were not aware of that really could have negatively impacted Kristen's ability to take care of herself as she gets older. A lot of slightly disabled people like Kristen like to get jobs and be self-sufficient to some extent, but it seems the gov't puts road blocks in their path to make it that much more difficult. I was talking to a woman here at work that I walk with- her brother was born with an oxygen deficiency, so he is mildly retarded, and when they went to get benefits for him, they said he made too much $ to qualify even for Medicare- b/c he worked a minimum wage job- she was completely unaware of the special trust that they could set up for him- b/c no-one tells anyone anything. They just deny claims- and don't give alternative options to people. So her brother refused to quit his job, and is w/o any insurance coverage. She said that she is going to look into the trust option. We were lucky that we were introduced to this special needs planner- otherwise I feel we would have been facing the same problem when Kristen aged out of our insurance coverage."

Pet and Animal Portraits - in Acrylic

Here are some pet and animal portraits I have painted....just wanted to share. When living in WV, we lived close to the Cacapon River - a wonderfully dynamic river - fast and furious with the spring thaws, slow and dribbling in late summer. So it was a wonderful place to find river rocks. Many clients enjoyed having their pets painted on these rocks.

A Finished Piece!! Wildflowers at Midnight

This top was shown in an earlier post, unfinished. It is now finished!!! Yay!!! It has become 'Wildflowers at Midnight'. This piece started merely because I had leftover bits of pieces in blacks and darks from another project. (The details of that project escape me right now - oh, if I only had a brain!)

After the top was 'pieced', it desperately needed something.....so I went a little bonkers with the quilting - using many colors, many textures. Then drew in more wildflowers with the quilting stitches. These became subtle, seen but not quite seen, images and textures.....and this piece had an identity - a walk at midnight! Have you noticed at night, when you want to look at something, you have to look beside it to see it. If you look directly at it in the dark, it disappears. That is the effect I discovered from the quilting on this top.

But the bottom right corner still needed something - and so I added a wildflower when the light from a bright moon stikes it - it shines and glistens with color and light. So I recycled the reflective plastic from Folgers' Select coffee bags, cutout leaves and petals and machine appliqued the plastic plant on the quilt top and it became Wildflowers at Midnight.

Gifts, etc.

This is a twin sized quilt I made several years ago - with holes in it to display teddy bears. I plan on making a few small wallhangings using this same technique - with holes for heads and arms - to give to children on my Christmas list this year. Just a fun way to display teddy bears.

I am having lots of fun making these mini framed quilts - so they are on my list of gifts this year for family and friends. They work up quickly - and I have found some cute frames that have the words 'FRIEND' , 'FAMILY' , 'LOVE' printed on the frames - the start of a great gift I think!

Quilted tissue box cover - on this one, I did some pen & ink raccoons, then fused on wood and leaves. These covers are easy to make and just the quilting adds enough body to the cover that it stays on well - doesn't need to be hooked under the box in any way.

For these placemats, I started with an oriental fabric - picked out by someone else and I thought it was UGLY! Which made it a wonderful exercise for me....try starting with a fabric you hate and work it into something you like. It actually became addictive, finding how many fabrics I could add to turn this ugly oriental into pretty placemats. Seven are shown here with my Imari plate on top.

Christmas stockings are an easy project. This one, I painted the Santa face with acrylics on fabric with a curly-cue print which became his beard. Quilted the top of the stocking, added a single piece of material for the back, binding all around, add a top cuff and finished.

Just wanted to share one more painting on cloth using the Tsukineko inks....can you tell I am a big fan? All painted using their Fantastix applicators - great to use for the texture of hair/fur. My male Jack Russell, Feerless, gave me the ultimate compliment on this painting - he started barking when he first saw it - it is life-sized.

Miniature Quilts - Framed

Time to recycle some old picture frames. Throw in some small scraps of fabric, inks, colored pencils, wool batting......and what have you got? Miniature quilts in a frame.

What fun these are!!

Painting this small with these inks is not really difficult. The Tsuniko inks (in the jars) are very thin, watery. But I recently bought the Fabrico ink refills. (Same pigment inks.) They are much thicker so I can apply them with a paintbrush, size 00!

I squeezed some in the cut bottom of a plastic bottle - about a month ago. The ink is thicker now - but still not dried out. Just great to work with.

And this wool batting is wonderful. Quilting this small, it still holds its loft, so soft and smooth!

Portrait

'My Favorite Dress'.....painted with inks on fabric, size 23"x18". This was my submission for the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2009 at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian.

Received word this week it was not accepted but wished me well in my portrait career. Hmmmm.... a career in portraits......goodness, way too much stress! In '06 and '07 I painted commissioned portraits - about 30 or so - and so stressful. But this was fun submitting a piece to such a prestigious competition and I am grateful for the opportunity to play/work at my art.

Inspiration - Teachers, Placemats and Catalogs

Browsing thru an old Coldwater Creek magazine this week - I was inspired! The colors and fabrics they use in their clothing are just beautiful. And they were selling some beautiful prints by artist Cheri Blum. (Saddened to learn from visiting her website that she passed away a few years ago.) I gathered some leaves, got out burgundy and orange fabric inks and got to work. Painted 7 blocks, then pulled out a piece of oriental fabric and a dark red velvet - started piecing it all together. It lacked something....thru in a few small pieces of teal blue.....and this wallhanging makes my heart sing! Plan to quilt the snot out of it....and hang it up high in our living room.

After making the black placemat purse (shown at bottom) I had some scraps leftover - added some other scraps along with 2 blocks of painted wildflowers and 2 hours later I have this small wallhanging top. I like how it came out - but it really needs some sublte and some not so subtle, funky quilting to really set it off.

These scraps of mostly orange with purple was a sample for embellishing in a class with Paula Reid. It has couched threads, cords, beads and baubles sewn on. I had also couched a wire across it - which I did not like, luckily I was able to pull the wire out. When I crumpled it to throw it away, the shape of the wire now looked pretty good. So I added some beads and baubles to the wire and sewed it on also - you can see it in the upper right. This is now my purse, complete with a picture of my two children on it.

A Placemat Purse - started life as a Walmart clearance placemat - add an inside pocket and handles.

Melted Elvis on Plastic

This bag is a late birthday gift for my sister. We will be visiting Graceland in a few days - so I made this bag for her.

It is made from red velvet, quilted, decorated with glass beads and with tacky plastic handles. The Elvis panel is a piece of a shopping bag from a previous trip to Graceland. From a technique I learned on quiltart.com - I layered 3 white plastic shopping bags with the grey Elvis bag on top, put all between parchment paper and ironed. The 'lightning bolts' are strips from a bag of coffee - shiny copper colored plastic.

I like the way it turned out but I wonder if she will use it!

Hummingbirds and New Quilt Projects

At the beginning of September we had at least 50 hummingbirds at our feeders. I was making a gallon of nectar each day. Now, one week into October, we still have 5 hummingbirds. This male rubythroat was in the grass one morning early, covered with dew and unable to fly. My husband held it till it began to dry, then it flew away.


This is a full-sized quilt that my dear husband is holding for the picture. It started as a backing that a friend sent to me to use with a small quilt top. But it was the most beautiful fabrics of red/yellow/orange. I could not bring myself to relegate it to the back of a quilt. So I chopped and slashed, added wide and thinner strips of offwhite, pieced in different sized and different colored circles, quilted it with concentric circles and horizontal meander to produce this quilt named 'Orange Back on Top'. Fun - Fun - Fun!!!



We are having our final 2008 4Sister block exchange this month. The only rule for this one is that it be based on leaves. This is the block design I have made - the fabric in the lower right has been painted first with pigment inks then overrubbed with oil paint.

Two weeks ago, my husband and I celebrated 26 years together. I made this small top to commemorate those 26 years. There are 26 flowers lining the path of marriage (looking more like a river), but rocks also are strewn alongside. Some of the flowers, although bright and beautiful seem to want to reach out and drag you off the intended path.

I attended an embellishment class with teacher Paula Reid this week - so there are now threads and fibers couched on this piece. It is still a Work in Process....

Wet & Wild Jr's

Nighttime temps here in Tennessee are down in the 50s so the pool was covered last week - just not comfortable swimming in 70deg water. But 2 of our JR's really enjoyed our pool this summer. Muttli is almost 14 years old - swimming has been the best thing for her!!! Feerless is 8 - he is the one leaping in. Enjoy!

Round Robin and 4 Sister Swap

During cleanup in my sewing room, these pieces that did not work when trying to make a fire quilt (see earlier post) got piled together. Very interesting - I think they need to become one! But now a question - where do I find yardage of the loopy material? What you see here is a $5 car wash mit. Notice some of the loops are turning orange? they take pigment ink too!


Here are 2 pictures of a long distance Round Robin. The first picture shows how the quilt top looked when I received it. Next how it looks after of day of playing. There are no rules. And I am the last one in the loop. Since anything goes, I think I may add more - get it to a nice twin sized quilt for charity.











The blocks for my 4 sister swap for August are finished! Our only rule for this swap was to use some of each fat quarter provided by each sister. I added a peach tshirt material and made four sisters.
Two of my sisters were early sending theirs - so have added a picture showing 3 of the 4 blocks.




After finishing my last 4 sister block, I had a pile of small scraps of green and black - just couldn't bring myself to throw them away....so I played! I added 3 pieces of a pale green fairy frost material - mainly to create a strong contrast of a very formal material with a very informal hodge-podge. It makes me think of the edge of a forest - so I may paint in details on the fairy frost. However it finishes, it is destined to be my new laundry room curtain.

In 1969 when I was in the 6th grade, the mill burned down. It was about 500 feet from my home. Inspired by the Journal Quilt competition with the theme of Elements, Earth, Air, Water, Fire, I tried making a submission about this fire. It became very tedious - it just would not work. I surprised myself that I worked on it so long, reworking it 4 times to this point. For me, the process has to be fun - and beyond painting, this one was definitely not fun! But I was pleased with my painted fire.....I used inks, colored pencils and pastels. Oh, the smear effect with the pastels works really well. And I discovered when used ontop of the still damp ink, the pastels are permanent! Where this piece will go from her I do not know. A good friend Deb often talks of tossing pieces into her burn barrel. This one may get closer to fire than just the pictures on it. Bur I certainly do not regret the time spent - I did learn!

This Cardinal on Dogwood is a work in progress, not yet quilted. It is handpainted with the Tsuniko inks. Working with them is very similiar to painting with watercolors. As a resist (a way to preserve the white areas) I used freezer paper. I cutout the dogwood blooms, ironed them to the fabric and inked away.



In the beginning of the year, I took an online quilt class thru Quilt University with teacher Patti Anderson - to make a feathered star, in my pursuit for precise piecing. Patti's techniques and tips work really well, they are quick and even more important to me, they are fun! I actually made two feathered stars! This one grew to a queen sized quilt using Patti's border designs from the class, with some modifications as I was running out of focus fabric. This quilt is a birthday gift for a very dear friend who loves the ocean.









In July '07, my family had a get-together in Colorado. One day we went to Lookout Mountain which overlooks Golden, Colorado. I painted this picture, Two Boys (acrylic) from pictures taken on Lookout Mountain.





My pallette are the secondary colors, orange, green and purple. I really enjoy working with this color scheme in paint and fabric.

Going to quilt shows, I find I am attracted to quilts with lots of grey in them. So I have been attempting to work with grey also. But it has been a chore. I can't seem to find that spark to make it work. Part of the problem may well be that during construction, I am working with and closeup to a micro shot of color combinations. Example, put a small piece of teal blue on top of a small piece of honeydew green, stitch a seam, iron them open and my heart sings. Put that same teal blue on top of a small piece of grey, stitch and iron and blah......so silly!



Here is a painted wholecloth in grey. It is the second in a series about wildlife in contact with man that started with the redfox in a previous post. It is painted with Tsuniko inks, colored pencils and acrylic paints, then heavily quilted. I added 2 feathers to the quilting, top and bottom. Why feathers? because I like doing feathers, they are a tradition for quilting and because they have nothing whatsoever to do with water, sea otters or tires!

Recent work

This small quilt started as just a quick excercise painting animal fur with the inks. I decided to tuck this fox behind a brick wall - and a series is started. It is now the 1st in a series of wildlife in contact with man.

My sisters and I are swapping blocks this year. The rules are we each make 4 identicle blocks, keep one and send one to each sister. For our 3rd swap we also exchanged fat quarters. So my block design is to make 4 sisters - and of course they needed feet and shoes. Legs and feet are made from rolled tshirt material and the shoes are a product called Vetrap - intended to be used on horse's legs and tails. It comes in the most beautiful colors - this jade green works perfect! What a HOOT!

This scene of a goldfinch landing on a purple iris I saw outside of my bedroom window - with no camera at hand. So I reproduced it in a quilt - painted with Tsuniko inks - then heavily quilted.

Scaling the 9Patch. This is a small quilt 11x14 made to portray the help experienced quilters give the beginner. There is a treacherous roller-coaster path one can follow - or just grab the rope and help offered by a quilter already near the top.

This twin sized quilt uses a fabric that fascinated me - solid color honeydew. I have truly begun to believe that it complements - goez with - all fabrics! This quilt started with just grey and the honeydew surrounding many colored squares. It was falling flat! So I added turquoise to it....and it came alive again.