My last free week-end

One of my favourite blogs is by Melody Johnson. She has been blogging for years and is an incredibly interesting lady. Not to sound too stalker like, but I read her blog every day. She is like a friend I have never met. OK—that sounds very creepy…

Anyhoo—Melody has generously shared her technique on what she calls “Special Edition” fabric pieces. I adore these hand-dyes. As it is my last week-end before I go back to work on Monday, I decided to give this a whirl since I wont need my cutting table for awhile.

Here is my first try:

 

 

Yah, its OK. But I learned some things and then did the second piece:

Obviously its still wet, but I like the movement it made across the piece. Delish!

I laid out a 1 yard piece of damp cotton that had soaked in soda ash solution for about 20 minutes. I used blue, red, green, yellow and purple dye. Melody Johnson uses pour bottles from a hair supply store, but I had syringes' so that is what I used.

Then I just put the dye in strategic places, moved them around with my gloves and voila! Now Melody’s pieces are less wet, I don't know how she does them without getting them so ‘blended’, but I’ll keep trying this technique. Who knows what I’ll do with them  :-)

Today is sign up at our for quilting classes, and although I always get this way, I get nervous that no-one will take my classes. This semester I am doing a ‘Sunday challenge’ every month with fibre artists and one  landscape embroidery class.

Wedding Quilt

I am delighted that I can say the wedding quilt for my young friend Nicole is complete.

    size: 91” x 102”

 

Of all the quilts I have made in the past, I think the ‘journey’ for this one was the most interesting. All hand-dyes, original pattern (based on Match Play by Sonja Shogren.

I received the most gracious email from Nicole’s mom, Lise, who is a wonderful lady thanking me for the quilt. I will be taking it to Nicole this week, so that will be done.

Here is the finished quilting design I decided on:

 

And I did the top in yellows and the bottom in purple so the quilting did not overpower the design.

I wish this young couple all the best in their future, and I hope they can enjoy this quilt for awhile.

Machine Embroidery

Today I spent some time reading a new book and playing with a project in it. This is one of my all time favourite textile techniques—machine embroidered landscapes.  I can honestly say I have made more landscapes this way than any other type of project. Ask my students about my love of landscapes. :-)



My favourite quilt “artist” is Alison Holt. She is up there in my list of professionals and I adore all of her books. If I lived in England I would probably camp out in her yard and clean her brushes or something so I could learn at her feet. Seriously, she is one of my hero’s. Here is a couple examples of her work:



These are all done with thread and a sewing machine. Pretty neat, eh?

I was reading her new book, Machine Embroidered Woodlands (which is on sale right now!) and decided to try out a great tree project she had. This is what Goddess Holt’s looked like:







and here was my attempt:



LOL—I guess I need to practice a bit more. But it is SO MUCH FUN to make these. I have never even heard of this technique before, and was very sceptical how it could work, but its pretty awesome.. And no, there is no water soluble film used. Get the book to see the technique, I won’t give it away.  :)



Don’t know what on earth I can do with this piece, but I’m keeping it cause  its so cool..

What’s up?

Nothing much I am afraid to say. It has been rainly and cool for the last 2 weeks and it has finally gotten to me. Yesterday I laid on the couch and read a book and had a nap. And I chatted with my favourite (and only) much loved sister Kathie. How’s that for a lazy day.  :-)

But today I received my order from Dharma Trading. I love my fall order from them and I also order from a Canadian dye company--G&S. I should get that next week I hope. Sorry I didn’t wait and order with you Janet even though we were going to order together  :-}

 

 

Tomorrow I am going to work on a fractured quilt I am doing with a Dye-Art group. I hope to have this project done in a week or two—before I go back to work Sept 1. Some of these supplies will be a welcome help for the creation of my flower.

Stained Glass Fireweed Wallhanging Done!

Yes, its true. I finished the top. Still need to quilt it, but the visual part is done.

Here it is…








30x66”—so its a biggie!!!!

Wedding Quilt Quilting

So I have pieced together the extra batting needed for this extra large quilt. I have spray basted the layers together, and sat at my sewing machine for 1/2 an hour deciding how to quilt it.

 

I am stumped.

So for the last hour I played around with the design and think this is it. Radiating lines from the light to the dark resembling sun streaks like this:

Then I thought a double starburst like this:

Or going this direction:

Hmmm.. I need to think about this a bit more.

 

 

Rust Dyeing

In July I decided to do some rust dyeing as the weather was nice and hot and I had a ton of rusty metal sources. I live in a country residential area and I think there was a local garbage dump near here at one point. Lots of lovely old rusty bits to steal borrow and use.



I ended up with a lot of lovely rust pieces. Here are a few:



Rust dyeing is easy. You wet the fabric with vinegar, drape and wrap it around rusty pieces and leave for a couple of weeks.



I would wet it with water one day, then a week later when I remembered, I added more vinegar. Then I left it for a couple of weeks until I got to it.



For a simple technique, it sure looks good. Just have to have patience..






Washed in syntrapol and hot water and its good to go. I absolutely love these pieces!

Stained Glass-Continued

I have been working steadily on a reverse appliqué stained glass pattern that I picked up over 4 years ago. It is very big, 30 x 65”, so the sheer size was such that I didn’t get around to it.

As I am on holidays, I decided to get started. So here is the background piece I painted.

Since I don’t have a frame big enough for this piece, I dried it outside. I didn’t want it to fly away in the wind, and I often use this type of setup to hold fabric. I push chopsticks in the ground that is attached to paper clips.

Here is a preview of the fabric with the pattern.

 

But I didn’t cut it wide enough! GRRRRR!!!!!!! 

I had to make another piece of fabric and it was raining too hard to lay it outside. So instead I cobbled together an inside setup> Pin the fabric to a tall piece of Styrofoam on one end.

 

Then I used the heavy bottom of a couple of lamps to hold the other end. This just keeps the fabric off the counter.

 

    

Another view.

 

And a close up picture of the bottom half of the final piece :

 

Stained Glass Appliqué

One of my favourite northern designers, Lise Merchant, has a book using reverse stained glass appliqué. I love her patterns and Lise lives about 15 houses from me. She has a huge studio overlooking the most beautiful section of the Yukon River surrounded by at least 5 HUGE mountain ranges. I am sure this is an inspiration to her creations..

Anyway—I have made a number of her stained glass wall hangings that I want to share:



Yap—that’s Ripley- the lead dog. This one hangs in my office and took 5 years to finish. It was a very time consuming technique using the reverse stained glass appliqué method. Not my favorite method by any means..

Then Lise wrote a book on an easy technique to do stained glass appliqué using fusible web. I took her class and made a dozen in 1 year. Here is a couple:







Right now I am working on a fireweed that is 72” tall! Will post it when done.I encourage you all to take a look at her book and technique if you get a chance.

Sunprinting

I have been asked to provide some sun prints for our quilt shop.

 

 

Yesterday was a beautiful, sunny morning, so I took advantage of the northern sun.

 

 

No fancy set-up, just my lawn and front steps. And my oven.

Below is a close up of a traditional print. Any transparent paint will do, I use Seta Color by Pebeo. This one is a combo of turquoise and ultramarine. Working quickly, paint wet fabric. Then place your resist into the wet paint, in this case I used fireweed that had been pressed flat. Put the piece in the sun until its dry. Today it was sunny, so an hour or two was fine.

I press a lot of flowers and leaves during the summer and store them for winter printing. I use a couple of pieces of large Styrofoam as the press, then add a few heavy limber pieces. I leave the leaves for a couple of days if I am using them right away, otherwise I dry them out completely for a week or so. Then I store them in a large, dry container.

 

The piece below was done in the oven. This is the fastest way to do sun prints. The only con is that the piece becomes a bit rubbery.

Directions: I always make the print over a piece of glass (an old picture frame) that fits just right in my oven. Put a cookie sheet upside down on the racks or you will see the racks lines in the piece.  The lowest temp works best, I leave in for about 5-20 minutes, and take the piece out when its dry.

 

Another one was done under halogen lamps. It makes the lightest transfer, but this could be that my lights are on the ceiling. Need to try with a halogen light closer to the work. Sorry, but I could not recall which was done under the lamps, so I cant show you a picture.

 

The last is a double print. Since these are transparent paints, the under layer shows through. A great way to make complex cloth!

My preference is always the sun, but in the Arctic, that is only good in the summer. I am doing a lot of sun prints this month.

Chickens!

A few years ago I received a wonderful chicken pin cushion from Sandra Fiegi, a long-time dye buddy of mine. I use mine all the time and think of Sandra every time..

Recently I saw these little guys on the net, and decided I HAD to make some myself.



So here is my HUGE chicken. The squares are almost 9”, so that’s a big chicken! I made about 5 of them in total.



But I really want to make this pincushion! Seen in an Etsy store a while back..  :-)

Its Been A While

So I am in a dilemma—carry on from this point, or go back and add posts that I wished I had added all along. Hmmm—maybe a combo of the two will happen. I am on holidays for the rest of the month and have the time, so we’ll see what this blog looks like in 2 weeks.



For now, here is my latest project. A wedding quilt for a young lady whom I have know for a long time.





I know its not the greatest picture, but it is still a work in progress. She loves purple, so I really, really tried. It evolved into this mock up I did in PSP:



The pattern developed from a picture I had seen of a class taught by Sonja Shogren called Match Play. I wrote her asking if she had this class for sale. She did, but I had to do the quilt before I got her class plan. To be honest, I still do not have it yet (yaah mail service), so designed this from the picture on her site. It was fun, but time consuming. I will definitely make more of these though.



Off to layer the beast—its big—about 108” x 108”, so I will have to work on my biceps so that I can manage this guy when I quilt it.