JULY PROGRESS

A little while ago I found a fabulous tutorial for drawstring bags at: http://sewbunnybum.blogspot.com/2008/05/drawstring-bag-tutorial.html - I absolutely fell in love with them and made 5 in one afternoon! 2 were birthday pressies for my son’s friends (twins). They were great for wrapping the other parts of their pressies. I made a couple for Mack too and he gave one away to a good school friend! The 5th I made from vintage fabrics.

I cut a couple for my daughter early one Saturday morning and got 1 sewn up before the kids and I headed off into town! That's the one with the purple owl fabric in the photo.

Did I mention how very easy they were? And that I just love them? I’ve since made one for my Mum out of printed cotton with an Egyptian pattern with gold and blues. I used a beautiful turquoise as the lining and a gold cord drawstring! It looked gorgeous but I forgot to take photos before posting it off! Oops! And I made 3 small floral ones for our Garden Club Birthday Luncheon where we place gifts at the table places for all attending! So, thanks Jessica for the tute!

Rose's Owl Bag

Mack's Skull Bag

I love the American Quilting Arts magazine to which I now subscribe. I found it about 6 months ago and am officially hooked! There are always new techniques to try and lovely articles on quilt artists and their work. They also have a website with a forum for mad quilters! http://quiltingarts.com/forums/

This little quiltie is a result of one of the challenges. It was so much fun to make; sometimes it is nice to go off in a different direction! (I usually work square or rectangular although I feel a circular quilt coming on! I wouldn't have ever thought to make the whole quilt a different shape!) The background is vintage tie fabric which I have hand embroidered and beaded. I hand stitched on some gold ribbon. It has fabric backing, craft wadding, and a velvet sulfolk puff with vintage button as embellishement. I machine stitched all around to combine the layers. Approx 5" x 6" (13cm x 15cm)

Medieval Shild Mini Art Quiltie

I entered a 1m square quilt for Down Under Quilts (http://www.downunderquilts.com.au/) magazine calendar competition a few months ago and have just received it back in the post (which obviously means I didn’t win anything! lol) This is the largest quilt I have completed to date (I can’t wait to see some of the other entries and of course the 13 chosen as winners for the calendar! The theme was ‘The Rhythm of Life’ The title of mine is “NO TIME TO DANCE’ and I had such fun designing and making it!

No Time to Dance

Here is the latest progress on The Light Within:

The Light Within WIP

MORE JUNE PROJECTS!

I’ve been playing around with manipulating photos on the computer. [I sadly lost a lot of my photos when our old computer crashed a few months ago! I didn’t have all of them backed up and have lost photos of finished artwork as well as family occasions and landscape, flower and building photos I use for my art] : ( I was happy to find this one of an old church window buried away in an obscure file and played around with it before printing it onto fabric. I don't know why but I love the shape of gothic windows and doorways!

The Light Within

I have painted vines and flowers on both sides of the window with acrylic paint and fabric medium. The inkjet printed cotton is a nice surface to paint on! I have just started to embroider some leaves and am excited when I think of adding wadding, backing and starting to quilt it! I've already added sashing and a border and can't wait to see what it looks like complete!

A lady in a local quilt store told me if I ironed freezer paper onto fabric (A4 size) that I could run that through the printer too! I was so excited I tried it out as soon as I got home. Unfortunately, it jammed. I may need to do a little more research! I was excited as it meant I could print onto coloured and commercially printed fabric instead of the standard white of the packs that I am currently buying.

I've done a little more stitching on my Mosaic Rose. I'm uncertain about the orange and may change it to yellow. I want to get the rest of it finished before I make the final decision but overall I'm pretty happy with it!

Mosaic Rose

Here is a little postcard sized mini art quilt in my Landscape Series. I knew it was buried under piles of fabric on my main work table and it turned up the other day! It's just waiting for it's binding and a little hanging ring before I take it off to the gallery!

Postcard Landscape Series

OMG! I’ve just made my first ever granny square! Crocheted! When I was 11 an aunti taught me to crochet those groovy diagonal square pot holders that were popular then (you know; the 70’s!) I couldn’t read a pattern and certainly didn’t know the names of the stitches; so here I am – some considerable time later with a yearning to learn to crochet! Why? I’m not sure. I think maybe I’m thinking of crocheted edges on little art quilts or those little crocheted flowers (which I saw on a gorgeous scarf the other day) or is it the memory of a gorgeous fillet crochet pattern I have floating around here somewhere? Whatever it is, it has propelled me to dig out the simplest instructions I could find and just begin. The hook feels like an old friend and there is none of that uncomfortable kakihandedness that sometimes accompanies learning a new skill. It is like we’ve never been apart!

I admit I had to unravel it a few times and even this final product isn’t perfect (a word no longer in my vocabulary anyway!) but I’m very pleased with myself! It is probably going to be one of those fleeting love affairs but it will be passionate whilst it lasts and I will enjoy the memories evoked of time with my aunti! I thought I'd taken a photo of this but can't find it in my files; so I won't embarass myself after all!

Creative June!

Wow! I'm actually getting some projects completed and feeling very good about it.......!

TREE OF LIFE

This little Tree of Life is from one of my sketchbooks. I photographed a selection of little doodles with the idea of printing them onto fabric and embellishing them. This little tree I did as an Inkjet Transfer onto black cotton fabric. It's been sitting around the studio for quite some time (as things tend to do here before I get back to them!) [I do find that sometimes the time factor allows things to stew or a new inspiration may be applied to something that has seemingly lost it's zest of creativity.]It is a mini art quilt (comprising 3 layers) but no actual quilting as all the embroidery was done before I backed it with a vintage napkin. I didn't use wool batting or craft wadding this time but just added a piece of vintage felt which added a bit of body and strength without being too soft and spongy. I'm really happy with it and have been playing around with some little tabs for hanging it but am inclined to mount it on matt board ready for framing. Size is 7" x 7" (18cm x 18cm)


My most current project is another of the Inkjet Transfers. It was a mosaic design I designed about 6-7 years ago (the actual mosaic tabletop is in here somewhere and is at about the same stage of finished-ness that this wee piece is now! ) What? You don't have any UFO's in your studio?
I'm using DMC Rayon thread in satin stitch and it is picking up the light beautifully just like a real mosaic! I will turn this into a little mini art quilt also!



MOSAIC ROSE

GINGHAM LACE HEART




I made this cute little Gingham Lace heart from a pattern I found and printed off of the net about 12 months ago. It is also known as Chicken Scratch embroidery and by several other names. It is very effective and very pleasing to work!



GINGHAM LACE HEART - Back

RETRO OWL -Back


RETRO OWL


I made up this little retro owl as I went along and have been meaning to graph the stitches into a chart but haven't got around to that yet! He only took me a couple of nights to stitch and I think he's quite cute! I love his Mother-of-Pearl button eyes. The background fabric is a vintage find in the form of a napkin (as above) and the backing was from my stash.

Let's hope the rest of the month of June is as productive as the first half! (I sold one of my little landscape art quilts at the gallery last week too!)

A Stash of Sorts

I’ve finally finished my liquorice allsorts art quilt wall hanging!

I’ve been working on it for a couple of months now (interspersed with about 100 other projects of course!) It has been so much fun. I originally designed it as a rectangle but loved the square within a square so stopped there... Another row of blocks would make a gorgeous cot quilt! (I'd have to use all cottons and prewash!)

All the fabric is from my stash; but not all cottons. The yellow is a flannel and the green which is the perfect shade is a synthetic stretch fabric of some sort. The black border and backing originally came from my MIL and is a vintage retro fabric with quite a coarse weave.

I decided to hand quilt it as the machine quilting just wasn’t adding anything to the piece. Each allsort layer is 1" wide and each allsort block is 5" square. The overall size including border and binding is about 25 1/2".

I’m really pleased with it. Just need to add a hanging sleeve and take it into the gallery!

Ties, ties and more ties! Red!

I can't stop buying ties! I've been picking them up here and there and bought 30 for $6 from a charity store last week! Some of them are so ghastly that they're beautiful! Some of them just sing when put together and I'm officially addicted!



The first picture I'm posting is similar to my last post. I haven't bound this yet because I'm thinking about making it into a shoulder bag.... I love the colours - colours I wouldn't normally put together. I haven't done much quilting so my early attempt at stippling over the tie fabrics is very exciting for me. I love how a thread colour can help tie the colours together.


I've been pulling the ties apart so far but met a woman in the op-shop who leaves them in tack and sews strips together to make up bags.

This second photo is an experiment called "Suit and Tie". I used suit fabric as the border - in this case a gorgeous charcoal wool (also from the charity store!)

I love the layout, the red themed tie fabrics but I do think I am going to have to stabalize the fabric somehow because the puckers on this are driving me mad! I'm certainly not a perfectionist (ANY MORE I can finally say!) and love those really loose art quilts that are more about the art than the perfect seam or binding. (This is the first time I haven't used a mitred corner binding and it has been a challenge for me!)


I am using tie strips left intack to bind this, (The perfect width!) which I am hand sewing on. I have machine pieced and quilted just the borders on this as I loved the way the silky fabrics puffed up like little pillows. Overall size is 18" x 18" (46cm x 46cm)

I am going to handsew some tie labels or suit buttons in the centre 4 intersections which may cover some of the puckering. Overall I am pleased with how this one has turned out. To me it has a slight oriental or ethnic feel. Probably not one to sell but I will hang it at home and it is now my officail prototype!

In truth I work on lots of different projects at once and seem to have quite a short attention span. I have a big burst and then hey! start on something new as a different inspiration hits me! I love the zing of a new idea and where it leads me. I love the idea of doing series of works (with my painting too) but in truth they develop so fast that the first and second may not even seem related!