New Experimental Wall Hanging in Progress

This piece was started on the last afternoon of Ana Buzzalino’s workshop while our main projects were soaking in the dye.

The bright turquoise is pure polyester that will not be affected by procion dyes.

Everything else is 100% cotton except for the centre Chinese print and the purple, which are both poly-cotton blends, and some of the neutral pieces around the borders, which are upholstery samples.

Scouring:

I’m in the habit of prewashing all quilting fabrics other than pre-cut jelly rolls and charm packs and the like.  That said, I wash my stash with regular detergent.

Scouring means using Synthrapol to really remove all dressings and treatments and ready the fabric for surface design treatments.

In this piece I did wash the upholstery samples in Synthrapol, and the muslin I’m dyeing for the binding was also scoured when I bought it, since it was intended for dyeing.

Prediction:

That the printed cottons (pink with Chinese characters and the purple and pink dots around the border) will take up less of the dye than the other fabrics.

That the upholstery fabrics will retain more of the dye than the piece used in my other workshop project, which glowed when it came out of the dye and then mostly rinsed off.

Quilting:

Purple polyester serger thread, which will retain its current colour and contrast with the dyed finished wall hanging.

I’m new to free motion quilting, not that I need to say that to anyone who knows about FMQ!  But you have to start somewhere and since this is a very experimental piece I figured it was a good place to start.  I used the approach explained by Elizabeth Hagh of the Modern Quilt Guild and found it was much faster than quilting with a walking foot.  Maybe this will inspire me to persist and tackle larger pieces, of which I have several almost ready to be quilted.  I bought 5.4 metres of Warm & Natural the other day based on current projects, so that’s an added incentive.  The batting was 50% off so to me this was a rational decision …

Backing:

Blue with a large white hibiscus print.  Since this will be dyed purple I wanted a simple backing in a primary colour, and was limited to finding something large enough that I wouldn’t have to piece it before starting the quilting.

Ana Buzzalino Workshop

Our quilt guild was recently blessed by a presentation followed by a two-day workshop from Ana Buzzalino of Calgary.

We pieced directly onto a quilt sandwich (backing, batting and muslin foundation) using cotton, poly cotton, and other fabrics that take fiber-reactive dye.  I.e. no wool and no pure polyester.

Ana is an absolutely inspirational teacher and although my machine was not behaving terribly well I felt brave enough to attempt free motion quilting and curved piecing.

In fact, as often happens in life, the challenge with the machine led to a serendipitous find.  I left the workshop to drive straight to Sawyers where Denise identified and fixed no less than three issues, so no wonder I was frustrated!  Anyhoo, they had a table full of polyester serger thread in all colours.  The polyester doesn’t reach with the Procion dye so you can choose the best colour for each project.  Before the workshop I had been somewhat challenged to find even white polyester thread.

Having finished a piece in the course of the workshop I left buzzing with ideas of other things to try.  Ana’s supply list was to bring suitable mixed fabrics in light and neutral colours, all of which pick up the dye a little differently.

For the second project which we began as our quilted projects were steeping in the dye bath, Ana gave us some pure polyester turquoise fabric (think bridesmaid dress!) and some lilac poly cotton.  I’m still working on that, because I added in a bunch of black and white prints and it’s grown and grown.

I decided to make a small experimental piece and ice dye it so instead of it being one colour all over you would get a marbled/mottled effect.  So I used some of the turquoise and lilac, plus other black and white fabric, and an upholstery sample which I prewashed with Synthrapol to remove the Scotchguard treatment.  Ana is big on using fabric with writing on it, which is another thing I enjoy working with, so I used two fabrics with Chinese script on it.  The dark purple one in the photo started out neutral; the lighter one with the larger characters started out hot pink.  I think this must have made the fabric less able to pick up other dyes.

So  the front is the last photo, quilted with fuchsia polyester which stayed the same colour.

And the back was a cool bicycle print!

At the workshop Ana reminded up to throw some plain muslin into our dye bath so we’d have the exact right shade of binding.  I placed a piece under the quilted piece, covered everything with ice, and sprinkled the powdered procion dye over the top of everything (navy, fuchsia and grape).

However much as I love what happened with the intended binding piece it’s too light to work as binding. (see photo, which is navy and white basically).

Fortunately I have a dark purple fabric with YET MORE Chinese script!  Which will be the binding.  Lesson learned, next time I’ll put the binding over the top of the quilted piece so it’ll hopefully be nice and dark yet the piece will still look good.

New Quilt Unveiled

Nothing was posted about this earlier because I wanted to surprise the recipient.  If she totally hates it, she can always pretend that the back is the top:

All my life I’ve struggled with completely finishing things, so bingo might be a better hobby than quilting, I sometimes feel.

Anyhoo, this has been bound, labeled, and provided with its coordinating tote bag.  And after going back and forth on it for a few times, I put handles on the tote bag.

This photo shows the bag.  Almost every piece of fabric has a story, either where it came from or how it was made.

See the blue and red swirly fabric towards the bottom of the bag?  That was a serendipitous piece created when I was using a hatband that had turned out too tight as a wiping rag when I was dyeing fabric.  For years this was a piece that was waaaay to beautiful to cut.  see here for a close up photo. The pink and green paisley to the right of it comes from either Susan Purney Mark or Daphne Greig.  Many small squares of it have been floating around Victoria, and I’ve collected pieces from both of them.

The fun thing about making this is that it grows itself and is a fast stash buster.  I’ve tried designs that purport to bust stash but require a lot of time and patience to work with smaller pieces that can’t be strip pieced.  After the twin bed topper was done I had no less scraps than before I started.  If my scraps continue to grow it’s because I keep an eye open for small pieces that other people have given up on!

When making this fabric I set a few parameters:

The same fabrics can be touching because I want to fool the eye and not be too obvious about where one piece starts and the other leaves off.  See how I did it with marbled fabric:

No, no set in seams here, thank you very much!

I’m working with strips and with pieces that are smaller than a fat quarter.  If you click on this photo Andrea Hamilton’s mid-arm quilting shows to much better advantage on the light fabric.  We chose Valdani Gem Symphony.

Nothing representational really, although I do have one butterfly on my cushion.

The fabrics are mostly solids, tone on tone, neutrals, batiks and surface design pieces. However in the spirit of nothing representational, I’m not using batiks with really in your face pictures on them, like flip-flops.

I’m not allowed to get too precious and agonize over whether adjacent fabrics look good together.  Some do, some don’t.

Some of the fabric is too beautiful to cut and some was what I couldn’t sell at the Guild garage sale!  And some came from fellow surface design folks who were cleaning out their studios and desperate to see the back of their own stash.

Since the fabric is used to make larger items there is not a set block size.  I sew pieces to each other and build long strips about 7 to 10 inches wide and as long as the width of a twin bed quilt.  Then when I’m going to make something I play around with these strips and figure out the final design.

And although some oriental carpet makers and Amish quilters put deliberate errors into their pieces because perfection belongs to God alone, I doubt I’ll ever come close to needing to do that!  There’s a non deliberate error in the tote (one handle is twisted, aaaarrrgggghhhh!

and another (really galling) one in the quilt itself. 

Something I gotta try … and a confession

I’ve been studying Pat Langford’s Embroidery from Sketch to Stitch, Quilters’ Resource, Inc, 1996, ISBN 0-9629056-7-4

This lady is first and foremost an embroiderer, which I’m really not, although various little things are nudging me in that direction.

Sketching is obviously a huge part of what she does.  Maybe this will be the impetus that will get me sketching on a more regular basis instead of wringing my hands and being a sniveling wannabe.

I’m intrigued by the way she pushes the envelope, using puff paint on a baby blanket (although you would never know from looking at the finished work), and crayoning onto microfibre.

Specific things I want to try:

Polychromos coloured pencils on microfibre, ironed to heat set

Transfer dyeing with Crayola fabric crayons on paper, ironed onto the microfibre fabric.

Pentel crayons directly onto linen in several layers.  Langford actually covered the fabric in places.  Hmmm, thrift store hunt for old linen coming up maybe?   Too bad I no longer have the orange linen tablecloth that was in my wedding registry, that would have been so dramatic!

Langford has many platters, which are round or oval art quilts.  That’s a possible direction.

CONFESSION

After the busyness and frenzy of preparing for and being in the Artists In Motion @ The Empress show, I vowed to take things easy/take the summer off.  Of course THAT’S not gonna happen, but as I recuperated I challenged myself to write down all the different outstanding projects and tasks of every description that I have on my plate.  It’s four pages long, so I’m forcing myself to look at this list every day, cross things off it as and when possible, and not undertake any more new projects.

So in order to stay focused artistically, I’m starting a new page on the blog for things I want to try, so that I can have a handy reference.  Of course I have a sketchbook on the go too but this will be a good handy way to preserve links electronically.

Before the show I did find that restricting myself to working in a series was helpful.  I am continuing with that series in order to have more to show at the Moss Street Paint-In, where we will be exhibiting on Thurlow Street next to the Moss Street market.

 

Starting Point

Am I finding an approach to creating art (in whatever medium) that works for me?

Were my struggles and basically dropping out of the design class I had wanted to take for so long all Hosni Mubarak’s fault?

Or am I just more of a verbal person than a visual one?

This is a mind map related to the piece I’m just starting.  So many things seemed to come together in synchronicity.  When I tried to think about drafting a blog post on these topics, my thoughts shot off in a zillion directions.  Each bit seemed to make sense standing along but I couldn’t organize my thoughts into a cohesive whole.

And here is the beginning — more pix will follow as the work progresses.  I want to create Moebius strip, so tested this concept with kraft paper (a gift from our lovely apartment manager who found a big heavy roll abandoned in a vacated apartment)

I cut and folded a strip to make a double thickness, since there will be batting inside the finished piece.

Then I twisted it into a Moebius strip to test the concept.  This will also serve as a mockup as I continue working on this piece.

Time to cut the Tyvek (from a huge piece I bought at the Sewing Show) and get drippin’!

Not having a studio space where I can be messy, I invented the small-scale paint bag.

and here’s what this work in progress currently looks like, until I can get more white acrylic to keep going!

Just Magic Challenge

The local fibre arts group I belong to that meets at Satin Moon decided to set ourselves monthly challenges this year to keep things interesting.

The challenge for January was anything starting with J, which one member dubbed the J-Cloth Challenge.  Here’s my finished piece, well finished except for the hanging sleeve.  The centre medallion is a sketch I made in the fall in Melanie Testa’s drawing challenge.  Thanks to Spoonflower it’s now on fabric and you can even buy it!

I considered beading this, but Young Sprout greatly admires it so I think I’ll leave it child proof at least for a couple of years.  Plus, his last name is different than mine and it’ll be cool to be able to say “Just Magic, in the collection of Mr. Young Sprout.”

This detail shows Dale MacEwan’s sunpainted fabric. It’s the pale pink and green in the middle between the green batik and my red and green shibori made in Susan Purney Mark’s class.

Combinations of red and green fascinate me.  It’s often found in nature from rhubarb and red leaf lettuce to geraniums, yet not exploited that much by artists for some reason, nor in decoration.  Maybe people think it’s too Christmassy?  What do you think?  Can those apparently overdone combos like orange and black or pink, red, and purple be revamped into something that doesn’t scream “Boo” or “Goo”?

More lines, two steps forward, one step backward

after missing a couple of days in the challenge preoccupied with Spoonflower designing and ordering I got back into it and experimented more with the ruling pen.  Everything I’ve done is in the Flickr group under “wordnerd411.”

 

This morning I finally got the pen beak open to the width that suits me and the acrylic ink, mid way through this doodle:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The “good bits” are from after and the crummy bits are from before.

 

Then I decided to use the pen in my sketchbook, practice stars and writing, and although it would be nice if this were on cloth, I’m actually quite pleased with it:

The step backward is that I had the house to myself, did the drawing, washed everything and put it away and went on my merry way making more assembled fabric and listening to jazz.  Family members came home and “You’ve been using that stuff again!”  Like, I’ve never heard that line before!

Although to me the acrylic ink has only a trace smell, it apparently hangs around the house and is bothersome.

So now I can either use ink on paper at a cafe (using cloth would be difficult because of stablizing) OR use a Pigma pen on cloth at home OR try Setacolor on cloth at home and see whether the odour is detectable.  Setacolor is basically acrylic and to me has a smell but not a smell that bothers me.  We’ll see, I like the thought of being someone who sits in a cafe sketching but things have a way of not turning out like  they do in my imagination.

Pomegranate

This is my drawing for Melanie Testa’s challenge today, done with a Pigma pen, which I’m most comfortable with, it feels like it’s an extension of my hand and I found myself better able to really look at this pomegranate as I was drawing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is my first sketch, in Pigma on paper:   I’m glad I changed the angle for the fabric sketch.  The hexagonal structure is much more apparent when seen from above.

Slightly surreal

Today’s feels more like an illustration.   I used the ruling pen but tried not to get any large blotches where I didn’t want them.  This was somewhat inspired by illustrations in a children’s book, Freight Train by Donald Crews published in 1978 by Greenwillow Books, but I will have to look at the illustrations to be more confident about showing more than just the smokestack!  When the drawing was finished I realized it could be mistaken for a hat.

Back to the Ruling Pen

Does the title say it all or what!  Decided to go back and give the ruling pen another go, loading it with the eye dropper in the ink bottle this time.  Despite practicing in my sketchbook there are still a couple of blots.  But I used more of the surface today than in previous days.