Quilter's Block

I am trying to extricate myself from 3 areas of Quilters Block. If writers can have a block, quilters certainly can!

1. I did this stamp making exercise for C&G. I was imagining the gingko leaves being pelted to the ground in the huge windstorm we had 2 weeks ago. I tried out the as yet unused umber and sienna acrylic paint. I had no foam stamp material so I used various types of plumber's gasket to create the gingko stamps. It was fun figuring out how much paint to use and see the overlapping effect of colour and leaf form. I got carried away with the stamping and didn't love the look of the end result. Way too many leaves. I know...IT'S JUST AN EXERCISE! But. I feel I need to do it again with a bit of restraint.

2. The Bargello needed to be batted, backed and basted. I know... ONE THING AT A TIME - START WITH WHAT YOU KNOW. But. There were issues. I did the miters late at night even though I new better. What was I thinking? I eyeballed the miters! All the borders seemed to line up so I sewed them. All was not perfect even after redoing 2 corners. I guess I should have used a ruler and the angle thingee. The top lay abandonned for a week. Finally I got down to business to correct wrongs. Resting was just what the miters needed. Everything measured perfectly. All was square and flat and the border corners met quite acceptably. The black Minkee got cut and sewn for the back. The wool that had been relaxing over my railing for the past week got cut to size. I spray basted the back of the Minkee and laid the batt on top. I used the basting glue from Walmart. It doesn't seem very tacky. Nothing like the 3M spray adhesive. The layers will rest while I will remove the zillions of threads from the back and front of the quilt top tomorrow while I have my morning coffee.

One more Quilter's Block to go! My mind will get too revved if I start thinking about it just before going to bed.

Twisted Ribbon

54X66

The bargello strips, bit and pieces are miraculously together! Miraculous because I perservered the tedium and because I didn't run out of strata prior to completion. I have the borders cut and ready to mitre but may have to save that for the morning when eyes, mind and energy are fresh. Tomorrow I will check out the Wonderfil http://www.wonderfil.net/index_en.htm thread at Sew Fine for quilting considerations. The thicker rayon thread sounds interesting. The colours on the web site look just fantastically intrigueing.

City and Guild exercises are languishing but the bargello must be completed by December 12.

Bargello Taking Shape

Paying attention is the name of the game in making this Bargello. Is it possible I'm just not good at following directions?! A system eventually developed. I enjoyed doing this late at night when my mind is prone to wandering. I fell victim to 'doing just a little bit more' and had some very late nights. I loved watching the pattern tighten up with each seam. I am planning to give this to my husband for his 50th birthday in December. I'm worried that it is too pink. A dark border might masculinize it. I am definitely using Minkee on the back. His only request was that it be soft and cuddly. I guess that means pink is not a problem! I am thinking about quilting lines and will probably do the predictable and follow the curves rather than an all over pattern. I'll just have to see what the quilting gods have to say when that day comes.

Strata Swatches

Every now and then I have the need to slip into "Sweatshop" mode and do some factory work- (cut 20 of this sew 100 of this cut it 20 more times sew it all over). The timely offering of 'Twisted Ribbon Class' at Poppins Parlour suited me just fine. I also knew the instructor, Gwen, would be adding ideas that add quality to the project.
The first class consisted of selecting 20 fabrics that will be used to build 5 stata. The stratas will be cut into various widths and arranged just so, with the end result being a 'Twisted Ribbon'. This is a tweaked version of Chris Timms 'Twisted Bargello' that I first saw in an Australian Patchwork magazine.
I kept coming back to the orange and corally pink colour scheme with it starting at white and plunging through a mossy green to the black depths. I struggled with the transition from pink to moss green but I made do and hoped for the best. Tomorrow I will post the partially finished strips as assembled on the design wall.

Shape in a Fruit Jar

Under the duress of procrastination I finally got 10 ‘shape’ pictures to Catherine for the Module 3 City and Guild exercise. The shape images were to be found in our own homes and gardens- no cruising the internet for excellent and inspirational photos for this exercise! My yard, things and photographic skills just don’t thrill me. Or so I thought. It turns out that looking, really looking, and opening my mind to what I see leads to even more seeing. (I thought I knew that.)
The fruit jar photo session was a good lesson. I hauled my beans and rice jars out of the cupboard thinking the form of the jars and various sizes would take care of one shape photo. My first background was white, way too harsh for the light, but I noticed interesting overlapping jar shadows playing out on the white background. I'll explore that later.
The beans have curiously perfect shapes and colours. DNA is an amazing 3D photocopier. It’s usually best when DNA doesn’t get too creative. Now the beans interest me and I decide to take a photo from above, I’m thinking circle shapes are good, so off come the ill fitting zinc lids and glass tops. Imagine preserving food in these things for families of 13 hungry farm boys. The thought of the absolute necessity of preserving such copious quantities of the harvest to sustain a large family overwhelms me. Now I notice the glass tops have interesting and varied regal crowns. Some lids have stars and other pattern embossed. So I decide to photograph the whole lot. The glass has subtle hues of greens and blues and clear with different size bubbles capturing the breath of the glass blower. Yuck.

My dad collects fruit jars. He has all the more intensely coloured jars including at one point the much coveted brown ‘Pansy’. He would put them in the sunlight to bring out more colour. Coloured jars were distained by the farm wives of the day but coveted by collectors today. Now I realize I have a personal connection to these jars. So much for having nothing that interests me in my house.
Now on to the compost pile.

Box Fish

box fish
Originally uploaded by Zé Eduardo

This fish is the latest background on my desktop. The more I look at it the more interesting I find it. Notice the hexagon pattern on the body. I love the translucent fins with the green tinge. The lips...well they are just fun. The background is fantastic, I think I have some fabric that would be perfect. It is very unlikely that I will ever get to Bonaire in the Dutch Antilles so I am loving the photos that 'Ze Eduardo' has been uploading to flickr during the last few weeks.

Cole&Me2

I absolutely cannot figure out how to put this image in my profile. I'm going to sew!
Cole&Me2
Originally uploaded by materialeyes

Hawaiian Snow

I’ve started Module 3 of the City and Guilds Patchwork certificate online course. 18 or so activities in this module with lots of hand work. I decided to get a head start on one of the final activities knowing Hawaiian style quilting is not for me and there would be much procrastination going on at every opportunity. It was fun enough cutting out the snowflakes- certainly messy enough. The flakes I liked best were angular and detailed. I knew those would pose extreme appliqué problems. I felt I couldn’t select the simple and gently curvaceous one because it would be ‘too easy’.
I really like the overall effect of the white flakes on black. Before seeing this photo I picked Halloween colours, orange and brown batiks.
I read a little bit on the history of Hawaiian quilts. Quite fascinating! Here is a snippet summary. “Before the first contact with whites (haole), the Hawaiians were making a type of Quilt called a Kapa, which was made of fabric pounded from the bark of the Wauke (paper bark or mulberry) tree. On the top layer they would print geometric and snowflake type designs, with a thicker layer in the middle and a smooth bottom layer or lining. They were sewn with fibres gathered from nature and needles fashioned from shells or the rib of the palm frond. From http://www.hawaiianquiltartist.com/ Thank goodness the Kemshall’s don’t have us ‘fashioning’ our own needles from natural sources…yet! I shall post the Halloween Hawaiian block in a few days.

Disperse Dyeing Results

Disperse dyeing is full of surprises. It is so exciting when you peel back the freshly pressed paper and see how the dye and fabric sublimated. The purple paper was in fact a brilliant blue. The dull red was fuschia and the mustard yellow was bright lemon. Very alarming! I was forever looking for my paper of ‘mud’ colours to iron over the whole works to tone it all down. My mud ran out and I just had to deal with it.
I tried several fabrics and loved the intensity of a 100% polyester ‘satin-like’ shirt with a heavy drape. My favourite is the last one, shown here, printed on the same polyester fabric. Very pale and pleasant. Too bad there was so much red dye left in the top left ginkgo. At this point I had learned there would be no fixing the bright pink with another layer. More than 3 layers proved more disastrous than not.
I stumbled onto Barbara McKie’s disperse dye work at http://mckieart.com/... again. She must use disperse dye in a large format printer to get her images. What is with these fibre art studios that don’t have a thread out of place?!

Disperse Dyes and Ginkgo Leaves

Yesterday I got my new painting area organized enough to paint computer paper with disperse dye. I read Linda Kemshall’s book ‘Color Moves, Transfer Paints on Fabric’ quite thoroughly before starting. I have been looking forward to doing this final Module 2 activity since July. I really liked the transparent effects when the paper was ironed onto the various synthetic fibres. But first…I had to get the paint on the paper.
The disperse dyes are very watery so the first few papers were drenched and runny. The cute little paint palette was too small and the watery paint spilled every where- not at all like the tidy pictures in Linda’s book! I thought it wasn’t working out very well so I added some thickener. This seemed to control the liquid much better.
I laid plastic wrap on the red, yellow and blue (looks purple to me). This made for great texture. After I had these basic colour sheets I started painting the positive and negative ginkgos that I had cut out. Freezer paper would have made sharper images but these will still be useful. I started mixing the primaries but did not get oranges like I was expecting and green was not going to happen. I must have contaminated the blue with red somewhere along the line.
This morning I checked out the dried pieces and was thrilled with the colours and did not miss the blue. The runny watercolour-like pages are actually very interesting when I lay the ginkgos on top. I think I have enough painted papers and possibilities to entertain myself this dreary October afternoon. Now to heat up the iron, thanks Doreen, and see what colours I really get.

Kiwi Jewel

14"X18" , click on image for quilting detail

Acrylic Paint Inspiration

My first blog entry was ‘Kiwi Mosaic’. This completed quilt is ‘Kiwi Jewel’. I really like it. Usually I just enjoy the doing and feel quite indifferent once the challenges are faced, decisions are made and the work is done. Translating my original kiwi acrylic still life into this mosaic was absorbing and challenging from beginning to end. Don’t be fooled by the small size! The border was a gorgeous piece of hand dyed fabric that resulted from Darlene (co-Fabricator) generously sharing her dyes this past July. I used up every square inch of it.
How to quilt the kiwi section was a big stumbling block until last week; when I bought a funky printed batikish fabric from Poppins. As I was pondering how to quilt an oval motif, my eyes landed on the swirly, sort of round shapes, in the fabric that squished in and around each other. It was fun to stitch the pattern. I couldn't resist adding the yarn around the large border. The chartreuse looked so great with the purple. I just realized this might be an example of complementary colours.

Tomorrow is the first day of a Bargello workshop, 'Twisted Ribbon' at Poppins with teacher Gwen Ledyard. I think I have my 20 fabric picked out. I look forward to the feedback of her experienced eye.

Transparency

I first picked a few leaves off of my sycamore tree then layed them on sheer fabric which was on top of a piece of glass. Using my very hot burning tool I burned an outlined of each leaf, lifted the excess sheer and peeled the leaf off of the glass. I just love when a technique works so slickly.
Using a metal ruler I burned a lot of rectangles out of a lot of different colours of sheer. Some shot, some not. I found it frustrating to try and control the placement of the sheers so opted for a willy nilly arrangement. Always something was not working with the arrangement. I'd move one thing and create a problem elsewhere. Finally I decided to accept this arrangement. (I see a few things I am going to change!) Nothing like a picture to see the flaws!

The goal of the City and Guilds exercise I was to observe the effect of laying yellow over blue vs. blue over yellow and was the layering effect the same result as in the paint wash exercise. However, I got caught up in where the heavier colours were laying with respect to the lighter colours and with respect to the leaves. I'll do a more structured experiment with colour layering tomorrow.

Flickrd

Finally I have started a system for organizing my photos. I decided to go with flickr.com. My user name at flickr is materialeyes. Its free for now but I will want more than 3 'sets' to organize and access my photos. For $25/year you get unlimited photo uploads and unlimited sets. I really love the ability to have so many tags. So far I have quilting, line and texture sets.

Picture organizing is really cutting into my already limited quilting time.

I'm posting the king size quilt I made for my dad a few years ago. I still really like like the quilt it but I love the cherry bedroom suite he made for us.

Log Turtle

Everyday bloggings are too daunting for me. Surely I can manage once a week. That is my new goal. Over the summer I managed to make a second version of the Fabricator group challenge to create a playing card (6 of spades) in the manner of a famous artist. I gave the first 'card' to my dad for his 75th birthday only to find the group of 'cards' was to be displayed in various venues in the coming year. I am happy to have this hanging on my beige walls.We just decided today that our next group project is 'Portals'. With so many fantastic doors in so many styles it is tempting to do a literal interpretation. I'm intrigued with Frank Lloyd Wright's glass doors but like the idea of working with a palette of fresh fun colours and creating a wonky batch of doors.I have inevitably reached the City and Guild's assignment in Module 2 to quilt the kiwi mosaic pictured in my June blog. I've decided to lay a fine, white netting with a smidge of iridescence over all the mosaic tidbits. Now to find the quilting plan I decided on in June!I couldn't resist posting this fun little log cabin block, also for C&G.

My pictures did not make it. One more try.

Kiwi Mosaic

Day 2 of blogging. I feel a little more relaxed. My C&G 'free applique' is complete and finishes the last activity for module one. I'll see what Catherine has to say. She will likely want more achromatic samples. I really enjoyed all of he activities and learned so much. I think I will copy the e-mails that I sent to Catherine and somehow add a pocket to my sketchbook so when I finally am able to call myself a fibre artist I can look back at the start. A before and after of sorts.
Yesterdays idea of posting all of my activities for unit 1 is not going to happen! It is hard enough handling the ideas each day brings.
My voyeur habit that started on flickr is now in effect with the C&G textile group I joined. I like to 'watch'. I may join flickr if only because of the copius numbers of photos I have.
This is my mosaic. Where to from here? I'm thinking a diagonal jagged line following the tiles to eliminate the heavy shadow. I don't mind the rectangleness though. It's at the wait and see percolation stage.
I played with my kiwi mosaic in the kaleidoscope program. The possiblilites are endless and they all look great. I ended with this kaleidoscope.

All blogs start somewhere. I will begin with Activity 10, City and Guilds Course 7922-03, Patchwork and Quilting Online. I will work back to Activity 1 with the plan to have a diary of my work and progress since I started the Level 3 certificate course April 27, 2007.These are the colourwheel dyeing exercises that I sent to Catherine. I can see I will have to create that imaginary person I am talking to for this to feel real.