Taking shape

In my last post, I told you that I had a plan to use the Celtic knot that I had drawn as part of the Creative Prompt Project..............but I did not say exactly what I planned. I have mentioned that I am intrigued with whole cloth quilting and want to try my hand at designing one. While I know that there are lots of beautiful designs available out there, I prefer to keep my work as original as possible.
Since I have never done this sort of thing before, I thought perhaps I should start small. So here is my knot, now surrounded by the designs I came up with. This will be a miniature, as the piece you see here is a mere 18" from edge to edge. You'll also notice that those lines are fairly dark,...........well, that is because I have no intention of removing them......... it's just something else I want to try and to find out what that might, be you'll need to check back later.


and here is my most recent doodle for the CPP. #43, which is Gratitude.

What to do with these doodles.

I am now up to the 42nd word of The Creative Prompt Project, in some cases, I did more than one so I now have 50 doodles in these sketch books.
What the heck will I do with them all? I believe some will be my inspiration for future art quilts, I have no doubt about that, but what about the others?

At times, when I am running fabric through my printer I find that I often have some unused space. I really dislike wasting anything.......especially fabric that has been treated for printing, so recently, I simply filled that space with doodles. I then pressed them to paper backed fusible web and cut them out. In the case of the rooster I placed it on a similar background, layered tulle over top prior to adding the stitching to create this postcard that has been sent to a woman who collects roosters.


I have a different plan for prompt word #42 Knot. here is my knot in the sketch book and here it is after being transferred to fabric...........what will it become? well you will just have to check back later to find out.

Prompt #41 & Finding Design Inspration.

Prompt # 41 is Core. Each week I try to do something that I think might be a little different or unexpected with my CPP prompt responses........ but this week, as you can see, I could not resist temptation.

I am working toward designing a whole cloth quilt. I am just playing with various ideas at this point and not wanting to use motifs that can be found in quilt books, I thought I'd look about for inspiration. There are designs everywhere you look. My oak press back chairs have wonderful scroll work, as do these trivets, great decoration can be found on old sewing machines, furniture, jewelry and on this old FireKing glass pie plate.




I did some sketches of what I saw, simplifying them where necessary. I then scanned my drawings, enlarged, print and cut them out. By cutting several of each image you can play with how they might look as part of a quilt design.




Here is an example of what this exercise yielded.

Test results ( I am not impressed) and more doodles.

About a week ago, I showed you a piece of fabric that I began marking with a water soluble pen so that I could test how well those erasers designed to remove the marks without having to immerse your quilt in water, actually work.
Well, I left the marks for a week, then added a few more. Did lots of machine quilting.....stitching beside and right on top of the lines. Once I was finished, I began "erasing" the marked lines.
At first it seemed to be working really quite well, I began with the motif that is left centre. It took a lot of erasing.........this piece is only the size of a sheet of paper and it took nearly 20 minutes to remove those marks. I left it to thoroughly dry and look what re-appeared......... so I began erasing again, but in the end (after another 10 minutes of erasing) the pen seemed dry, my hands were getting very sore and I just gave up and immersed the piece in water.
I suppose for the odd line this product would be fine but I simply can not imagine the time it would take to successfully remove lines from a full size, whole cloth quilt. I was actually using 2 of the eraser pens, one of which is already dry......at 6$ a pop that could be an expensive venture. How long should they last? I certainly expected it to last longer than this small piece........maybe I got old product, but the results of this test have left me totally unimpressed.


Okay........time to doodle.

Have you been following the Creative Prompt Project? Click on Clara on my side bar to learn more about it and see what others have posted as their response to many of the prompts. Each week, Jaye at ArtQuiltmaker provides us with a word prompt.

Word #40 is wish. I decided to do a couple this week........my Dad loved Barbara Eden in that silly T.V. show "I Dream of Jeannie" so here is my Genie's bottle and as kids, my siblings and I often spent time hunting for 4 leaf clovers, you were supposed to wish on them and they would bring you luck. .............hmmm what shall I wish for?

Is This Considered Cheating?

I recently volunteered to re-draft the block our guild uses for it's logo because the instructions for our chatelaine have been photocopied to the point that the templates are somewhat distorted. I made my chatelaine from those earlier instructions and had a devil of a time with it. In the end my block was too big and did not fit the pattern....so I made a few changes ....set it on point and created this. Of course I had to "junk" it up with all sorts of embellishments.

The block is known as "Hands all Around" or the "Friendship" block which is fitting since our guild is The London Friendship Quilters. But for a fairly new or inexperienced quilter it is not a friendly block with all those Y seams. So I decided to include, in the new instructions, an alternate way of completing this block for the chatelaine. First I drafted the block adding the seam allowances for those who wish to stitch the seams in the traditional way and another set without seam allowances so it could be done using a fusible applique method.
I traced the pieces onto paper backed fusible web, cut and laid them out before pressing them to some light weight stabilizer. Then it was a simple matter of satin stitching (although this took almost as long as piecing would) but without un-sewing there was definitely less stress.

I realized as I was putting it together that I should have left a seam allowance for the outer edge, I will be correcting that.


Now I hate to waste anything and since I'll need a postcard for our exchange at guild this week I used this block, practiced a little mini-McTavishing, added some found objects and Voila! One postcard completed.

So I ask you........................Is this Cheating?

Tests, a Doodle and Introducing Kitty!

Introducing Kitty..........Kitty, a hooded rat about 4 weeks old is my newest little rattie girl.

I have been working on an idea for a whole cloth quilt but am a little nervous about actually marking the fabric..........will the marks really all come out once the quilt is done? While at the Creative Festival in Toronto a couple of weeks back, I picked up some Clover eraser pens to test. One is strictly a tool to erase marks made by water soluble pens the other is double ended, with one end having the ink for marking and the other, the eraser. I like the idea of not having to submerge the entire quilt in water so I do hope these work. I plan to stitch this piece and leave it sit for a few days before removing the marks. I'll post the results next week.
Normally I thread baste by hand but I have been trying some of the neat little things that my new Janome can do, this piece was basted by machine.....I LOVE it!


............and finally, my response to this week's word for the Creative Prompt Project, Spirit.
This is what I imagine my spirit guide might look like.