Plaids at Play

On Friday, I did a quick post, mostly just photos.........today I will explain. What I was showing is some of the steps on the way to my entry for this year's "Wee"Quilt Challenge held annually at McDougall Cottage in Cambridge, Ontario.
The theme was "Plaids at Play"and participants were given a 4" swatch of this Olympic tartan....what would you do with that?

For this theme, I had the desire to make a quilt that could be played with. So I began with the steps you saw in the last posting, I inked and painted some heavy stabilizer, did lots of quilting, made a few cut outs, and added beading to that top layer. For the under layer I drafted a sort of Dresden plate type block.....put it together with some piecing along with both machine and hand applique. The plaid tartan was carefully cut and used in such a way that they would become the focal point of the piece. Once I had finished quilting and binding that bottom layer, I attached the "wheel".........(figuring out how to make it secure but still rotate freely was the trickiest part)

I titled it Kaleidoscope........Pattern, shape and colour appear to change with a simple turn of the wheel.

Yes! That upper layer (yellow wheel) can be turned and in doing so, the plaids play Hide and Seek!

here are some close ups so you can get an idea of the way the piece appears to change as the upper layer is rotated.

Yesterday, a friend emailed me these photos.....(Thanks Julia!!!)  uhmmm,  I was unable to attend the awards presentation last week and was not aware the piece had won a ribbon....what a terrific surprise :-) or perhaps Julia has a wicked sense of humour and is having me on LOL

I made a stand for the piece so that viewers could actually turn the wheel. Thought it might be a little difficult to play with, if it was hanging on the wall

 

 

 

 

 

 Julia also set me this wonderful shot of the old stone cottage where the show is on display until Labour Day

What do you suppose......

 Just a few photos.........what do you suppose this is?  I'll post more next week

Start with ink and paint on fabric

add some selective quilting

create a few cut outs

make decisions

 

Okay.....so I am a bit of a tease.................I'll post the finished piece early next week

A Block, a Ribbon and a Prompt

Those of you who have been long time visitors here know that I like to enter challenges. For the past 5 years, I have entered the quilt block contest held annually at Joseph Schneider haus in Kitchener On. This years theme was "What's in a Name" The rules stated that the title must have a "proper"name and that there be some use of gold in the fabric or embellishment. My entry is called Sarah's Garden. It is hand appliqued and embroidered......birds, vines, blossom, melons and garden tools

 I generally find that the most difficult part is composing the statement that must accompany any entry. Since this week's CPP word #157, is Write .........I thought I'd share what I wrote for this block

Welcome to Sarah's garden, where perched on lacy vines, 

birds sing among the blossoms while watching over the days work. 

Delight in the beauty and feast on the harvest.

of course, for the prompt response, I also had to toss in a doodle.

as you can see, these birds are very small

a 1st place reward

Wash test

 My last post about using paints and inks on fabric along with various "extenders" led to many of you asking if the painted/inked fabric can be washed. The short answer is that once heat set, these products are supposed to be permanent.......but, of course, I had to test this. I took the sample that I showed in that post and sliced a couple of strips off, enough to be able to wash (by hand, in warm soapy water) I made a couple of notes so that I could easily line it all back up again, I did it this way so that I could now compare the washed pieces to the originally painted/inked fabric.

Looks good to me!

 There was no bleeding and it appears that there was no colour loss or fading either. Generally, we are not going to wash a painted quilt but, it is nice to know that if it did get wet, it won't be ruined.

Mediums, Gels and Extenders .....oh my!

If you stop by here occasionally, then you know that I very much enjoy experimenting with paints as well as inks. Most of the time the paints/inks are not used straight from the bottle, they have to be mixed with something to help them flow across the fabric easier. I decided to make myself a little sample piece as reference to see what happens to the fabric when each of these products are added to paint and then applied to fabric. Here is what I did. I took 2 pallets, one for SetaColor transparent paint and the other for FW acrylic inks.(also transparent) I have a number of gels, mediums,and extenders....each with its own viscosity.

On each pallet, I mixed my colour (paint or ink) with roughly equal amounts of each of the products you see in the photo.
On fabric, I drew decent sized circles and labeled them. One row is the SetaColor paint mixture and the other is the inks. The first circle in each row is the paint or ink straight from the bottle, so you can see the true colour. I used colours that looked  fairly close to each other......Vermillon in the paint and Scarlet in the ink. The colour intensity will depend on the ratio you use when mixing the paints or inks with the mediums.

The hand of the fabric changes very little with any of these products, you may notice a different "feel" if you pass your hand across the painted surface, but the fabric itself is still very pliable and easily stitched.
In case you can not read the labels in the photo.....I used....Clear Aloe Vera gel (find it at the drugstore....has to be the clear stuff) there is an acrylic glazing liquid by Golden, a Floating Medium by Folk Art, Colourless Extender by Jacquard and Lightening Medium by Pebeo.

I seem to have fallen behind in The Creative Prompt Project once again.....the current  word was Present, my response is this quick paper cut.

More Fabric Painting

I promised I would show you more of the fabric painting project that I have been working on. But I was scheduled to do a presentation at the Oxford Quilters Guild this week (well 2 actually, since they have an evening and morning program) and wanted to give them first peak at this work. I am not accustomed to public speaking and making presentations, but all of the guild members were so receptive, they welcomed me with great energy and made me feel at ease, it was a fabulous experience.
I mentioned that even though I have played with paint for a while now, I thought it was time to take a class. I signed up for an online class through Craftsy, for one called Painting Pictorial Quilts with Annette Kennedy.

This is one of the class projects. Here you see the beginning stage, the bloom is one piece of fabric, as is the leaf and then the stems are another. They are simply cut and fused to the background fabric. looking pretty plain.

then you see the drama unfold as depth and shadow is added, simply with paint. in this photo just the leaf and stem have had paint applied

here is the finished painted Calla Lily  (the background colour is more true in all of the other photos, not sure why this looks quite so purple)

 A very small amount of stitching is added

 and here is it bordered, quilted and bound.

This class was great fun, well laid out, and best of all you can pause, back-up and re-watch segments as many times as you need. I followed the instructions and did it all her way, for my first attempt, I am really quite pleased with the result, my plan is to now take what I have learned and apply this using my own photos. I can hardly wait to get started

Marking circle placement

I am still working away on my applique quilt, for the final border, I choose a pieced and applique block. There are lots of them and I wanted to be sure that all of the circles would end up in the exact same spot on each block. Rather than measuring each one, I simply made a quick template out of card stock. I laid it on the fabric, drew the circle placement and now I can be sure they will all be consistent.

appliqued circles

Because I use an applique method that requires the block to be immersed in warm water to remove the freezer paper, I actually made the block a bit larger and cut it to the proper measurements, (just in case that process might cause a bit of distortion) once dry, I trimmed them before moving on to piecing the corners. Used the template again, to be certain the circles remained in the proper position.

paper removed......drying

one of 56

Looks as though Blogger has decided to make some improvements.............liked it better before. oh well, its probably only because I was comfortable with the old way of doing the job  :-)

Just going to half to learn how to deal with these changes.  Hopefully it won't take too long to figure this out.