Three finishes!

Boy do I have a bad case of winter! Symptoms are a desire to sleep unreasonably late and an uncontrollable urge to eat chocolate. Unfortunately, the only cure is spring and that seems a very long time away.

But I did get three journal quilts finished over the weekend. Dogwood was the first, and needed beading for the center of the flowers, and binding. I'm pleased with the way it turned out.

The other two are painted quilts, which I'd worked on over the weekend and just needed binding.

Iris was the first quilt in my DIY challenge. The words I drew were Metallic, Sunrise and Tech. I really couldn't think of anything high tech for a subject, at least that went with sunrise, so I decided on a high tech look for the flower vase. For this one I pieced the "table" and "sky" together, then thread-sketched the irises and vase. I started by thread painting the irises yellow with a purple center, but they got lost when I painted the sky with sunrise colors. I quilted the outlines of the vase and the sun's rays, and then painted them in with the Lumiere paints.

I liked the sunrise effect, and I do a lot of quilts based on lighthouses, so I decided on a painted lighthouse as the next piece. For this one I started with a single piece of fabric for background, layered (and basted the edges), then thread sketched in the lighthouse, area of water, area of land and sky. Then I used appropriate colors to quilt in the details in each area. I used the Lumiere paints to paint inside the quilted lines. The white and black are Opaque colors in the Lumiere line and looked too flat against the others, so I highlighted the black with a blue metallic and the white with silver.

After I finished up all the bindings, I used my new Sidewinder to wind a bunch of bobbins. It doesn't wind as well as winding on my machine, it stops too soon and isn't quite as even, but it is nice not to have to unthread the machine I'm sewing on to wind bobbins.

And I finally caught up with the exercises from the Art of Silliness. I'm enjoying the exercises, but since I'd been behind I haven't kept up with the class. I'm going to try to keep up for the rest of the class.

It's a gray and gloomy day, so I'm hoping the rain will clear in time for me to go to guild tonight. More later.

Dimensional applique flowers

I had a good night in the studio last night. I alternated between working on my dogwood piece and an effort for my DIY challenge. I'm not sure about the challenge piece, so I'll just tell you about the dogwood.

This one is another effort at combining different techniques. The background is pieced from a variety of black print fabrics. Then I layered and thread sketched a branch and leaves, using decorative threads and echo quilting, then quilted the rest of the background using black thread. A good idea here (which I always forget) is to baste all the way around the quilt before starting thread sketching and quilting. That should help reduce the distortion.

After quilting, I painted the branch and main leaves, using the Lumiere paints.

Then I got to the tedious part. I wanted to make the dogwood flowers with dimensional applique, my term for creating the item separately, layering and quilting it, then adding it to the background. I used this technique in my Angels of the Garden.

My original plan was for a lot of dogwood flowers, so I drew a zillion petals on freezer paper, cut them out and pressed onto the wrong side of my flower fabric. Then I cut apart in sets of four petals, laid them right sides together with a second piece of the fabric and stitched around the freezer paper templates, leaving space at the end of the petals to turn them. After cutting them out, clipping curves and removing the , I turned them right side out and used the freezer paper template to cut batting (from scraps) to fill. After tucking in the batting, I hand-sewed the petals closed.

After trying some different arrangements, I decided o just three flowers. Then it was back to my free motion machine (my Singer 15-30 treadle) to stitch down the petals, working from the center and leaving the outside edges free.

Next step is some beading, then finish the edges. What do you think?

More later.

Photo Friday - the ice storm

I can't say much that's good about ice storms, so I won't say anything. But I did get some nice pictures. Enjoy. More later.

Crape myrtles

The branches look like gold under the ice

Every berry is cased in ice

nature's lace

A zen of a quilt

I finished the zentangle quilt last night, while thinking about my DIY challenge. I wish all my quilts came to mind as easily as the zentangle. Usually I have a concept and let it bounce around in my head for a while, getting an idea here, an idea there and then I pull them all together. Sometimes it takes a while.

After finishing the zentangle quilt, I worked a while on another piece, which combines quilting, painting and dimensional applique. And I sewed together the bases for two more potential zentangles (or I might use them for something else.....)

I posted my zentangle quilt to the 3 Creative Studios challenge page. There are some beautiful works already posted, it's always inspiring to see what everyone else is doing.

 Here's the finished zentangle quilt and a couple of details. Time for me to get busy. More later.

A challenge quilt or two

Good morning from icy South Georgia. This is the kind of day that makes me glad I work from home!

one of my zentangles

One of my goals this year is to stretch myself as an artist and quilter. I want to try new techniques, ideas, and materials. One way to do this is with challenges, so I'd planned a DIY challenge for the year. I have three sets of words, including techniques, materials, shapes, colors, moods, subjects and more. When I'm ready to challenge myself, I'll draw one word from each of the three sets and use them as the basis for my work.

I was going to do this on my own, until I found the 3 Creative Studios Journal Quilt Challenge. A journal quilt is a small quilt designed to explore a subject or technique. That's exactly what I want to do, so I'm doing my challenge as a participant in the Journal Quilt Challenge. My goal is to average two pieces a month.

My first words are Metallic, Sunrise and Tech. I'm not sure where I'm going to go with them, but I'm thinking about them while I work on some other projects.


And one of those other projects will actually be my first entry in the Journal Quilt Challenge. I recently discovered Zentangles, a kind of structured doodle. Someone asked about using the zentangles to make a quilt and I just had to give it a try.

pieces cut and swapped

I started with three approximately 12 inch squares, layered them, and cut gentle curves through the entire stack. I stopped at six pieces, because I liked the looks and proportions. I swapped the stacks to get three sets with two pieces of each color, then stitched the new set together. You have to be careful to start seams on the interior of the block, because the curves don't match and you end up with extra fabric when you end the seam.

Press after each set of seams, and give it a good pressing when it's completely stitched (I used a starch type spray before I cut the fabrics, made them easier to cut and handle).  For this piece I then squared the block, layered it and started quilting. Next time I'll mark the cutting lines, layer the batting and backing and baste along the cutting lines before I square it. It's definitely worth basting the edges and stitching along all the seam lines before starting the intense quilting, to prevent distortion.


Then I quilted. I looked through my stack of zentangles to choose motifs for each section, and for this one I thread sketched to fill in the solid areas. I think for the next I'll use paint to fill in the solid areas, instead. I just need to finish the edges on this one and it's done, my first journal quilt of the year!

A quilted zentangle

First finishes of the year

Great day yesterday, despite the cold. I figured out how to set up the Treadlin' Bloggers webring, for bloggers who use and/or collect vintage or antique sewing machines. The first sites have been entered, though at the moment two are waiting for their code so they can be activated.

Then it was into the studio. Forget organization, I wanted to create. First project was to finish my painted quilt. I finished a last bit of quilting, then added a tiny binding matching the border, using my Davis VF to sew it on. The binding would have turned out nicely except that in a moment when my brain was turned off (only explanation) I tried to trim up the batting and backing and cut the binding at the corners. We just won't talk about what the corners look like on the back.

The second finish is a quilted purse. This was another of my demo pieces. I kept adding to the quilting, decided I liked it and then had to design the purse to use the piece at the size it happened to be. Fortunately I had more of the black and was able to quilt an additional piece for the back and flap of the purse so I could complete it.

I know I've talked about how these pieces were started before, but a quick recap. I used some random fabrics to set up sandwiches for my demo at our guild's quilt show back in October. I did free motion on my treadle sewing machine, with no particular pattern in mind, just showing people what you can do. I ended up with about a half-dozen similar pieces that I set aside. Some, which showed up better, had light thread on the dark background, some had used a bright pink, which didn't show up as well as I'd hoped.

Later I wanted to try out some multi-line quilting techniques, loosely based on Patsy Thompson's hyper-quilting (she uses stencils and is very precise, mine is more fluid).  I used a very small piece first, added quilting until I was happy, accented with Shiva paint sticks and was pleased with the result. So I started working on the next piece, which I ended up using in the purse. The painted quilt I did a little differently, because I started with just the demo quilting, then worked out the painting and additional quilting together. For that one I used Lumiere paint.

Now its on to the next projects. I have several ideas competing to be next.

 More later.

Treadlin' Bloggers webring

Calling all bloggers who use and/or collect antique and vintage sewing machines! If your blog focuses mainly on sewing adventures using your collection, or on the hunt, repairing or restoring vintage machines, you're invited to join the Treadlin' Bloggers. Users of treadles, handcranks and vintage e-machines are welcome.

Join here

The link takes you to a page to add your site (your blog) to the ring. Enter the name of your blog,  a brief description and the web address (URL) of your blog. Then give yourself a user name and password so you can log in to make changes to your membership. Be sure to include your name and email so I can let you know if there are any questions and when you are added to the ring.

Then the most important thing, copy the code that creates the "ring" box that goes on your blog, and copy it into your blog. On blogger you do this by clicking on Design in the top right corner, then clicking on "Add a Gadget" at the top of your sidebar. Choose HTML/JavaScript and hit the "+" sign. Don't put anything in the title bar, but copy the code into the Content box. Then hit save.

When I get a submission for a ring, I'll check for the code and approve your blog after I see the code is installed.

More later.