Pretty in paint

My first painted quilt was kind of an accident, as I started with a piece I'd already quilted. So I decided to make another and take notes along the way on what works best.

Start by quilting with a contrasting color, then echoing the quilting
with a second color.

Here are the basics on a simple painted quilt, using Lumiere paints.

The paint shows up best on a dark background, so start with a dark fabric and border it with a two inch border. For this one I chose a fabric that picks up some of the colors in the paints.

Layer with a thin batting and cotton backing. I used leftover 80/20 cotton/poly batting. Baste all the way around the edges with a long stitch so the layers won't shift.

Choose two or more colors of thread to quilt the main area. Both should contrast, and the first you use should be the one you want to be most prominent.

Starting at one of the edges, begin free motion quilting. It helps to have some plan of what motifs you want to use and where you want them. Let the design overflow into the border at a few points. Then quilt the border with a color that blends into the border.

Begin painting with main color in larger areas.

Changing to your second color, follow the quilting lines from the first color, quilting inside any motifs like flowers or leaves. This will be your painting line. Add additional quilting to emphasize different areas if you want.

Get out a selection of small paintbrushes, including fine and wider brushes (about one-fourth inch). Wash brushes with soap and water and allow to dry between uses.

Begin painting, using the main color in the larger motifs first. Allow each group to dry (about an hour) before moving on to the next group.  After the main areas are painted, go back to add accents and shading. Paint can be smudged with nearly dry brush for subtle shadings.

Allow finished painting to dry 24 hours, then heat set with hot iron and press cloth. You can add quilting on the painted areas if desired. Finish the edges of the quilt as desired.

 Enjoy your painted quilt! More later.

Add accents and shading after the large areas dry.

Photo Friday - Tybee Island Lighthouse

Here are a couple of photos I took of the Tybee Island (GA) lighthouse a year or so ago.

More later.

A little of this and some of that

I've taken a little break over the past few days from creating new journal quilts and have been working on new variations of the painted lighthouse. These will be the first art quilts to add to the postcards already in my inventory at our restaurant.

I'm planning something new with these quilts, framing them. When I finished the last journal quilts my sweetie suggested I should frame them, then several of the members of my quilt guild suggested the same thing. When I read an article in a back issue of Quilting Arts about framing small art quilts, that was the clincher. So I bought a couple of frames and I guess you'll be getting a step-by-step on framing an art quilt in the next few days.

Other miscellaneous stuff. The new issue of Quilting Arts came in Monday and I was pleased to see my letter to the editor had been printed, and then was used in one of the email promos for the magazine. I guess a writer never gets tired of seeing her name in print, even if it's just a letter to the editor.

Anyone a fan of the movie Mamma Mia? I had never seen it and it was on TV Saturday night. I watched it while sewing and enjoyed it so much I watched again Sunday night. I've had the songs running through my head all week and am ready to watch the movie again.

I've been reading lots of interesting blogs lately. Havels Sewing has some nice tutorials for different projects.

American Quilt Retailer has a roundup of thoughts on the increase in price of cotton fabric.

For other quilters in or near Georgia, I found out that the East Cobb Quilters Guild in Marietta, GA, has it's 2011 show scheduled. Here's the information.

And not really quilting related, but cool, NASA has a new satellite with a solar sail.

Have a great day. More later.

Tutorial - Pincushion Threadcatcher

A few years ago I learned to make these pincushion threadcatchers from a friend. We didn't have a pattern, so later when I wanted to make more, I had to re-create the instructions. I posted the instructions several years ago on a previous blog, but thought they were worth sharing again.

More later. 

Pin-cushion threadcatcher

Materials:

Two or three coordinating fabrics, plus muslin

Sand, rice or ground walnut shells to fill pincushion

Plastic (package strapping), tubing (from plumbing section at hardware store) or thick interfacing (peltex)

Cut as follows: (A)

Pincushion, one of coord fabric and one muslin -- 6.5 by 8.5

Straps, one of coord fabric, 6.5 by 3.5

Bag, one each of two coord fabric, 10 by 17.5

Straps:

Fold fabric along length, right sides together. Pin and stitch along length, leaving ends open. Turn, press and cut in half.

Pincushion:

Layer coord fabric on top of muslin, right side up. Place straps on one short end, with raw ends even with edge and stretching toward center of fabric. Fold in half across width, enclosing straps. Coord fabric will be right sides together, with muslin on outside. Pin. (B) Stitch from fold one inch on one side, leave gap for turning, then stitch remaining open sides, backstitching when crossing straps, for reinforcement. Turn right side out. (C)

Threadcatcher bag:

Separately, fold each coord piece in half across width. With fold on left, pin right side and bottom. On lining, stitch one inch at top of side, leave gap for turning, then stitch remainder of side and bottom. On exterior of bag, stitch entire side and bottom. (D)

With seams still on outside, flatten bottom to side and pin about 2 inches from corner, forming “ear” at each end of bottom seam. Pin both corners of both lining and bag. Stitch across pinned ears, creating flattened bottom. Cut off “ears.” (E)

Turn so side seam becomes back. Pin straps with raw edges even with raw edge of bag, one strap to either side of back seam. (F)

Turn exterior of bag with seams out. Turn lining to seams on inside. Match seam and pin around top. Raw edges of seams should be visible on both bag and lining. Pincushion and straps will be hidden between bag and lining.(G)

Stitch all the way around top, backstitching when crossing straps.

Using gap in lining, turn right side out, then arrange lining inside bag. (H, I, J)

Using gap in lining, thread in plastic/tubing or .5 width of Peltex to hold bag open. (K) Run stiffener all the way around the top, pinning to hold against seam. Stitch around bag top below stiffener. (L)

Pull lining out, pin together edges of gap and stitch closed.

Fill pincushion with sand, etc., then stitch closed.

Photo Friday and 100th post

This is my 100th post on this blog! Not bad considering I had only posted two or three times until August last year when I decided to get serious about blogging.

Most of my photos this week have been of the cats or my projects, but my sweetie stacked some firewood on the deck the other day and I loved the look of the wood rings. So here they are.

More later.

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.