Quilting Flotsam

I've seen many beautiful art pieces with circles lately and love the look and wanted to duplicate it in some way.  I collected discarded bits of fabric and threads (flotsam) from the floor of my quilting studio and made them into circles and glued them onto a quilted 12x12.  Sewing the circles down made them flat and I really wanted them to stand out so I resorted to fabric Mod Podge.  I used a blue hand dye to give an oceany feel and hoped the circles looked like they were floating flotsam.

Once upon a time. . .

Once upon a time Kasha, a very beautiful fairy princess, was flying through the forest when she saw a very small little creature inching it's way along the forest floor.  She sat on a tree branch and watched the chubby little creature crawl a very short distance.  "Why don't you open your wings and fly little one?"  The little creature didn't seem to hear her and continued to crawl.  Kasha flew down to the forest floor and knelt down.  She gently raised the little creature up to her face.  "Why don't you open your wings and fly?"  

"I can't fly your highness, I don't have wings.  I must crawl and spend all the days of my life under this tree."

Princess Kasha smiled and her eyes twinkled as she giggled, "Of course you have wings.  Don't you know that all the King's creatures can fly?  Open your wings and fly!"  

"I . . . I . . . have wings?  I can fly?"

"Yes you can!  Just open your wings!"

The little creature looked around at his tiny little body looking for his wings.  If the Fairy King's daughter  said he had wings then certainly they must be here somewhere, he reasoned.  He began to feel tingly all over and a bit itchy on his back.  Before he knew what happened his little body morphed into a glorious creature with wings.  He stretched and waved his wings at the Fairy Princess while doing a little dance on her fingers.  He could barely believe it was possible that he might be able to fly across the forest and see his King.  Princess Kasha raised her arm and exclaimed, "Fly!"  And he flew!

Fairy Princess Kasha the butterfly morphing fairy (or would it be caterpillar morphing fairy?) created in photoshop and printed onto fabric using TAP (Transfer Artist Paper) and then embellished with acrylic inks and organza.  See my blog for the before photo.

The Future is Inside You

"You are the only one who can change your future"

Dr. Seuss

The young lady is filled with drawings and words of her dreams and hopes for the future.  She is stepping forward into the cold world of her future but is prepared and willing to bring about her future. 

The background was a batik to which I lightly added some quotes about the future using Citrasolv.  I also transferred the word "Future" with Citrasolv and then painted over it with black Setacolor to enhance it.

The Road to a New Home

My home for the first 21 years of life revolved around the city of Chicago and all that entailed:  family, friends, the Chicago Cubs, Chicagofest, Hot dogs wrapped up with fries, Italian Beef Sandwiches, Lake Perch, heat & humidity.

After becoming engaged the road was leading to California.

We had plans of stopping in Salt Lake City to marry in the temple and continue on to Southern California, however the world had other plans for us when the car broke down in Iowa. 

We spent 5 days in a hotel waiting for the car to be repaired.  We pondered how we were like the pioneers of old breaking down and having troubles across the plains.  Once the car was repaired we continued on our journey, slipping and sliding across I-80 in the biggest storm of the decade.  When we finally arrived in Salt Lake we had $5 in our pockets and were thankful for friends who took us in and helped us find work and eventually our own apartment.  We have tried to find work and move to California many times but things have never worked out for us.  It seems the road home will always lead to Salt Lake City.

Be the Change

I'm starting to catch up!

Trying to change my procrastination. ;)

"We must be the change we wish to see in the world"

Ghandi

Tsukineko inks on cotton printed fabric.

Hey Hey Cubbies!

One of my favorite memories of growing up in Chicago is going to see Cub's games with my mom and sister so I naturally had to make a quilt about the Cub's when Baseball was chosen as our word.

I chose to find baseball cards of players I fondly remember from my youth such as Billy Williams, Ernie Banks, Fergie Jenkins, and Ryne Sandberg.  I then printed the cards onto muslin treated with BubbleJet 2000 and laid them out as if they were on my desk being admired.  And the fabric on the back is yet another beautiful Cubs fabric.

Where the Buffalo Roam

Buffaloes were one of the first things that came to mind when I heard the word "prairie."  I think of the hundreds of thousands of American Bison that used to roam across America's prairie's and how we over hunted them and are just now working to raise the numbers of buffalo across the country.

My quilt is a reversed appliqued buffalo silhouette on a free form pieced prairie.

Matinee

My first thought of the word Matinee was the marquee outside the theaters of my childhood.

There were several theaters with the name of the theater in large letters that would light up at night.

I pondered how fancy to get with the building as well as the scaffolding that held up the sign and which angle. I concluded that simpler is usually better and 

I decided I wanted the sign to look like I was standing on the street looking up just before participating in one of my favorite activities with my Mom and Sister.

Subliminal Green Messaging

I had many "brilliant ideas" for Green but just couldn't seem to make any of them come together.  I finally decided to use this piece of snow resist dyed fabric and attempt to use thread to make it "come alive." 

I'm not excited about the results and I couldn't get a photo I liked either. Neither seems bright enough for me.  I think the quilt is a little brighter in person.  I do like the words I quilted into the tree and grass, although they can't necessarily be seen at first sight I hope that perhaps they provide a little subliminal message to keep the world a beautiful place.

Actually I'm not sure you can read them in these photos either! Oh well.

Deep Blue Sea

When I think of blue I think of the ocean and I take a deep wistful sigh. While I was in Hawaii a few years ago I went snorkeling. I loved looking all the amazing fish and coral. However my heart still skips a beat when I think about almost swimming head first into a turtle. She was so beautiful and after we got over the shock of almost running into each other she seemed as curious about me as I was about her. It was a miraculous moment for me.


I created the turtle using a photograph that I printed onto tissue paper. After the tissue paper was sprayed with three layers of finishing spray, I crumpled it several times and then fused it to fabric. This along with the coral was then machine appliqued to the background. The crumpled tissue paper adds a very nice texture to the turtle.

Black Friday Chaos

The first thing that came to mind when I heard Chaos was the inevitable shopping I had ahead of me for the holidays.

I tried to use warm colors to give the feeling of movement and pandemonium but I'm now not sure if I put too much chaos into the piece.  ;)

Brrrrrrrr

Baby it's Cold outside!

I suppose today is an appropriate day for my "Cold" quilt to make it's debut because we had our first snowfall.  My yard is covered with about an inch of the beautiful stuff but it won't be there for long since it is warm enough that everything is melting already.

I had many ideas go through my head for Cold: cold turkey, cold shoulder, cold feet, snow, ice, icicles, and snowmen to name a few. I sketched out many of these ideas but when it came down to the wire this frosty face was the image I decided to go with. My son says it looks more like an image of warm than cold because of the big puffy coat. However my thinking was more along the lines of a cold so frigid that even a big puffy coat will not keep you warm. A chill so cold that you don't want to open your eyes for fear of freezing your eyeballs. Perhaps I need to add more frosty bits (glitter perhaps?) along the scarf and face to better convey a more frosty image?

Midge Meditation

As soon as I saw Maria Elkins' on Quilting Arts TV demonstrating how to make portraits I knew I had found a way to make my frog. And with my children off to school once again I finally had the uninterrupted time to make her happen!She is made from fabric I dyed and is quilted with rayon thread. I am feeling very good about the quilting on this piece because of all the instruction and practice I received in Lisa B's class. Thank you Lisa!

The Price of Peace

Thought Process: When I think of Peace the word seems to morph into "peaceful" and when I think peaceful I think trees, forests, nature and cemeteries. It may sound morbid but let me explain. Cemeteries are quiet places where one can think without much interference. Also my mother and I have always enjoyed going into cemeteries and looking at the names, dates and inscriptions on the tomb stones. We wonder about the people each tombstone represents. Who were they? How did they live? How did they die?

Recently my family and I went to Washington DC. While there we visited Arlington National Cemetery. The Cemetery is 200 acres of grass, trees and white tombstones and although the surroundings are very peaceful, the immediate effect upon entering the cemetery can be anything but a feeling of peace. Despite my facination with cemeteries and wanting to know about each person who lies buried there, I couldn't help but remember that each person is buried there because of our nation's search for Peace. And no matter how you might feel about the subject of war I think you can't help but feel the irony in this. As a result I felt this image would best represent this month's word.

How I made the quilt: I cropped a photo I took at Arlington and then used photoshop to superimpose the word "Peace" into the grass. I printed the photo in reverse and then took the print to a copy shop to be enlarged and color copied by a copier that uses toner. I then used Citrasolv to transfer the image onto a cotton fabric. I enhanced the image using colored pencils and Paintstiks. As I quilted the image with my friend Juliette's really cool Bernina, I did a bit of threadpainting on the trees & grass and then quilted around a number of the tombstones and the word "peace." Next I used a homemade foam stamp, which I learned to make when I read the book Inspired to Quilt, to put leaf images across a piece of silk organza. I placed the organza on top of the piece and quilted more. Lastly I cut the organza off of the main tree, the word "Peace" and the foremost tombstone. The edges are left unfinished.

Many Sandstones

When I first heard the word for this challenge, I thought of Delicate Arch in Moab, and I thought most of us would think the same thing. Also, knowing what beautiful Batiks Anne has done on the subject of sandstone I felt a bit intimidated. I tried to "mix it up" by thinking of crazy things I could do to make Sandstone really different: make layers of sandstone in blue, or make the layers using zippers, or something not natural like a building made out of sandstone but in the end one of the things that kept calling me was petroglyphs. I found this cool petroglyph of Ghanaskidi, the Hump-backed God and really fell in love with the image. The second link is of the actual petroglyph and the first link is of a replica someone made which I translated into this reverse applique.

I really like how this turned out with the curls of the Batik behind the hand dyed fabric but I haven't quilted it yet because after talking with my son another idea kept bugging me. My son told me that sandstone wasn't an image for him, but rather a texture and so I played in my mind with different ideas of how I could create sandstone texture without actually glueing sand to the fabric. I came up with this:

Basically it is the same idea as that used in making faux chenille. I layed a large number of small scraps onto a piece of batting creating about three layers. The scraps were arranged in random directions. I then put a solid piece of fabric on the top and back and stitched lines all over the fabric in a pattern I had seen in many sandstone pictures on the internet. After I stitched, I cut between the stitches and viola! multicolored layers of texture. They are soft layers, so maybe not the rough texture I was looking for tactilly but more visually rough.

Here is a close up of some of the cut through layers.

I really, really liked this idea and decided to try to take it one step further by making another layered sandstone quilt and then "carving" an arch from it and placing it on a sky:

I don't like this quilt as much as I like the plain sandstone because I used a printed batik for the outerlayer instead of a solid. The underlayers don't seem to show through as well, and the dark outerlayer and dark blue background isn't enough of a contrast in value so the whole thing is reading dark to me. If I decide to do it again I'll change up the values. This might be something fun to try in a bigger size!

I can't wait to see what everyone else has come up with!

Words of Comfort

The reason I submitted the word Comfort was because I was struggling with how to comfort my sister whose close friend had recently committed suicide. I was shocked when the word was drawn first, especially since one of the siblings of my daughters friend had then committed suicide as well. As I contemplated the word I thought of all the words I've tried to offer, but I've felt that the words mean so little. I then played with the images that came to mind of physically comforting someone.

My girls laughed at some of these and said they looked like the people were kissing. Something that is still icky in their lives (thankfully)!
Then I played with some simple images in Photoshop and finally found one I liked. I played around with the colors a bit too, trying to decide what color comfort is.

I decided that I wanted to write words of comfort on the quilt. I decided I would write the words on the arms. I'm not sure why I chose the colors in my first attempt but I did like them when I started out.

However after I put the quilt together I hated it! I quilted it to see if the quilting would make a difference - Nope. It seemed too busy and not the least bit comforting. I hung it on my design wall and tried to figure out the problem. Then one day as I was watching Quilting Arts TV one of the artists reminded me about using the color wheel to portray a feeling in a quilt. This is when I decided that the quilt needed to be monochromatic, and that it needed to be warm. I also decided that the embrace was more important than the words, and so the words were written with a brown marker on the background where they could still be there, but they weren't jumping out.

The embrace is what I hope stands out and brings the feeling of comfort.