A Day Spent Quilting

I got to spend the whole day quilting. Right now, I can't think of a better way to spend my vacation.

I did some piecing and I quilted the water quilt which now has it's official title. I don't actually put the names of quilts out there until they are done or mostly done. That way I'm sure they actually are what I decided to name them. Anyway, this quilt is named "Middle Passage Mediations". I'll take a non-blurry picture soon.

The fabric is hand dyed. And it is machine pieced and quilted.

I even quilted a ship on it.

I don't really have too much to say about what's going on with this quilt. Or I have so much to say that I don't know where to start. I'm not sure which is true. Suffice it to say, I think every person has something in his or her consciousness that sort of haunts them. It is useful to process these things and meditate on why they grip you. I think it might also be useful to get them out of your head an up on a wall where you can gain some perspective. That's all I have to say about that for now.

Update on the Blair Witch. I've managed to stay one step ahead of her with hand sanitizer and mentholated vaporizers. It seems like she's not going to get my vacation. But I've seen enough scary movies to know that as soon as you let you guard down, something crawls out of the TV and gets you. And yes, I know those are two different movies. Risk is everywhere.

Coffee Break

I finally finished the coffee quilt. It was actually finished a while ago. But I just got around to binding it.

This quilt was a UFO. It was going to be much bigger than this. But I put it aside and started working on other projects. Every now and then I would piece a few blocks. All the piecing is done by hand so it was easy to pick up the sewing from time to time. I thought it would take me one hundred years to finish this quilt.

But earlier this year I decided to just finish my UFO's or get rid of them. It's hard to explain, but I feel like my work is in a different place now than it was a few years ago. I don't want to spend my time now on a project I came up with when my head was in a different place. Especially since my time is more limited. So I decided to just stop piecing and put together a top with what I had. It is all hand pieced and machine quilted. After the top was together, I thought it was kind of boring. Again - I don't think about my work the way I used to. So I stamped coffee stains all over the piece with fabric paint. The piece is called, "Wake Up and Smell the Non-fat Carmel Macchiato."

I have one more UFO to take care of. It's being difficult. But it's going down.

Proof of Life

I'm still waiting to exhale but I'm still working too.

See.

I'm painting some background fabric that will be part of a bad luck quilt. The first layer will be stenciled letters. I made these stencils out of freezer paper so they would look like letters I would draw by hand instead of neatly prepared stencils. I'm using an iridescent Shiva paint stick that is very close to the background color. Since it is the bottom layer, I want it to be subtle. This is way too much fun. I could spend all day smearing around this color. Is that weird?

New Year's Resolution Quilts 1 & 2

I finished two bad luck quilts. The first one is called "If You Hand Someone Scissors, You Will Argue With Them Later". In my family, if someone needs a pair of scissors, you lay them on the table for them to pick up. It is bad luck to hand someone a pair of scissors. The background is foundation pieced. The scissors are needle turn applique. It is machine quilted. That bead in the middle of the scissors is actually a brad from the scrap book section. I punched a hole in the quilt and placed an eyelet there for the brad. This quilt is 100% from my stash. The big lesson I learned here is once you trim a quilt, you can't untrim it.

The second quilt is called, "Don't Spill the Salt". I think most people know that it is bad luck to spill salt. The background is hand pieced and the salt shaker is needle turn applique. The quilt is machine and hand quilted. And it is hand beaded. The big lesson I learned here is that you don't have to take things so literally. Actually, I think I may have known that. But I was reminded of that lesson in the quest for beads that look like salt. I had white beads that were too clear, or too big, or the wrong shape. I couldn't get them to work. I tried the pink beads just to see if they were the size I wanted, and really liked the effect. So I used them. There was no reason to use white beads. The only thing I bought for this quilt was the black thread for the salt shaker. The embroidery is too tiny for you to see how bad I am at french knots. I really like the back of this one. It has that whole "book of shadows" effect I was going for. Maybe I've seen one too many episodes of "Charmed".


On baby blanket front, I have 8 panels down and one to go. The only panel left is the center popcorn stitch panel. Yippee.

Buzz Buzz

I've been a busy bee this week. Working, running errands, cooking, doing the laundry, running around after my son. Nothing out of the ordinary, but it feels like it has been more hectic than usual. I think I'm longing for a change of scenery, so I'm rushing through the days. I'm feeling pulled again by my quilting. I know I promised that I would work in my sketch books on days I couldn't get to the quilting. I haven't been doing that because I've been crocheting. But I've got ideas buzzing around, and frankly, I would be better off if I got them down on paper. After all, I wouldn't just sit there and do nothing if the ideas were actual bees. Actually, I probably would. I don't make sudden moves around bees. But I would be way more attentive to them than I have been to my creative life these days.

I painted the tea dyed fabric for the back of the bad luck quilts. I was going for an old, wrinkled, rusty, patina stained look. Like beaten, leathery paper. And I'm pretty happy to say I achieved that. I dampened the cloth and then scrunched it. Then I took a cotton ball and pounced on light green and dark green textile paint. Then I used a wet makeup sponge to brush on copper Lumiere paint. I finished by dripping on green Lumiere paint and going over the drips with a cotton ball. I'm especially happy with how they look creased and wrinkled even though they are not. That's what I was hoping would happen when I wrinkled the fabric before painting. Every now and then, things work out the way you expected.

On the baby blanket front, I finally finished the bobble panel and I'm on to the yummy diamond panel. I love crocheting cables. It is one of the simple joys in my life. If you are keeping count, that is 5 panels down and 4 to go.

Likes Shiny Objects Too

I did some tea dyeing. I haven't done any fabric dyeing all year because of the drought here in Georgia. But tea dyeing doesn't use that much water. I was contemplating the backs for my bad luck quilts. I'm planning to write what the quilt is about on the back. Whenever you see a book of spells or legends or whatever in movies and on TV, it is on that funky, old timey brown paper. I thought that would be a good look for the back of the quilts. And I figured tea dyeing would be the perfect way to achieve the look.

I used cranberry tea, blueberry tea and regular orange and black pekoe tea.

My son stole my spoon and wouldn't give it back, so I let him stir the fabric.

I'm pretty happy with how it came out. You can't tell from the picture. But it is kind of brownish pink. I think it will be a good base for adding some paint and some lettering.

On baby blanket news, I have another panel done. I heart cable stitches. I rewarded myself for finishing the bobble panel by doing a cable panel. Now I have to do the second bobble panel. But at least I have another cable panel to look forward to. And then I get to do popcorn stitches. Whoo hoo. It doesn't take much to make me happy.

New Year's Resolution #3

I finished my third New Year’s Resolution quilt. It is called “Arty Choke”. It turned out much better than I expected. The new techniques I tried were raw edge appliqué, using Shiva paint sticks and zig zag stitches around the edges of the quilt. The artichoke is fused and hand painted. Did you know that artichokes are members of the thistle family? I also painted (or colored) the background with shiva paint sticks. I was not thrilled with the outcome. I liked using the paint sticks. But I felt the piece was too dark and dull. I told myself that I could brighten it up with quilting. But deep down inside, I didn’t really believe that. Lo and behold, the quilting helped 200%. The raw edge appliqué worked out pretty well for me too. And why didn’t anyone tell me about zig-zag stitching before?

As usual, I practiced my free motion quilting. I was pleasantly surprised by how well I did. I still need to work on getting the tension right. But I think I’m getting the knack of it. In the picture, the artichoke looks like it is peeling off. But it isn't. That is the shadow created by the background quilting puffing up the fabric around the artichoke. It has a lovely texture and depth that you can't appreciate in the picture. I know I should have hung it and used the tripod, but I'm really too tired for all of that.

So here’s the thing about lowered expectations. Sometimes, they give you the opportunity to do well because you are not so invested in the outcome. I honestly was not thrilled with the background fabric and I thought the paint on the artichoke left a lot to be desired. I didn’t really think the quilting would help. But one of the things I learned in the Self-Expressions class at Quilt University is that you should keep moving forward on a project, even if you are feeling uneasy about it. So rather than give up, or go back and try to fix what I perceived as problems, I just took a deep breath and kept going. And the quilting really did make the whole thing work. So here’s a light bulb moment. It’s called a quilt because it’s quilted. Quilting is as much a design element as color, texture, and shape. I don’t spend nearly enough time considering the quilting while I’m designing the piece. In fact I rarely think about the quilting until the top is done. You may have known this all along, but then you didn’t tell me about the zig-zag stitch either did you?

New Year's Resolution 2 and A Rant

I finished my second New Year's Resolution quilt. It's called Sketchbook Blueberries. The new technique I tried is using colored pencils on fabric. This was really fun and easy. I will have to try watercolor pencils next. I also practiced some embroidery with the running backstitch in the leaf veins and blueberries. As usual, I had to practice binding. This time, I bound the edge using a plaited edge stitch. This is like a blanket stitch with an extra knot in it. I think I will try this edge stitch again with beads. I haven't tried this sort of raw edge binding before. I like it because it is easier than cutting binding, sewing it on, stitching it down, yada, yada, yada. But it's not really practical for a quilt much bigger than this. All in all, this was a fun little quilt. I will definitely look at colored pencils as another tool for embellishment.

Today, I also tried to print out the New York Beauty foundations for the Weeping quilt. Can I just say - aaarggg! If you heard a crash around 7 pm that was me throwing Quilt Pro for the Mac out of the window. The thing that frustrates me about this program is that you do everything right and it doesn't work. You have to do things 2 or 3 times to get them to work. I wasn't even making up my own block. I was using one from their library for crying out loud and the bleeping foundations still wouldn't print out correctly. The problem is that it is a Windows program masquerading as a Mac program. And the manual is crap. I could have drawn the block by hand in the time I spent dinking around with this program. Technology is supposed to make your life easier - not harder. So I'm done with it. Now I have to find some program that will allow me to design quilts on the computer. There really isn't anything for the Mac. I run an Intel Mac, so in theory I could use EQ on Parallels which lets me run Windows. But I don't want to. The Mac is the best computer on the market for doing design work. In this area, it is superior to Windows in every way. There should be awesome quilt design software for the Mac. If EQ was so great, there would be a Mac version. So there.

The Grand Prismacolor Experiment

The grand experiment with the colored pencils went great. After drying for 24 hours, I ironed the whole thing and put it through the wash. I washed it on a gentle cycle, in warm water, with baby detergent, which is how I pre-wash all my commercial fabric. I also got the sunrise fabric for the Weeping quilt washed too so I can get started on the foundation piecing. Then I put it in the dryer with all of the other fabric. And the whole thing came through with flying colors (pun intended). There is no noticeable fading. And the areas that were treated with the fabric medium still seem soft enough to needle through. The whole piece of fabric has maintained it's drape and softness. Now I'm going to trim it down, layer it and quilt-embellish the whole thing. Probably by hand. First I need to decide how I'm going to finish the edges. I'm not feeling binding. But I can't picture it bound pillow case style either. I've never bound something by satin stitching the edge, so I might try that. Ahh, another project for the WIP pile.

Distracted by Shiny Objects Too

I recently started a thread on the Pickle Road yahoo group about using colored pencils on fabric. I saw an article somewhere about using colored pencils to embellish your fabric but I couldn't remember where. I was wondering if anyone had any tips or knew of any resources. This lead to a discussion about the best method of setting the colored pencil. When it was all said and done, I ended up volunteering to give one of the methods a try. I know I've already got tons of works in progress. But I was too curious to pass this one up. And technically, since I picked blueberries as a subject, it works for my whole New Year's resolution thing.

So here's what I've done so far. I drew some blueberries and leaves using Prismacolor pencils. It was pretty simple. The colors go on smooth and nice and bright. I like Prismacolors pencils because you can build up layers of color. And they blend easily. Here's what it looked like.

Then I applied Golden GAC900. This is Golden's textile medium. You use it with acrylic paints to turn them into textile paints. You mix the medium 50/50 with paint, paint your fabric, and then heat set it. Some people on the yahoo group mentioned that this is what they used with the pencils. One person said they mixed the medium with water and then brushed it on. She had been using watercolor pencils. The other option was to use a spray fixative. Since I wasn't using watercolor pencils, I applied the medium undiluted with a brush. Prismacolors don't blend out like watercolor pencils - but they do blend. So I was careful to use a small brush and follow the shape of the drawing. The colors did blend a little. After I applied the medium, I painted the background with some Jacquard dye-na-flow. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the pencil acted as a resist to the dye so it didn't flow into the drawing. This is the result.

Tomorrow, I will iron it to set it and then put it through the wash. This is the test. To see if using the medium and heat sets the color. See - it's for science. Lest you think I completely blew off my WIP's, I actually got some quilting done on my husband's quilt this morning. He was snoring away, so I couldn't sleep. Since the baby was asleep too, I took this opportunity to get some machine quilting done. I got about an hour of work done. Woo hoo. Here's a little bit of Kevin's quilt to whet your appetite.