Adventure Quilter
Ellen Lindner uses fabric the way a painter uses paint, with extraordinary results
I’m SO happy with my latest quilt, Fragrant Canopy.
It started as one piece of fabric which I dyed/printed. That fabric makes up the left two-thirds of the completed quilt.
I had great fun working on the details, especially adding some black hand stitching.
I love everything about this quilt! Not only the results, but also the process and the things I learned.
See larger images and purchase information.
Ellen Lindner
A little bit of black can often add just the right touch to a quilt. And in the case of this piece, I NEEDED to add more black to go with what was already there.
I liked the idea of playing up the sharp little lines on the left. But, how to best accomplish that? I tried stitching with a double pass, using 30 weight thread.
It showed up well on my sample so I drew out a pattern and started stitching on the quilt.
But, it didn’t show up that well on the quilt. Up close it was fine, but it pretty much disappeared from a distance. What else could I try? Maybe hand couching?
Here it is, with about half machine stitching and half overlaid with couching. It shows up much better, right?
Here’s a detail shot, again in-progress. What a difference!
I was loving this effect and couldn’t wait to finish it up!
Ellen Lindner
P.S. BTW, I used 6 strands of embroidery floss as the laid thread and regular black sewing thread as the working thread.
P.P.S. See other quilts with hand couching: Wishes on the Wind, post about couching, Back Yard Beauty.
Have you been following along as I’ve used my “Tetris” skills to put this quilt together?
I’m calling it Adrenaline Rush.
Adrenaline Rush
It was challenging at times, but I’m quite happy with the results.
I dyed/printed all the fabrics myself!
See full details for this piece.
UPDATE: This piece got one more radical change. See it here.
Ellen Lindner
P.S. I’ve got a pretty collection of scraps. I’ll have to do something fun with them.
More photos from the amazing Tentmakers of Cairo exhibit.
If you look closely at this detail shot, I think you can see that the design is appliqued. The stitches are very shallow so they don’t even show on the back of the background fabric, (the white/cream canvas.) There’s no batting or added backing fabric, but still the stitches don’t show through the canvas.
Many of the designs are inspired by historical motifs. However, more contemporary images are also used.
Embroidery is sometimes added. This is often done by wives and sisters, at home.
At one time such wall hangings would have been used to decorate the inside of royal tents and outdoor settings. Today, in Egypt, they’re used mostly for important ceremonial events, such as weddings and funerals. But, they’re also sold in the West as home decor.
If you ever get a chance to see this work in person, I think you’ll enjoy doing so!
Ellen Lindner
Perhaps you’ve heard of the Tentmakers of Cairo. They’re a group of men who have shops in the historic part of Cairo, where they make and sell stitched wall hangings. And they’re AMAZING!
One of my favorites
A detail shot.
See what I mean? I recently got to see an exhibit of these pieces at the Dunedin Fine Arts Center, in Florida.
Each wall hanging is made by one man and is unique. The men work 6 days a week, for 10-11 hours each day, seated in a sort of semi cross-legged position.
The largest pieces (which are smaller than bed quilts) take about 4 months to complete! But only cost around $1000!
We got to see a demonstration of how they work and they are SO SPEEDY, with that needle turn applique!
See this video to get an idea.
The exhibit has closed now, but I’ll have some more great photos for you in the next post.
Ellen Lindner
Whew! After LOTS of rearranging and trial and error, I’ve finally finished this piece. And I’m quite happy with it.
The finished piece is 36″ x 26″. It’s available for $695.
The yellow in this detail shot looks a little yellow-green, but it will show you the circular quilting pattern, done both on the machine and by hand.
I think it’s well named, don’t you?
Ellen Lindner
P.S. See recent posts about how I dyed the fabric for this, and in-progress construction photos.
You probably know about English paper piecing. It’s a way to use hand stitching to create very precise patterns. Each piece of fabric is first stitched around paper or cardboard. Later, the shapes are stitched to one another and, finally, the paper is removed. (Check out You Tube for a PLETHORA of different ways to do the stitching.)
Years ago I decided I needed a hand sewing project, so I made a bunch of 1″ hexagons. Or “hexies” as they’re called in English Paper Piecing (EPP) lingo. Mine are the 1″ size, which is the length of each side.
Any EPP purist would probably gasp if they looked closely at the image above. It clearly shows that I’ve used machine stitching to join my hexies. NOT the norm! But, more about that in a minute.
As I said, I already had a bunch of hexies, so when Linda Kemshall, of DesignMattersTV.com talked about making them, I got reinspired.
This shows a bunch of hexies ready to be stitchied. My card stock templates have a hole in the middle which serves two purposes. 1 – it givse me a way to secure the fabric to the template, with pins. 2 – it makes it easier to remove the template later because I can pop a pencil in there and easily pry it out.
After hand stitching and ironing the hexies, they look like this. The ironing is done with the template still in place. Aren’t they lovely?
This is what they look like from the back. Apparently, you’re not supposed to remove the templates before joining them to adjacent pieces. But, I didn’t know that.
I tried hand stitching them to one another and I was NOT good at it! My stitches were quite visible from the front. (Would those templates have helped here, I wonder?) Since I wasn’t too keen on that much hand stitching anyway, I decided I could sew them to a muslin backing and use a clear thread and a zigzag stitch to attach them. So that’s what I’ve been doing.
I’m really loving the effect of these gently undulating colors. I don’t have a color scheme in mind, although I seem to be leaning toward orange. I will pay attention to brightness, however, and use fabrics that aren’t too loud.
I expect this to be an ongoing pick-it-up-when-I-want-something-portable type of project, rather than something I complete all at once. At any rate, I’m having fun.
This link shows how I make my hexies.
What’s your favorite portable project?
Ellen Lindner
P.S. YouTube has a ton of other videos about making and joining hexies.
P.P.S. Update: when searching for similar posts I found one showing that I had used this same method before. That link is below.
I finally got around to properly photographing my latest quilt, She Has a Great Personality. It’s meant to be a self-portrait in the style of a favorite artist. In this case, that artist is abstract painter Jane Davies.
I thought working abstractly would be difficult, but it wasn’t too bad. I had more trouble deciding on some of the details.
I added hand stitching in several areas to help tie it all together.
I’m very happy with it, and I think it represents me pretty well.
Ellen Lindner
What to do when the call for art requests ocean animals smaller than 12″? This is my result: two fish for SAQA’s “Fresh Fish” project.
These are made from scraps, most of them hand dyed.
I had fun adding a little hand stitching.
It turns out that this shape is VERY hard to turn right side out. The narrow spot between the body of the fish and the tail is a problem. But, I’m happy with the result.
I’ll be mailing these off soon.
SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) wants to receive 250 and anyone can donate, so join in if you’d like!
Ellen Lindner
She Looked for Blessings and Found Them is the tile of my just completed self-portrait. Here’s a photo of the full quilt. It’s height matches my own, at 60″. And it’s 12″ wide.
She Looked for Blessings and Found Them
(A self-portrait)
What makes this piece special are the statements I’ve stitched in telling things I’ve done over the years. Some are cute and others are not so complimentary, but the combination gives a good insight into who I am.
I hope you’ll check out all the detail shots which show these statements and really tell the story.
Ellen Lindner
P.S. See this quilt in-progress.