My friend, Kestrel, is a wonderful artist. She creates intricate work using fused fabric, and a special “Cricut” cutting machine. With it and her techie abilities she can create designs and cut TINY elements for her artwork. Like this. She typically mounts and frames her work, but is slowly embracing stitching. This one is my favorite, Flamingo…
I was lucky enough to take a two day class with Pat Pauly. Fabric was flying and Adrenalin was flowing as she challenged us to work without a lot of planning. The purpose of the class was to teach us various ways to jump start an abstract design. One way Pat does that is by…
My local art quilt group, The Dirty Dozen Fiber Artists, are at it again. We’re doing a group challenge in which we all use the same inspiration photo. This time we’re using the photo below, taken on a street in Paris. As usual, we’ve selected a photo with lots going on. This works well, since…
In Part One I showed you how to mark large irregular circle shapes. Now, let’s learn how to make smaller flowers. I did this sample on a t-shirt and I wanted the design to be on the front only. Therefore, I put a baking sheet inside the shirt. Draw 5 small dots with a Sharpie….
While at the retreat, I attended a demo about dying fabric with Sharpies (permanent markers) and rubbing alcohol (isopropyl.) I already knew alcohol would make Sharpies bleed, but I’d never seen this particular application. This is the sort of result you can expect. Cool, right? And this is how you do it: – Stretch fabric…
While at the retreat, Annette Boceck did a demonstration about hand embroidery. I found her use of hand stitch to be very interesting and (to me) unique. I’ve always used embroidery to add some interest to a quilt or to highlight a particular area. But, Annette uses it to completely transform the fabric. Like this….
You know about complementary colors, right? Colors that are in opposite locations on the color wheel? Like blue and orange. Since rust is a version of orange, this quilt uses complementary colors. (Or maybe it’s red-orange and blue-green, which are also complementary.) But, maybe you’re not too comfortable with a color wheel, or how to…
The retreat provided plenty of time for everyone to work on their own projects. I decided on a very difficult approach to my project and therefore made slow progress. I made some great scraps, though. (I’ll show you the in-progress craziness when I write a future post about said project.) I think Barbie Swanson‘s scraps…
At the recent SAQA retreat, you could work on your own projects or take time out for one of the many excellent demos. One of the first I attended was put on by Sally Dutko and Pam Richardson, as they explained their process to us. Sally’s work was used for most of the in-progress examples….
The retreat I attended recently had a very interesting and fun ice breaker activity. Karol Kusmaul led us on a HIGH SPEED collaborative portrait making exercise. Since she works exclusively with recycled clothing that’s what she provided for us. Each table of about 8 people had a bag on monochromatic selections, with buttons, cuffs, etc….