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. What makes this piece special are the statements I’ve stitched in telling things I’ve done over the years. Some are cute and…
My art quilt group, the Dirty Dozen Fiber Artists, have a really interesting challenge going on. We’re all making self-portraits, each the height of the maker. Isn’t that a cool idea? They also have to be skinny: no more than 12″ wide. I wanted to include a lot of text in mine, stating my characteristics…
Here it is, A Croton Story, Chapter One. As you can see, the 3D aspect of it really adds a lot. Here’s a detail shot. Final dimensions 24h x 11w x 1d. Here are some studio shots. The stem was stiffened with thick interfacing and heavy stitching. Then, I wet fabric strips with gel medium (collage…
After admiring the arch and curl of a Croton leaf, I decided I wanted to make a quilt with those same lines. And because I thought it should roll up for shipping (or lay flat) but still be malleable for display, I knew I’d want to put wire into it. Which is what plunged me…
My primary objective during a recent dying session was to improve many ugly or high contrast fabrics. This photo shows about half of the fabrics I intended to improve. Some of them look fine, but have a lot of contrast in them. Now that I’ve been working with these hand dyed fabrics for a while,…
My recent dye session was devoted almost exclusively to improving ugly prints. That generally meant over dying with a solid color, or stenciling on a new one. Take this little piece, for instance. It was originally an ugly yellow-green that I didn’t think I’d use. But, I knew that if I mostly obscured that color,…
After trying a pastel blue sky on my piece inspired by fall trees, I tried it with dark blue instead. I actually liked it pretty well, but I didn’t have enough bright blue to do it justice. So, I tried white. And also auditioned the idea of more twigs. The verdict: YES to the white…
What do you get when you add a beautiful setting, great friends, and time to make quilts? Well, fun productivity, of course! At a recent SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) retreat I took my portable design wall, my easel, and ALL of my hand dyed fabrics. I didn’t have an idea when I left home,…
“Deconstructed Screen Printing.” That’s a mouth full isn’t it? Perhaps the alternate term is a little more self-explanatory: “Breakdown Printing.” This technique uses thickened dyes applied with screen printing and it often yields extraordinary results. Like this (detail shot.) Don’t you love the squiggly irregular shapes and “halos?” You probably know about screen printing…
Well, after LOTS of trial and error, trouble shooting, and rearranging, I finally finished my latest abstract piece, When Fuchsia Came to Play. A detail shot of the fabrics – most of them dyed by me. I showed you my plans for rearranging in an earlier post. As part of that, I whacked 7+” off the…