Do You Work Intuitively or Do You Plan Your Work?

     When you make your art do have a plan that you stick with or do you just let it happen? I usually have some sort of plan and then as I work on it I let it speak to me and changes happen as I go. For this one, I took apart some leaf pieces I had matted and placed them on top of fabrics that coordinated with them and thought I might make a long scroll-like art work of some sort.

leaf pieces on fabrics

But I didn't know exactly what I had in mind. Maybe embroider leaf designs onto the fabrics, maybe put log cabin blocks between the leaf pieces, maybe strips and borders around the leaf pieces.
     I started by sewing extra pieces of batting between them and then hand sewing a strip of the brown fabric onto the batting below one of the leaf pieces.

one piece of fabric sewn on

     Then I cut strips of fabrics and one by one hand sewed each on top of the other onto the batting. Some of the fabrics were sheer and I folded them over to make them thicker before I sewed those on. I used one strand of embroidery floss in the same color as each fabric so that the thread would hardly show. For some of the fabrics, like the brown one in the photo above, I used the finished edge of the fabric because I like the look of the stitching that was already on the edge.

section below leaf finished

Some of the fabrics had stitching on them already in a criss cross pattern and some had a folded texture.

two sections finished

     So now I think I'm going to build it up by adding a small section to the top and a small section to the bottom and then add sides of some sort. After that, I have think about if I want to quilt the added sections or embroider them somehow and how the finish off the edges all around. But I'm enjoying working this piece completely intuitively which is not my normal way of working and I'm enjoying all the hand sewing. Sitting on the porch while I stitch I'm noticing a lot of birds and sounds and I saw our box turtle come by to sip from the small pond we built. If I was at the sewing machine, I'd miss all that. I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts so that they know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

Do You Need An Idea For An Art Party?

     Do you sometimes run out of ideas for group activities? I wanted to have an art party at my house and this idea popped into my head. 

Everyone will started with an identical piece of fabric  10 x 10 with the same line or a mark on it. (That I provided.) 

cotton with felt underneath and line drawn with a marker

I put a box in the center of the table with threads and other objects in it. The other guests brought things to contribute to the box.

These are the directions I sent out ahead of time:

1.) Each person changes one thing on their piece of fabric by taking something from the box and adding to their fabric.

2.) They pass their fabric to the person on their right.

3.) Each person changes one thing on their piece of fabric by taking something from the box and adding to their fabric. Or by adding something of their own accord that they brought.

4.) They pass their fabric to the person on their right.

5.) Each person changes one thing on their piece of fabric by taking something from the box and adding to their fabric. Or by adding something of their own accord.

On it goes until we declare it finished. Each takes one home.

Sometime in there, we'll break for lunch.

What to bring:

Items to put into the box that would be good to add to the fabrics to make for fun compositions.

Items to not add to the box that you might want to use for yourself on the fabrics.

Scissors, sewing needles.

Things I had in the box: buttons, found objects, fabric scraps, Inktense pencils, markers. Off to the side I had a container of water for the Inktense pencils, a paintbrush, and a huge container of embroidery floss.

There were 6 of us and we spent about 10 minutes on each step. Sometimes I forgot to look at the clock and we spent longer. By the time the cloths came back around to the original person, we were hungry so we called it finished. It was interesting that some people rotated them as as they went around. At the end we put them in a bag and randomly chose one from the bag to take home. Then we enjoyed a nice lunch. Here are the results.

Sample 1

Sample 2

Sample 3

Sample 4

Sample 5

Sample 6

     Now I have no idea which side is up on any of them except for Sample 2 with the bird and cat. I think all of them are pretty impressive especially since we worked quickly. One of the members already took hers home and did more work on it and is sewing a fabric edge around the four sides and is planning to hang it. We liked it so much that we may propose to do it with our art group ArtsEtc., also.
     I even dressed up my Xian warrior for the event.

in the entrance hallway

     So if you need another group activity, this is one that can be done in a little over an hour if everything is set up ahead of time. It worked well for a group of six.  I think it could work for up to nine people. If you have more than that, you might want to split up into smaller groups. I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find more art quilt blogs. Please make comments on the artists' posts so that they know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

Time Out

     I took time out this week to run errands and take a field trip. I visited a recently opened art museum in Daytona Beach, Florida. You wouldn't expect such a location to have a huge fine art collection. But there it is. It is located at The Cici and Hyatt Brown Museum of Art.  And not only is it a marvelous and varied collection, but it is a wonderful building as well. If you have a membership to a museum already, check to see if this one is part of its reciprocal membership list. You may be able to use your membership to get in free.
     When you first enter, you see a huge mural that depicts a typical day of wildlife in Florida. Here are three photos of parts of mural.

The way the museum is organized is that they have a main gallery that has the paintings of the masters and then the other galleries are arranged by themes. Here is a view from the main gallery.

Wonderfully vaulted space

I will definitely revisit this museum many times especially since they have only a small sampling of their collection on display and will be rotating it. I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts to let the artists know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

Is It Time For New Beginnings?

     Now that all deadlines have been met, rejection letters and acceptance letters received, sewing machine back in place, I'm ready to march into Spring with new growth. Before I show you my newest idea, here is a finished one that was a lot of fun. It was to honor the penguins of Argentina and my cat, Opus, who is always with me in my studio. I've named it My Pingüino (Penguin in Spanish).

My Pingüino

It's only 9x9. I found that small size very difficult to work with, but it was the size designated for a challenge. 

     Now onto the new things. Years ago, I discovered leaf skeletons in my forest and wanted to use them in my art somehow. I created several pieces like this one.

painted leaf

I painted the leaf skeleton with fabric paints, painted fabric to match, covered the leaf area with tulle, pieced, quilted it, and placed it under a mat and onto foam board. Then I thought I'd try to sell them on ETSY. Over the space of 5 years, I sold one. I sold a few others locally in gift shops. So decided to take them off the ETSY store awhile ago and I'm going to revamp the store completely. If, by chance, there was anything you saw in my Etsy store you were thinking about purchasing, contact me before I decide to cut them up. :)

     This week at our art meeting we had a "garage sale" and I picked up some nice sheer fabrics that coordinate with my leaves and had an idea. I took the mats and foam board off of them and dug up some other fabrics I had and laid out three of the leaves on top.

with sheers and other fabrics

I'm going to play with making a long scroll with three of these hanging down vertically with some of these fabrics around them. Better than having them sit in storage or throwing them away. All the colors of Spring and new leaves popping out have inspired me to play with nature's designs.

     I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on the artists' posts so that they know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

How Addictive Is Small Sketching?

     Is sketching this way in choosing a background format and keeping the same element in the foreground addictive? Well it turns out I look forward to it each day. I not only think of which compositional background I want to use, but I also try to think of a pun or fun title to use with it. This is probably the last post in which I'll share the sketches with you. I'll continue on with them in my weekly sketch group and modify them as I go and move on to other types of sketches in the future when I get tired of these. Here are the ones from this week. If you haven't been following my posts, you can see my previous post here if you want to see the other ones and the types of background formats. I think (again) that my watercolor techniques have improved. It really is true that you do have to get in there and practice.

strata format

                                                   (I had to do one with a rock cairn.)

grid format

bridge format

radiating lines format

So there it is. In my art quilts, I usually stick to the grid format. Now I have an idea of more backgrounds to work with and by doing these with the lamp, I've come up with a way to make quick designs.

     And now for some good news. My art quilt, Contemplation, was juried into the show Sacred Threads. 

I've wanted to be in that show for several years, but didn't have a piece that was appropriate. I'm very happy that Contemplation will be exhibited alongside works by artists I admire. The show is at Floris United Methodist Church in Herndon, Virginia from July 10 - 26. Here is a link about Sacred Threads. http://www.sacredthreadsquilts.com/  

I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts so that the artists know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.