Mini Art Quilts

Years ago, I had made "inchies" to trade with other artists. Mine are actually 1 1/2 inches square.
To make each inchie, I decorated the fabric by painting it, fused the fabric onto a stiff interfacing, some free-motion stitching done, trimmed it to size, and then zig-zag stitched around the edge.

I had several leftover and made them into pendants, but didn't like how they came out. Today, I took out a package of glass beads that I bought when I was at The International Quilt Festival in Houston and some wire, and I redesigned my inchies. To add the beads at the top end, I looped the wire, added the beads to the wire, looped the wire under the beads, and sewed the bottom loop of the wire to the back of the inchie. To add the beads to the bottom of the inchie, I sewed the beads on with silamide thread. I attached a surgical stainless steel chain that I bought on Amazon. Here are the results. I'm linking this post to Off The Wall Friday where you can visit other art quilt blogs. Please make comments to let the artists know you where there.

Painted on commercial fabric

Painted on commercial fabric and some foil applied

Background painted on a dryer sheet
Heart appliqued on top

Center is thread-painted

Here's a photo of the back so you can see how the wire is attached to the top. I sewed it on using the silamide thread, too. The black square is a piece of sticky back (soft side) velcro from my first attempt at making the pendants way back when. I'm leaving it on for now for the added weight because it may serve to keep the pendant facing forward as I wear it. I've noticed that sometimes lightweight necklaces tend to flip over as I wear them when I move around. I'll see how these wear as I move.

back of necklace at top

Layering The Background

     After I was happy with the arrangement of the background fabrics, I placed them on top of batting and a backing fabric and straight-stitched them down using a walking foot. This is the first time I used the Pergo  Table Top we just built and the quilt top just slid right over like the surface of the table was teflon. I LOVE IT!  The white stuff you see in the photo on the left and right is shelf liner. I cut small pieces and it works well to guide the fabric as I quilt. I don't like wearing gloves. (It also works well to open jars.)

attaching fabrics

     Then I thought the edges of the fabrics looked a little too abrupt next to each other so I cut strips of a polyester light blue fabric and using a wide utility stitch, I sewed the sheer fabric strips down at the intersections of the fabrics, vertically.

Attaching sheer strip to blend fabrics

     So that's how I'll leave it for now. I need to look at it for a few days and audition a few different sized monks here and there in the foreground. And a few different rock cairns here and there. And also try out different sized suns/moons in different spots. I'm slow in making these kinds of decisions. I'll work on some smaller projects in the meantime.

Background sewn together

In some places, if I still want to blend more, I can take a brush and blend with Shiva white oil paintsik. I'll do that as one of the last things after I'm done with the foreground, though.
I'm linking this post to http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com/ where you can visit other artist's art quilt posts. Please make comments on their blogs to let them know you visited.

A Handy Dandy Sewing Table Top!

Finished Table Top

Now that I've been in my sewing studio a few months and my husband is newly retired, he and I put our heads together and we designed a way to have my sewing machine surface flush with a table top without having to cut into the table. (The studio is still a work-in progress... I may paint the table and the ironing station behind needs work, etc.) I bought a table that is about 3ft x 4.5 ft from a thrift store. We had some Pergo panels leftover from the studio floor. We bought some 2x4  pieces of wood from the hardware store. Here's how to do what we did: It took only about 10 minutes.
1. Lay the Pergo on the table and snap the panels together (don't glue them).
2. Put the sewing machine on top of the Pergo where you want the machine to be when you are sewing.
3. Mark with a pencil on the Pergo the outline of the machine.
4. Remove the machine and cut the Pergo with an electric jigsaw (but it could be cut with a regular saw, too).
5. Cut 2x4 pieces of wood to fit under the Pergo so that it will have support.
6. Lay the 2x4's on the table, lay the Pergo on top of the 2x4's, put tape on the edges of the Pergo to help eliminate friction as the fabric will pass over it.
7. We put the small piece of the Pergo we cut out under the sewing machine to raise it a little higher.
With this set-up, I can easily access the bobbin in the front and I can access the cord and buttons on the side of the machine.
8. This set-up isn't permanent. So if I want to sew with a free arm of my machine, I can easily lift off the Pergo and remove the 2x4's from the table and sew with just the machine on the table.
NOTE: Now my chair is too low so my husband is going to disassemble it and add a 2x4 piece of wood under the seat and reassemble and then it will still swivel and it will be the correct height.

ALSO NOTE: I haven't yet sewed a large quilt on the Pergo. If the Pergo starts to shift under the weight, all I have to do is put sticky back velcro on the bottom of the Pergo and the top of the 2x4's and that should hold it down.
Email me if you have any questions.

Pergo cut to fit machine

Opus inspecting his new throne during set-up

Front view with bobbin access

View underneath after completed

What it looks like with just the 2x4's

Creating a New Background

     I took the fabrics I had monoprinted and I cut them up and put them up on my design wall to create a background for my next art quilt. It was going to be a background for a rock cairn quilt and was going to be the first in a series of rock cairn quilts. But as it sits on the wall and I look at it and I look back at my prayer flag quilt with the monk on it, it seems that this background is asking for a monk to be put on it. Time will tell which way it goes.
     So anyway, here are some photos of close-ups of some of the parts of the backgrounds. They will look much better once they are sewed down and quilted and I will probably use some sheers to help blend them together, also. You can visit the Prayer Flag Quilt post on my earlier blog post to see how I use these monoprinted backgrounds on my quilts. I'm linking this to http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com/ so that you can visit several wonderful blogs about art quilts and make comments on their posts.

One part of the background

Another part of the background

Some strips with color contrast added on top

Some color contrast added

Fun with Paint

While waiting for the background fabrics to fully cure, I've been busy with side projects. I have four window boxes under our windows in the front of the house, and, over the years have grown various plants in them. We live on a heavily wooded lot in central Florida so they don't get much sun. I want some bright color there and the only flowers that have been successful in the boxes have been impatients. But even those the last few years have been challenging to keep alive. The eaves over the house prevent rain water from getting to them so I have to go out and regularly water them and I get eaten alive by mosquitoes when I do it. This year, I had the idea to forget about putting plants in them and here is my solution for color in them.

painted with acrylics and sprayed with glossy topcoat.

This is a sculpture that is near the front door. I put a painted bird with her to provide unity... I'm learning about the elements of art.

these plants are self-sufficient

With all those acrylic paints to clean up, I used a white transparent cloth of some sort I had laying around. I don't know what type it was. I just wiped up the brushes, sprayed it with water, wiped up the plastic dish I used as a palette. I squished up the cloth and wet it more and spread the paint all over it to clean everything up so that I didn't have any paint to put down the drain. Here is the wipe cloth when I was done.

Wipe-cloth

I knew the cloth had possibilities for an art quilt/s. But instead, I cut it into three long lengths and sewed them together with an embroidery stitch on my machine and then machine couched a fancy yarn along the edges and made a scarf out of it.

I love wipe-rags!

New Background fabrics

I made a new gelatin plate for monoprinting two days ago and printed up some fabrics yesterday. Here is a great link from Linda Germain on how to make a plate.How to make a gelatin plate Linda has several YouTube videos and tutorials on her website and regularly blogs with tips on how to print. She prints on paper, though.
You can use any kind of paint or ink. I used regular acrylic paints since I had a supply from a painting class and want to use them before they dry out. To get my colors, I mixed ceruleuan blue, ultramarine blue, a little cadmium yellow light, and a lot of titanium white. I added an equal amount of fabric painting medium so that it would play well with fabric (although I don't think that is necessary).
I spread the paint with the brayer onto the gelatin plate and then pressed a toilet paper roll here and there onto the plate to get oval shapes and then laid down a piece of cotton muslin and pressed it down evenly and lifted it up. I sprayed water onto to the plate and used a clean piece of cloth to wipe up the extra paint and got a nice pattern on that cloth, too. I repeated several prints with various patterns for about 10 cloths.
Then, to get gray, I added a little cadmium light to the blue mixture and some more fabric medium and some more white.  Here are two of the prints.

with stripes

I'm linking this post to Off The Wall Friday Be sure to visit to see all the wonderful art quilters and make comments on their posts.

with ovals

After the paint dried, I used Shiva Paintstiks, which are oil paints.  I found out that you can use the oil paints on top of acrylics without a problem, but you cannot use acrylics or other water-based paints on top of oils. Anyway, what I did was to put texture plates under the fabrics and then rub the sticks on top to get patterns and layers of patterns. I pressed the oil sticks first onto a plastic plate and mixed the colors with a palette knife to get colors I wanted and loaded stencil brushes with the paint and then rubbed the brushes across the fabric that was on top of the texture plates. (One of the texture plates was actually a brass trivet that I bought at a thrift shop.)

Here are the same two fabrics from above after I was done adding textures. I hope to use these for my next art quilt background.

with textures

with textures

New and Improved

I had made a quilt some time ago that I liked, but as it sat, I realized that it had a design flaw in the lower right corner. Some on-line artists helped suggest some changes and they were so correct. I hung the quilt on my design wall and worked on it little by little and made and redid the changes until I got them the way I liked them and here is the before and after. The quilt is called "Spread Peace". The text says "Peace on Earth" in many different languages. The idea is that the monk is putting up the prayers and the flags get shredded by the wind and weather and then the prayers get taken up to the gods. Sorry the new photo isn't as crisp as the old one. I forgot to reset my camera to the best setting. I'm getting some good bulbs via the mail and will build two nice stands for them and then will redo all my photos for all my quilts and put them onto my website then.
(I made a prayer flag last week with the words "Recover, Thrive, Soar" and sewed some symbols onto it and hung it in my back yard for the friends and acquaintances I know who are ill.) I'm linking this post to a wonderful blog with posts from all sorts of interesting art quilters. Please visit it and make comments on their posts. http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com/

old version

Spread Peace(final version)