Do You Have A Favorite Process In Creating Your Art?

     When you create a piece of art, do you have a favorite step or process? I'm not sure I do. I'm slow to start a piece. I think about how I want it to look in the end and usually try to sketch it out and paint it several times first. I enjoy drawing and painting so I find that part fun and relaxing. Getting fabrics ready is also a good time for me because I get to mix colors with my paints and who can't have fun with that? If you get the wrong color, just keep mixing. If the fabric doesn't come out right for this project, it will be good for another one.
     In my last installment, I had my fabrics pinned on my design wall and was happy with the arrangement and colors, but it was a bit boring.

last week

     The large rectangle in rust needed to be darker and more oomph. There was paint left behind in many of the colors on the plastic on the cutting table. So I sprayed it with water, put the rectangle of fabric on top of the leftover paint, and brayered heavily to pick up the paint.

adding paint from the plastic to the fabric

     That actually helped some and it cleaned up the mess. Then I added more paint using a sponge and Dyne-na-Flow in Chartreuse by Jacquard, and various rust colors I mixed up with acrylic paints and GAC-900 by Golden. Here is the result

surface designed fabric

The fabric to the right of it is a commercial fabric by Stonehenge. I also added acrylic paints and GAC-900 to the girl and the window in places to darken that area, too. Once I was happy with the tints, shades, and hues, I sewed the fabrics down to the background fabric with a straight stitch. Then I backed it with batting and quilted the girl, window, and walkway. After that, I decided to add two more fabrics and pinned them on to try them out. I think I like them because they keep the viewer's eye from leaving the piece. I'll sew them down down today.  All of these steps have been lots of fun for me, too. It's like having a conversation with the artwork. It almost tells me what it needs next. As you see, it has changed from the original sketch and painting. Once it has become fabric, it takes on a life of its own with its textures and unique character and begins to evolve. It's a fascinating process to me.

     I've been struggling with how to quilt the background. Perhaps, that is the least favorite part for me. I take the photos and put them into the App ArtStudio and then sketch possible quilt patterns on top to see what they might look like. For some of them, I'm happy with them for a day. Then the next day, I realize that they just won't look right for the piece. I think that yesterday, I finally hit one that will be just right for it (I hope). At least today, I still like it. 

     So here is how it looks on the design wall now. (By the way, these photos are taken with my iPad at night with just the overhead light. That's why they are a little fuzzy.)

in process

     The next step for today is to sew the two new pieces of fabric onto the background. Then, quilt the flowers onto the bottom right (from the shadow photos I took here), then quilt the rest of the background, and finally put on a pillowcase backing. (I think that's the plan, anyway. Unless the artwork tells me differently as I go.) So, I guess my favorite process overall is the conversation with artwork. I'm linking this with 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.

How Do You Switch From Sketch To Fabric?

     Is there a favorite way you switch from sketch to fabric? I vary in my ways. This time, I painted my sketch here first. Then I painted a set a fabrics. I put plastic over my cutting table and set out all of my paints, fabric medium, sponge brushes, dishes for mixing, tub for putting the painted fabrics, bowl for water, and put the three cats out of the studio so they wouldn't get paint on their paws because some of the paints might be toxic. I forgot something so I quickly went to get it and left the door open a crack and came back to find this.

Opus snuck in to help

After I locked him out again, I painted my background fabric. But when it dried, it was way too blue and too saturated of a blue. I loved the color, but it wasn't the color I wanted for this piece. So I decided I could either save it for the back side or for another art quilt. I painted another large piece of fabric, and it came out a little more green than I had planned, but I decided to go with it. Then I painted the other pieces. All came out as planned except that I couldn't get the large rectangular rust piece dark enough. I'm going to repaint that one.  Here are the painted fabrics.

Painted fabrics lined up

The one on the left came out lighter than intended but looked alright when first pinned up on the design wall on top of the background fabric. I even painted some whited eyelet cotton fabric thinking that might come in handy since this quilt is about wildflowers. In the layout above, I included a piece of fabric I rusted a few years ago.

     Next, I cut the fabrics as per the sketch and pinned them onto the background on the design wall and made some changes. This is what I have so far. The girl and window are digitally printed. 

in-process

     It's a little boring, but it's on its way. A main part of the design is a group of wildflowers that I want to put in the bottom right. I had thought I would machine stitch outlines of them there, but I need some good photos of some flowers to get the outlines from. I know I can always find copyright free photos online, but I prefer to use my own photos so today, I visited a wildlife refuge looking for some wildflowers to photograph and I got a nice surprise.

     I wanted to place a piece of white paper behind each plant I found for each photo so that I could isolate the lines of each plant. Then I could sketch it later from the photo and from the sketch do a stitching onto the quilt. Here's how I set up the first photo.

taking photo of wildflower

     But what I noticed was not the plant, but how great the shadow was! So for all the photos I took, I set up photos of shadows of plants.  This next one is one in particular that I love.

plant shadow

I took that photo and played with it later using the App Snapseed and got the next photo that I may use for something, maybe on this quilt somehow.

photo from App

I took about ten photos that I think I can get good outlines from so I'll play more with those tomorrow. The fabrics need more oomph, too.
     As I was deciding how to do the wildflowers I came up with all sorts of ideas. Some were very interesting and elaborate. But then, I realized I should stick to the processes that I find fun and that I'm good at so I abandoned most of the other ideas. The answer to the original question then, for me, this time, is to get the fabrics ready first, layout the design, then figure out how to add texture and alter colors to make it more interesting. All fun for me. Opus (and Andy and Rosie) are glad the painting is done so that they can be back in the studio to play with me. 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.

When Is It Time To Switch From Sketching To Fabric?

     When you use a sketchbook to plan your art quilts, how do you know you are ready to to get out the fabric? I've been working on a series of sketches to prepare for a quilt about wildflowers using my niece as one of the focal points. In it, she represents a force in the Universe. In the series, she is always manipulating an ammonite fossil. This time she is spreading seeds with the fossil. In previous posts, I've shown some sketches. Here is how I've painted them in succession trying to see how I could interpret the image in my head into fabrics.

The Seed Bearer 1

In this one and the others, I was influenced by my trip to Croatia and used the image of a ruined window and aging walls and walkways. I like aspects of this one, but it definitely has a way to go.

Seed Bearer 2

In this one, I used shapes that I would cut out of various fabrics. I like it better, but it is out of balance. It made me notice that the first one didn't have enough of value contrast.

Seed Bearer 3

     In this version, I taped extra paper to the bottom of my sketch page. That's why there is a line there. I like this one the best, but there are changes that are still needed. I took this photo and put it into the Art Studio App and played with the hue of the blue green shape and made it more of an olive green. That seems to work better. Also I made the rust shape longer at the bottom. And I made the yellow orange shapes thinner. 

     Getting back to the original question, I think I need to paint up some fabrics and get to it. The textures and patterns on the fabrics will determine what is needed at this point. The requirement for the exhibit is that it is exactly 20 inches wide and at least 30 inches long. So after Christmas, I'll get out my Gelli plate and paints and see what I come up with. But the sketch has given me a good starting point. 

     Speaking of Christmas, I showed you the Christmas art quilt I planned to have printed into cards here. I'm very pleased with how they came out. I used a card template that came with my Mac. I put the image of my quilt on the first page. I put separate text boxes for each word and bordered them with dashes (so that it looks like stitches) on the third page and I put "Art by reginabdunn.com" on the fourth page. I put that on a flash drive and gave it to my local printing company. Here is the result:

Front Page

(the watermark is not on the card... I only put it on this photo for the blog)

Third page

Fourth Page

I hope you all have a Very Merry Christmas. Thank you so much for reading my blog. It means so much to me. When I look at my statistics and see followers from so many different countries, it makes me so very happy that I can reach you.  Peace, Everyone.

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.

To Boro Or Not To Boro?

     When is it appropriate to add the hand stitches that are characteristic of the Japanese patchwork known as Boro? I love the look of it. I'm no expert on Boro, but I've done some reading on it and I've browsed images of it on Google and on Pinterest. I've even created a Boro board on my Pinterest page of images that inspire me. If you aren't familiar with it, basically what I've learned is boro used to be from rags that were worn by Japanese peasants and were patched and repaired with stitching.  Often, they used fabric that was dyed using indigo, so usually you will see blue fabrics when you look up boro. Now, when you see boro fashions, you will see patched fashions with large stitch work. Some of it looks ragged and some of it looks very refined. If you want to see it on Pinterest, be very careful when you type "boro", because Pinterest keeps changing your word to "boho". You have to keep changing it back to "boro".  If you visit my Pinterest page https://www.pinterest.com/reginabdunn/ you can see my board on boro.  Or you can Google "boro stitches" and go to images to see what it looks like.
     Anyway, I decided to experiment with boro and create some clothing for myself in this style, but in a little of the more refined way. My husband got to be the guinea pig for my first venture. He asked me to repair two holes in his khaki shorts. I used one of the tutorials I found on Pinterest as a guide.
1.) I trimmed the edges around the hole.
2.) I cut a patch of patterned cotton fabric a little larger than the hole.
3.) I placed the patch inside the hole and hand sewed a running stitch around the hole using a darker thread.
4.) I cut a patch of thicker cotton fabric larger than the patch and pinned it inside on top of the other patch.
5.) I hand stitched up and down a pattern of stitches all up and down the patch to reinforce and to decorate.

first patch from the outside

from the inside

second patch from the outside

If I had just done the patching normally, I would have used a khaki-colored thread that blended with the fabric and not done that pattern of stitching. And I would have used a khaki-colored patch. But this is boro. I made sure to tell him how special it was. :) 

     Then, I had the idea to make myself a boro Christmas scarf using leftover Christmas fabric scraps I have. I decided to model it after some of the images of scarfs from my Pinterest board. So I cut rectangles from my scraps and pieced them together until I had two large enough pieces and then put right sides together and sewed them, leaving an opening large enough to push the right sides back out.  Here's my scarf.

Christmas scarf

     The intention was to add large boro hand stitching to each section in contrasting thread to make it look more informal and worn. But now, I think I like it just as it is. So that's why the title "To boro or not to boro?" I think, in this case, I should not add stitching. Maybe, I'll piece a bunch of denim rectangles together and then hand stitch with green, red, and gold floss to boro another scarf for next year. Can boro even be used as a verb? 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.

How To Soothe An Aching Heart?

     Have you ever needed to send a home made gift to someone quickly? My sister's dog of 17 years died yesterday and the whole family is hurting. Her kids, my two nieces and my nephew, are grown now. They are in their twenties, but they are very upset at losing their longtime friend. I wanted to send them something more than just a card and I wanted to send it quick while they need it.
     So I went through my stash of fabric and pulled out a multi-colored purple/pink cotton and cut out a heart shape for each of them. Then I chose a purple fabric for a background selecting a checkered one for my nephew thinking that was a little more masculine.  Here are the steps:

1.) Iron on fusible to the heart fabric.
2.) Cut out the heart.
3.) Iron on fusible to the background fabric. Cut out two of them for each heart.
4.) Cut out a piece of interfacing the same size as the background piece. I used one that has fusible on one side.
5.) Iron on one of the background pieces to the interfacing.
6.) Iron on the heart to the piece above.
7.) Embroider a narrow zig zag around the heart.
8.) Iron on the other background piece to the back of the piece with the heart. That way the back shows no stitching and is nice and neat.
9.) Embroider an edge stitch around the edge. I used a buttonhole stitch.

3 hearts with ruler

close up of heart for my nephew

     These were quick to sew up and I put them in separate cards and wrote "Keep this heart for whenever you feel the need for a hug."  And then I sent them off in the mail.
Afterwards, I thought I should have printed that message on the back of the heart squares.  Next time.  So I know I can't heal their aching hearts, but I can show I care and that holding a heart may help a little. I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday  where you can find other art quilt blogs and Sew and Sow Farm. Please make comments on their posts to let the artists know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

Up To The Challenge?

     How can I incorporate the images I've been using in my latest series in a challenge about wildflowers? My art group, ArtsEtc., has an exhibit coming up in our City Hall about wildflowers and I want to use the image I've been playing around with of my niece in it.
     To try it out, I did a sketch using her image scattering seeds with simple shapes around her similar to the quilt I made of The Puppeteer seen here. I added some flowers to the bottom right. Not too bad.

practice sketch 1

     When I was in Croatia, I did several sketches that I really liked with that image. To me, the image represents a force in the Universe of some sort. I decided to try the Croatian influence on this theme. So I started a sketch with her in the top left sitting in a ruined window. Then I drew some flowers in the bottom right and developed the sketch from there using photos I took in Croatia as references.

practice sketch 2

     I think this has promise. I could see monoprinting the background fabric for the wall and ground and free motion quilting around the shapes.  The next step will be to choose a color palette and start playing with fabric. My guess is the final product will end up different than the sketch, because fabric will call upon me to make other choices. I took out some embroidery floss in colors I might choose.

possible color palette

     This week, when I meet with my sketching group, I think I'll paint a couple of versions of the sketch in those colors and later in the week maybe start getting fabrics ready. A possible title is The Seed Bearer. As I'm working with this series, I'm finding that I can adapt her image to a variety of themes which is bringing a lot of creativity out of me that I didn't know I had. It really is true that there is great value to working with a series.
     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.

Do You Stay Creative When You Travel?

     When you travel, do find time and energy to create art? I try to create some type of art on each trip. On some trips, I pack small embroideries that I can sew. Usually those work best on family types of vacations where I'll be staying in one place for most of the time. On my most recent trip, I spent three weeks in Croatia visiting various cities. I had envisioned myself sitting by ruins sketching and painting the views. So I packed a sketchbook, a small set of watercolors, a pencil, and a gel pen.  As it worked out, I didn't feel comfortable sitting for a few hours at a scene sketching while my husband was ready to move on to something else. To get my creative itch scratched, each evening I looked at the photos I took with my iPad and chose the one the inspired me the most and began to design a sketch of it. As I began, I decided not to just do a realistic drawing. I decided to carry on with the series I began here.

The Puppeteer

     I cut out the main figure in various sizes from tissue paper and then superimposed them onto sketches and photos as I worked to help me with my designs.

tracing paper "tools"

My husband took this photo of me playing with a cat in the town of Labin in Croatia. 

in Labin, Croatia

As I started a sketch of it, I decided to put the figure of my niece on the bench instead of me to carry on with the series.

The Puppeteer of Labin

Another place we visited had the remains of a Roman arch. It's at a place called Burnum. How this sketch began was a bit unusual. On the right side of the sketchbook, I had made a pressing from watercolors a few months ago from a plant and it looked like just a spray of blue paint. I was sitting in the hotel room in Croatia wondering what to do to it and I saw that it had a vague shape of an ammonite. So I drew the shape around it with the gel pen and painted patterns in to finish it.

     Then, I decided to sketch the arch on the facing page and unify the two sketches with each other so I did the arch in the same style as the ammonite and put the figure of the girl under the arch to carry on with the series.

The Puppeteer of Burnum

I took a photo of clock against the ruins of a wall in Zagreb, the capitol of Croatia and I'm working on a sketch of her sitting near the clock.  The tracing paper pieces of her helps me to decide what scale of her to use and where to place her in each drawing. Plus I can hold the tracing paper pieces right up to the iPad photos to see how she would look before I start sketching. I've found it to be great tool. So even when I don't have time to sit and do sketches right on the scene, I find I can still be creative when I travel.  Just take photos during the daytime, review them in the evening, rethink them into something new, and draw and paint whenever there is time.

     And now for some personal news. Those of you that have followed my blog for some time are familiar with one of my cats, Opus. He is black and white and often in my studio with me. Well, another black and white cat showed up in our yard and would not go away. We tried hard to ignore him and then to find another home for him. But in the end, we had to adopt him. We named him Andy... not after anything or anyone. Just a cute name. Here are some pictures of Andy and Opus making friends for the first time. Andy is on the left and Opus is on the right.

Hello

Uh oh

The first touch

So now I have three cats. They all are getting along just fine. Opus and Andy play a lot with each other. They are going to be best buddies. Rosie is just starting to play with Andy. I'm linking this to Off The Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts to let them know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.