Want To Go Way Back With Me?

     I was glancing up on my kitchen wall looking up at an art quilt I created over 10 years ago. At the time was teaching chemistry and had just started making art quilts for fun and didn't even come close to consider calling myself an artist. I was invited to join an art group and bring something for show and tell. I had never shown anyone anything I had created before let alone a group of artists. I was terrified. I almost didn't go to the meeting. But the women I met were very encouraging and friendly so I went. This is what I took to show.

Kitchen Concoction

     To create this, I took a photo of this bowl.

My wooden salad bowl

And a photo of this bottle.

bottle of flavored vinegar

Then I manipulated them in Photoshop Elements until I got layers of colors and I printed out the photos. I chose fabrics with those colors and cut out the shapes and fused them onto the base fabrics and sewed it all together and then quilted it. The difficult part for me was to machine embroider the words for the sauces. I actually ripped them out twice before I was happy with them. The "vapors" are painted on with Shiva paintstiks.

     Looking back at this beginning quilt, there are things I would do differently. It definitely would benefit from having light values in it. I didn't know about varying values back then. I would balance out the dark green more. It's all on the left side. I would also change the shape of the vapor trails and change where the fluid coming out of the bottle intersects with one of the vapor trails. But, overall, I still like this early quilt and that's why it still hangs in my kitchen. And I still cook and/or use the sauces that are named on it. 

     So that day way back when I stood up and showed my quilt the group was very nice and welcoming I decided to join and I am still a member of ArtsEtc today. It has been such a great influence on my artistic life and now I do call myself an artist. 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.

From Photo To Sketch To Fabric

      My art group, ArtsEtc, meets once a month except for July because that meeting falls on the July 4th weekend. This past summer, a small group of us decided to meet at my house that weekend and take a walk at a local park and take photos for inspiration. I came away with photos of Spanish moss hanging from large live oak trees, and close-up shots of beautiful textures on leaves and bark. The sunlight of the early morning left wonderful patterns peaking through the foliage as we walked down the shaded path towards the lake. Suddenly, the trees opened up before us when reached lake and this is one of the many photos I took as an osprey sat on one of the piers as it fed on a fish it recently caught that morning.

early morning on the lake

     I knew that I wanted to capture this moment in my art somehow. It was very quiet. I could hear the water lapping against the piers. I could hear some birds in the distance. No traffic noise at all. No wind. None of us spoke.

     So at my sketching group, I made a few sketches with this photo as the focal point. Some were more realistic. Some were more abstract. I eventually settled on one that I liked a lot that is a stylized landscape.
     I got out my monoprinted fabrics from here and some older ones and started laying them out on my design board to fit into the sketch background. That was the easy part. The harder part was to figure out how to translate the lines I had drawn on the sketch into fabric. I could couch them on with fibers, I could do bobbin work with thick thread, or I could try to paint the lines on. In the end, I decided to put two black threads in the needle at once and then free motion stitch as normal. To do this, you thread one spool as normal, and then put the other spool on the other thread holder and thread as normal but through the other tension disk. (Both threads go through the same and only eye of the needle; size 90 universal needle.) I had no problems with thread breakage or thread tension.
     I sketched out the lines onto the yellow quilting paper first and pinned it on top of the fabric and then sewed (with the double threads) on top of the drawn lines on the paper. Then I ripped off the paper. Here's a photo that shows some of the stitching done and some of the paper still on with the sketching on the paper.

in-progress stitching

If you think the fabric with the piers is lighter in color than you saw from the link above, you are correct. That's because I decided to use the reverse side of it. I felt that the "right side" was too dark and saturated for this quilt. Here's a close-up photo of part of it.

with paper and sketching waiting to be stitched

     The color inside the piers was added with Shiva Paintstiks. Now I have the stitching done and am down to some more difficult decisions. How to do the bird and how to add Spanish moss. I've made three birds already. One that I printed onto cotton fabric from a photo, but it just doesn't fit with this style of art. One that I painted onto fabric and just doesn't fit, either. And one that I printed onto sheer fabric and it is too faint. I have a few more ideas to try out for the bird.

     For the Spanish moss, I thought I was going to use painted cheese cloth, but the texture doesn't fit with this quilt. Neither does some wool roving that I have. I need something smooth and flat to go with the lines I stitched and the flat look of the painted piers. I have few ideas to try for that, too. Time to put on the creativity hat. 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 the artists know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

What To Do With A Piece That Isn't Working?

      Haven’t we all had works that started out with such promise and us with such enthusiasm about them? And then either we’ve overworked them or somehow we just couldn’t get the tone we wanted out of them? Well, that seems to have happened with my latest small piece. It started as just a line study in crinoline. Then I wanted to develop it a little farther into a meditative piece with a Buddha. Since it was a small quilt, I felt I would just work free and easy and see where it went and have fun with it. It was great fun at first, but then I kept making adjustments. I thought I was liking it and when I thought it was done, I realized it wasn’t working out.  So how do I end it so that I’m happy with it?

     Since I last showed you the quilt, I added a fabric piece to the bottom. I had found a teal cotton piece that I had treated with some rusty hardware some time ago. To fit it with this quilt, I added some some texture rubbings with Shiva Paintstiks and left the rough edge of the fabric on the bottom edge. 

rubbing plate, paintstik, brush, palette,
tape to get pain on bottom edge of fabric

And I couched a fiber onto the border of it.  I found some sari silk ribbons and sewed those onto the other edges with the intent of squaring them off but then I liked the pattern of the edges they already had. So for the time being, I’m leaving the edges as they are. And I do love the edges. Funny that I love the fabric piece at the bottom and the sari ribbon shapes more than the actual quilted piece I started with.

     My stitched Buddha wasn’t the greatest. Since the quilt wasn’t looking good to me, I thought that was the problem. So I stitched another Buddha. The Buddha looked much better. Better face, better hand, better foot, but not a better quilt. 

with the new Buddha, couched fiber,
sari ribbon-borders, and bottom fabric

So I removed the Buddha and the squares and pinned a monk from sheer fabric in its place. 

Put a Monk on it!

A little better, but still, I don’t like the quilt as a whole. Next step was to look at the quilt without a monk or a Buddha or squares. 

Sigh (not the title)

It looks empty now.

     The end of this story for me is to put it away for a long time and work on something else. I sure wish I had a design expert on hand to tell me where I went wrong so that I could learn from it, but maybe in the future I’ll figure it out. So for now... Let it go... Let it go... Let it go...

Don't you wish you had a private art expert to guide you? Or would that take away your voice? What do you think? I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please leave comments on their posts to let them know you stopped by.

I'm Getting Attached to My Monk

     At my art group ArtsEtc, we've decided to start each monthly meeting with a quick sketching exercise from a book called "Drawing Lab for Mixed-Media Artists: 52 Creative Exercises to Make Drawing Fun (Lab Series" by Carla Sonheim Amazon.com even though we are basically fiber artists. We only spend about 15 minutes doing it to get our creative juices going. Our sketching leader chooses the exercise and this last time the instruction was to quickly draw 30 cats. I knew I wouldn't have time for details, so I only drew the outline of the cat over and over; no eyes or whiskers or other details. I only had time to get 22 of them on my paper before time was called.
     Then the homework was to choose our favorite drawing we made and to put it on a 5 x 7 cardstock and develop it into a composition and bring it to the next meeting. Here's mine.

Guardian

I used a combination of watercolors, acrylics, Shiva paintstiks (I love those), and a black Sharpie fine point marker.

     The other homework was to bring a photo of a giraffe. Intriguing. In the meantime, I'm monoprinting and texture rubbing fabrics for a couple of quilts I'm preparing.

Adding More Texture and Blending to the Background

     I went to my monthly studio meeting with my art group, ArtsEtc. This meeting was an exercise in texture rubbings. I decided to take my background for the art quilt I've been working on and try to unite the panels more by using the Shiva paintstiks in two ways.
     The first way, was to take the paints and mix the colors on an old plastic plate to get a pale blue and then load a stencil brush with the paint. Then I brushed the paint onto the edges of the whitest panel to have it blend into the bluer panels around it more. The orangish panel was a little too orangish for me for this quilt and I had plans to sew a white sheer fabric on top to tone it down. Instead, I brushed white/gray paintstiks on top. I think it helped.
     The second way, was to make texture rubbings that would overflow the edges of the panels to help blend the panels together more. The problem with this was that the background was already a quilt and the thickness prevented pattern from the texture plates from rubbing through. But there is always a way...
     So here is what the solution was: (I put plastic onto the table surface to keep it clean.)
1.) I took the paintstiks and rubbed them right onto the brass trivet. I used various colors together.

Half of trivet is rubbed with paintstiks of various colors

2.) I placed the trivet paint-side down on the quilt where I wanted the pattern to be.

Trivet placed paint-side down

3.) I carefully, flipped the quilt over and rubbed from the back side of the quilt.

Rubbing with my hand
You can also rub with a hard edge like a ruler

4.) In this panel edge, I felt I wanted more unity. I thought there was too much of a difference between the two panels. (You can see some places in the top of the photo and the bottom where I already did this procedure.)

Needs something here

5.) So I took several colors of paintstiks and rubbed them directly onto this plastic rubbing plate.

Thick with paints

6.) And I place the painted part of this plate paint side down where I wanted the pattern onto the quilt. I flipped the quilt over and I rubbed from the back side of the quilt.

Rubbing the texture from the back

7.) Here you can see the same section with its new pattern uniting the panels better.

With pattern overflowing the edge

So it's not too late to add texture rubbings to quilts after quilting. You just have to do it from the back. If you want a really well defined rubbing, then use a hard edge like a ruler to do the rubbing. If you want a more diffuse rubbing, then use your hand to do the rubbing. But do have the texture plate really thick with paint.             TIP: Practice the technique on a small scrap quilt first.

I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday Where you can visit other artist's art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts to let them know you were there.

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.

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

Some More Photos of Monoprinted Fabrics

 Here are some other photos of fabrics I had monoprinted on gelatin. You can see other photos on earlier posts in this blog. I used regular acrylic paints mixed with textile paints because I want to use up the paint I have before I buy more. I had read warnings not to mix different brands or types of paints together to get the best quality. But it turns out I like the way these fabrics came out. They have a certain amount of graininess but the hand of the fabric wasn't changed that much. It is a little stiffer than if I had used only textile paint, but since it is for a wall art quilt and not clothing or a bed quilt, that's OK with me. Plus these fabrics will be used to represent rocks and windy skies so the texture will work well for that purpose. I think I will make more fabrics this way for my series.

Gray Paint Monoprint with string masks. The droplets were made by spraying the painted gelatin surface with water just before pressing the fabric onto it

Gray monoprinted fabric with Shiva Paintstiks(white, teal, and russet) rubbed onto in with stencil brushes after it was dry. This softens the texture and adds interesting patterns.

Teal Paint Monoprint. The ovals were made by pressing a toilet paper cardboard into the paint on the gelatin surface before pressing the fabric onto it. Note the graininess of the texture in most places. The mottled areas are where water droplets were added to the painted gelatin plate before the fabric was pressed onto it.

Here is a link to an interesting blog that Ill be following: http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.nl/
Have a good weekend.
Regina

It's Starting to Look Like a Real Composition Now

Greetings,
Well, my prayer flag quilt is starting to look like it's coming together nicely now. Since I last posted photos, I've added some more Shiva Paintstiks in white and blue to blend the areas more. And I've machine quilted most of it. (I'll need to add quilting after the prayer flags are added). I quilted the top portion in horizontal wavy lines with beige thread to give the feeling of wind. I quilted the botton portion in circles with a light russet thread to give the feeling of rocks and cobblestone.

bottom part quilted

orb with the quilting

the entire piece quilted

I think this is the last time I'll show the whole quilt on-line. I will add the prayer flags and show you a few of those up close. Then I'll add the actual focal point and finish quilting and then finish the edges. The reason I won't show the whole quilt is that I want to enter it into some shows and I don't think the quilt should be unveiled until the show (if it gets accepted). If it's not accepted, then I'll put it on-line for all to see. I hope that you are enjoying watching the process of making an art quilt.

It was particularly difficult to do the machine quilting last night because my kitten kept jumping up on the table and darting underneath the quilt, burrowing under the machine table extension, and popping out on my lap. I had to set up a tent with an afghan for him to play in to keep him away. He loves watching the spool of thread vibrate when the machine is going as soon as he hears it, he stops what he is doing and comes by to entertain me. There is no way I can get angry, though. He's just too cute. 

So what do you think about the quilt so far? What do you think about the process?

Preparing Fabrics for My Project

I've been busy creating fabrics for my newest project. I want to do a series of quilts with the theme of prayer flags. There are a lot of beautiful commercial fabrics out there, but I want to create my own for this series. Maybe I'll stick a commercial one in here or there, though. What I need are fabrics to put in the sky area. I'm not going for a totally realistic look for this series. I want to express the idea of the prayers being sent to the Gods via the wind. So what I did was start with 100% cotton muslin and a poly/cotton voile. I prepared a gelatin plate in a large cookie sheet (I had to lock the kitten outside during that process...he's still being trained to not jump onto the kitchen countertops).
Then I wanted to use the paints I had rather than purchase more. (I've decided to use up my stash before I buy more paint of any kind.)  I had  jacquardproducts.com/  Jacquard blue textile paint, Jacquard russet paint, Jacquard teal neopaque paint,  regular white acrylic paint, Golden Gac 900 Fabric Painting Medium  goldenpaints.com.  Mixing the combination together gave me a desaturated light blue. (Using the acrylics with the Gac helped not make the fabric too stiff.) They say not to mix different product brands together, but this one worked for me.

I used a brayer to put the paint onto the gelatin plate. Sprayed it with a little water. Took a toilet paper roll and smooshed it a little to make it more of an oval and then made marks with it in the paint. Put the fabric over it and took a print. Sprayed more water on the plate and took another print with another piece of fabric.
I repeated but this time used a cardboard edge to draw streaks in the paint instead of making ovals with the toilet roll on the plate before printing.

with ovals from toilet paper roll

with streaks from cardboard edge

with ovals

with streaks

I mixed up gray paint and repeated. I repeated all several times on different fabrics.
I found that I didn't think I could use these for what I had in mind. Then I thought that if I spread some white Shiva Paintstiks cedarcanyontextiles.com/category/paintstiks/ on them I could blur up the marks and make the patterns more mottled. When I was digging through the bin looking for the paintstik, I saw a rubbing plate and had an ahah moment.
See below how I added the rubbing with white paintstiks. I don't know if you can see from the photos, but I used a stencil brush to blur the patterns to make them more subtle. Now I think I can use the fabrics as backgrounds with the theme of spreading prayers. I have torn the fabrics up and made a layout and will look at it over the next few days to be sure I like it. But I think it is promising. Man... this blogging thing is kind of scary... to share unfinished work. Because usually I make a lot of changes before a work is done.

streaked and rubbed

with ovals and rubbings