How Would You Finish Off A Crazy UFO?

     Do you have any wild UFO's laying around? Most of do. I never know what to do with the really crazy ones. Usually I cut them up into smaller pieces and rework those. Awhile back I threw an art party at home and posted about it here. Each of my friends took home a "finished" piece. Mine is still laying in the UFO pile. One of the participants, Mary McBride, was given one by another so she took home two. She actually added on to them and created finished artworks from them. Go Mary!
Here's the starting piece of one of them.

starting piece 1

She went with the cat theme and went to town.

Finished!

starting piece 2

after rotating it, Finished!

She made this one for a friend who loves art with Madonnas. Mary is a fantastic collage artist. (This last photo isn't great because I took it in a cafe and the lighting was terrible and I had to take it with my iPad from above it as it sat on the table.) I guess I'll have to take another look at mine and see if I come up with any collage ideas based on what's on the background or a possible recipient. Maybe I'll just have to go really crazy for once.

Have You Ever Surprised Yourself With A Composition?

     Have you ever just gone into the studio to play with something quick and ended up with a composition that you liked so much that you might use it start a series? Well, I made a sketch the other day of a fossil and decided to make a small fabric interpretation of it. The first thing to do was to choose a background for it. As I learned in my recent class that I blogged about here, the fossil needed to rest on something. I decided to choose the shape in a shape background. So I got out some fabrics and cut out some rectangles and placed them on top of some dyed cheesecloth.

fabrics on cheesecloth on top of white crinoline

Then I thought it might need more, so I tried this combination.

Another possibility

I decided I didn't like the piece that was separated from the others. Then I hand stitched the pieces of fabric onto the cheesecloth and crinoline. Next,  I sketched my fossil onto the back with pencil and free-motion sewed it with black thread from the back.

Interpretation of fossil sketch on fabric 12x12

     After looking at it for awhile, I felt something needed to be added. So I turned it over and was going to add a bird to it on the orange-red rectangle so that the bird was looking downward towards the fossil. But, I had a photo of my two nieces from when they were toddlers sitting on a rock that I was going to do a series on in fabric and I got the idea instead to do this.

The Puppeteer

I removed part of the rectangle and put one of my nieces on top. She was playing with sticks so I got the idea to make it look like she is manipulating the fossil. The piece is still in process. I like all the raw edges. I'm not sure how I want to finish it. But how it evolved was fun and very intuitive. I can see making a larger quilt with this theme and then some other ones building off of this idea. 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 them know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

Back To Monoprinting

     Now that I'm working on a larger piece again, the first step is to monoprint the background fabrics. I wanted to have several color choices to choose from and this piece is about a walk in the woods in the early morning. So I needed to use greens for the foliage, oranges for the sunrise, and blues for the water of the lake that I came upon. I mixed my own colors starting with acrylic paints of cadmium yellow light, cadmium red light, cerulean blue, ultramarine blue, alizarin crimson, and titanium white. I added equal amounts of Golden's GAC 900 Fabric medium which allows the paint to play well with fabric. I also used Jacquard's colorless extender to thin the paint so that it would be more transparent on the fabric.
     This is the first time I used the actual Gelli plate. Before this I used my home-made gelatin plates. When I took the Gelli plate out and spread the paint on, it kept beading up. I thought maybe I just had to break it in and do a few prints. But it kept beading up. I was getting ready to contact the company when I realized that I had not removed the protective plastic cover! I got some interesting prints that way, though.
     Here are some prints I got off the actual plate.

reminds me of sun reflecting on the water,
impressionistic style

might be good for background in the woods
with a foreground on top

another background

I like the white "resists" I got in this one

All of these will be cut up and used in pieces and have other elements added on top, but they are a good beginning as the bottom layer for backgrounds for what I have in mind.
I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on the artists posts to let them know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

Decision Time Again

     I've chosen background fabrics for my next quilt. I pinned them up on my design wall, rearranged them over and over. After I finally chose their arrangement, I cut them to size and sewed them together. This process took me about a week and a half. The sewing only took about half a day. It's the decisions that take me awhile. The fabrics were all ones I had monoprinted on my gelatin plate. I love each one of them so to make a commitment to cut into them is a big decision. But it's getting easier as I do more of it. I figure, if I change my mind, I'll use the cut pieces for something else smaller later on. I'm collecting all the scraps of these fabrics and plan to make some small mini art quilts soon.
     This quilt is a result of a sketch that I did in about 10 minutes. It just popped into my head one day, and I loved the result. It has three rock cairns, a sun/moon, and some interesting earth layers on the bottom with rocks tucked in them. The composition is a good one, I think. What will make or break the quilt will be how I use fabrics, stitch, and other surface designs. Here's the background sewn together. It measures about 34 inches wide by 42 inches tall. It's a bit wonky because, it is only the quilt top and doesn't have any support. It does lay flat when I put it down on my table and it will lay flat when stitched down on the batting. The golden colored fabric near the center is still pinned on in this photo. That was a recent decision. I need to cut it to the correct size and sew it on to replace the fabric underneath it. All of the fabrics are my monoprinted ones except for the three golden-colored rectangles. Those are commercial. They are from the Stonehenge line of fabrics.

current background

     Now I have to put it on batting and quilt it. I'm going to use a light gray thread and free-motion a pattern in the "sky" panels to suggest upward motions. There are five layers in the bottom. I'll use a pebble pattern in at least one of the layers. Not sure what I'll do in the others yet. (This background sat up on the wall for about five days while I decided how to quilt it.)

     After that, I'll apply a pillow-case backing. Then I'll appliqué the rock cairns through the entire sandwich, appliqué the sun/moon similarly, and quilt some more through all the layers. Then I'll see what else it needs. That's the plan anyway. Subject to change. (Oh, I'll probably eliminate several inches off of the top before I apply the backing... it looks too tall to me. Lesson learned on the previous quilt.) I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can visit other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts to let them know you stopped by.

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.

Ahhh, Back to Making Art.

My art quilt background is still hanging on the design wall. I made a cutout of a monk from brown wrapping paper and took a photo of it. I made a bunch of rock cairns on a table from river rocks and took photos of them. (It was difficult balancing them because they are so slippery and Opus had a blast watching and chasing them as they fell.) And I used a previous photo I had of a circle from a wipe rag. I imported the background photo and all the other photos into Photoshop Elements and began to play with various compositions. Here are some of them in the order I designed them.

1.) Remember; this is only to check for compositional placement. The real thing will look much better because all will be made of fabric with textures and patterns and stitches. You know how much better it all looks once it is sewn and quilted. To me, this one is a bit boring, but it is a start.

large monk, tall cairn, all three items seem to be focal points

2.) This second one has a rock cairn with more interesting shapes. I tried to see how changing the size of the sun/moon would affect focal point since in the one above all three items seemed equal. But I want the cairn to be the focal point (I think) so this doesn't work for me.

better rocks on this one

3.) I made everything smaller on this third one and I like the effect better now. It gives a more expansive view like the monk is looking outward. Getting more like I want it. Oh, how Photoshop helps me see things. I can enlarge and stretch objects out and shrink them out in just a few seconds.

getting the effect closer to what I want

4.) Now, I had to go and really change it up. I flipped the composition over on the background, lightened up the sun/moon. Decisions...decisions.

Flipped composition

So how will I decide? That's the hard part for me. I'm hoping some of you will chime in. I think I'm leaning towards the last one. The monk is in the part that is glowing. Also, the rock cairn is in a part of the base that is almost like a path pointing to it (that's accidental but fits it and seems to lead to the sun/moon).  

Of course, the rocks will be made of fabric and won't resemble the photo rocks you see here.

But now I'm excited to get going.

I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can visit art quilt blogs. Be sure to 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.

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

New Quilt?

I've been racking my brain trying to come up with an idea for an exhibit I want to enter called "Color Wheel of Emotion".  Everytime I got excited about an idea, I sketched it out or created a mock-up in Photoshop Elements from my photos and/or scans. But then after awhile they seemed too trite, too ordinary, or too difficult for me to execute. Then, I was gathering spices in my kitchen to make a batch of garam masala (a set mixture of spices for curry). And I realized how colorful they were and decided to use photos of them for my color wheel. I took individual photos of them on a plate such as these four:

whole cloves

mustard seeds

cardamom pods

cinnamon sticks

Then I manipulated them and merged them into one photo looking like (sort of like) they are on the same plate at the same time. (I wanted to keep them separate in real life so that I could put them back into their bottles uncontaminated when I was done taking photos.) My plan was to interpret the composite photo in cloth and thread to create my version of a color wheel of emotion. Here is that photo:

Composite photo

but in the end I decided I wasn't ready to make that quilt. I may do it another time. While I was in the shower this evening, I glanced at an ornament hanging from our curtain and I suddenly saw my color wheel of emotion! So I photographed it, manipulated it in Photoshop with background fabric and I like it a lot. I hope I still think it is a good idea in the morning. If yes, then I'll get out my gelatin plate and monoprint the background fabrics and start creating the foreground. The deadline is the end of April. If all goes well, I'll be able to make it.

New Quilt for Auction

I'm going to donate a quilt to SAQA for an auction. The requirement is that it be 12 x 12. What I did so far to make it is I scanned in fabrics that I made for my prayer flag quilt. I manipulated them in Photoshop Elements 10 and added part of a photo I took on Sanibel Island in Florida. Here is the result:

The next step is to print it. Since my printer only prints standard size, I'll have to print the background in several pieces. Then I'll cut them up and put them onto batting. I'll print the orb and the birds onto a sheer chiffon and fuse them onto the background. Then I'll quilt, hand-embroider, and probably sew on a pillowcase backing. If you've been following my blog, then you've seen some of these fabrics as I made them and you've seen some of the steps I followed to make my prayer flag quilt.
By the way, the prayer flag quilt is finished. I sent in an application and photos of it to SAQA's Text Message exhibit. Now I have to wait to see if it gets in - fingers crossed.
I made a second prayer flag quilt and only have to finish some hand embroidery and I'll submit that one to another exhibit. I think I've found my way to creating a body of work!
If the two quilts don't get accepted, I'll post photos of them here and on my website.

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?

Creating a Background for a Quilt

Now that I've made a few posts to you on this blog, let me tell you the big picture of what is going on in my art life. I've joined a group of international artists and each of us has set a goal for the year. Some have set a goal to write a book, sell more art, try new techniques, create a small piece of art each day. My goal is to create a cohesive body of work. That basically means that I want to create several works of art around a theme and by doing so, develop my own style. I decided that my theme will be prayer flags and that by creating several art quilts around that theme I hope to develop a unique style. I recently posted photos that show you some of the fabrics I made for the first quilt. Here are some that show you how I put fabrics together to create a background. The next step will be to quilt it.

using a sheer to help blend fabrics

Also using a sheer fabric

A side-view showing white and blue sheers laying on top

The background (the smudge in the top right is just a shadow...not a gray fabric)