Do You Like To Work With The Seasons?

          This week not only did I tie up another loose end, but I tied it in with the autumn season as well. Way back in a blog post here,  I wrote about how I had some artwork that was going nowhere and I decided to rework it. I started it off and it was going well, but then I lost my verve for it and it sat waiting after I had added the top section and bottom section. Part of the reason was because I didn't have the right green fabric for the sides and I hate shopping. I went to the closest quilt shop and they didn't have the right hue. Finally I drove to the next nearest quilt shop and found exactly what I needed and I was off sewing on it again. I'm sure there was an easier way, but to finish it these are the steps I followed:
1.) Hand sew batting onto the sides.
2.) It wasn't nearly straight so I had to add extra fabric to the sides in places.
3.) Sew magenta fabric strips onto the sides.
4.) Sew green fabric onto the magenta fabric.
5.) Quilt onto the green fabric with a rayon rust colored thread (no backing fabric).
6.) Sew tabs with green fabric.
7.) Pin tabs to backing fabric and make a pillowcase backing.
8.) Quilt in the ditch down two sides lengthwise.
After all the handling the leaves were starting to show some wear so I dabbed them with matt medium to keep them together. (After all, they are from 2007.)
     It was nice to know that I was able to rework the art to a form that I like much better.
I bought the hanger at Ten Thousand Villages a fair trade store. It was amazingly inexpensive and they come in many sizes. We have one about 40 minutes away, but you can get them on-line, too.

Autumn Leaf Scroll

Scroll Detail 1

Scroll Detail 2

     So now the problem is what to do with it. I can't find anywhere in the house to hang it (Unless I take another one of my husband's things down and put it in its place instead.) No, I think I've done that enough times already. Working on this now did help me get in the mood for autumn even if it is still pretty hot here in Florida. Our first real cold front may come through next week. Maybe I'll get to wear a sweater soon. Exciting!
     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 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.

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.