#art quilts

I’ll be presenting my lecture Modern Quilting: Philosophy or Aesthetic to SAQA Texas on May 5th. The Studio Art Quilts Association is a pretty interesting bunch of artists. I have lots of respect for art quilters and what they are able to do with fabric. In many ways, art quilters paved the way for modern quilters. The challenges both movements faced in their early days are similar. I’m sure I’ll learn quite a bit from them both in technique and history. The meeting is open to SAQA members only, but if you are interested in joining, check out their website.

As for posting quilts, I’m hoping to get back to posting this summer when my son starts pre-school full-time. I started a business, a new job, I’m helping plan QuiltCon and I’m still a SAHM the majority of the time. My plate is overflowing in many wonderful ways that I am thankful for! Although I do miss this blog and all you super amazing quilters.

I imagine I’ll have a ton of amazing work to search through once I’m back in the game. I’m looking forward to it!

I love modern quilting and the fantastic people I meet in our world of quilting. I love the debates, the lovers and the naysayers. I am constantly inspired and amazed by all of you. I hope to meet many of you in Austin 2013. The last few years have been amazing and I can’t wait to see what will happen in the next few years!

XOXO,

Heather

Work still progresses on “Bobbin on the Beach”, but very slowly. My workplace went through a huge reorganization two months ago and my schedule changed along with it. I still work the same amount of time, but my free time is now broken up into much smaller chunks. It’s definitely caused me to reconfigure how I manage my quilting time. One night after work, I made this little applique shovel.

The next day, I stitched it down. The day after that I started the design on my punchline element, the cat litter box. About a week ago I got together with some friends to play with Tsukeninko inks. I had a little fun making color swirls in shaving cream, but I dripped water on it before I could heat set it, so I couldn’t fix it. But I can use it as a background for my text.

I printed out my text in the font I liked (and to an appropriate size), and positioned it under my inked, marbled fabric. Then it’s just a matter of tracing the text onto my fabric. There are a lot of good fine line fabric pens out there. I used a .01 Pigma and a .05 Pilot gel pen. Both are permanent and work well on most quilting cottons.

This will be such a fun element to my cat’s ‘beach.’

Only 6 days left until the Cherrywood Challenge deadline, and I’m just finishing the last touches.

Once I got the binding attached, I was able to add the last few leaves. As you can see, I wanted a couple of the leaves to go over the top of the binding, so now I can applique those as well. I also added some ink to my branches to give them more interest.

Another good use for ink is on the edges of these raw-edge appliques. I stitched the leaf in a different color to make the veins show better, but that also makes the raw edge more obvious.

Enter my favorite remedy; Tsukeninko ink. The Cherrywood cottons take the ink very well.

I’ll enter my quilt in the contest tonight. Then I can start working on my next challenge quilt - which also has a tight deadline.

Ten days left til the Cherrywood Challenge deadline (and only three days off work before then), and I’m finished with the quilting. Tomorrow I’ll square up Bob and start making the binding.

You’ll notice the light chalk line inside my stitching line, which will be the outer edge of my quilt. I didn’t stitch completely to that edge, especially in the corners, because I still have a couple of leaves to add to the branches, and I plan for those leaves to lay on top of my binding.

I’ll probably add a little more ink and/or paint to finish it up before I officially enter it in the quilt contest.

Ten days? Yeah, I got this.

Of all of the leaves in my Bob Ross Cherrywood Challenge, these blue willowy fronds have become my favorite. I wasn’t thrilled, originally, with how the oil painted edges had come out, so I knew I was going to wind up covering the entire raw-cut pieces. I chose to just thread paint in variegated blue silk. First I stitched my center stalk.

A simple V to fill in the feathery structure. Already the awkward painted edges are starting to blur.

A little more thread to really fill them out. They came out exactly the way I’d hoped!

Tomorrow I should be able to quilt the background.

With 15 days left til deadline, I’m almost done with the quilting on Bob’s ‘hair.’

Tumblr has continued to lose my posts, so I’ve started posting my progress on my Facebook page instead. FB has their problems too, but Tumblr has always dropped random posts, and I’m about done with it. So here is the link to my Facebook: (https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=677501572697839&id=660335101081153)

In other news, I finally got my website up and running, complete with blog and link to my sometimes working Tumblr. Check it out at www.quiltingtails.com

This is why a Japanese Bobtail makes the perfect sewing companion; no tails to move out of the path of sharp implements.

Branching Out

June 6, 2019

It feels like it took forever, but I finally finished stitching all my applique leaves.  Now it’s time to start my border.

With only 20 inches allowed in the Cherrywood Challenge, there really isn’t a lot of room for a border.  But unlike my last two challenge quilts, I think this one can benefit from a little something.  I have my quilt edge marked in chalk, and I also marked off triangles to frame Bob for my border.

Using my leftover kit fabrics, I’ve made some branch appliques to frame my subject.  I’ll probably use these same colors when I bind it later.

I had a few leaves left over that didn’t go into Bob’s hair or beard, so I worked them in to these branches.  Of course, not all the leaves were a good fit, and I needed more than I had, so I spent last night cutting, turning and painting yet more leaves.  

Once I was happy with the placement, I took several photos to help me assemble each piece again later, and bagged each section into its own baggie.

Now that I’ve appliqued all those leaves, I plan to spend my upcoming weekend off  sewing these branches…and yet more leaves.

Hand sewing during work breaks can be very therapeutic. Especially if you’ve already spent six hours wanting to stab something.

Slow Stitching

I finally got my website up and running. I had reserved the domain Quiltails, but thanks to some odd logistical problems, I had to let it lapse so I could re-register. During that time the rights to it changed hands, and to own it again would now cost me an arm and a leg.

So my website is now QuiltingTails.com, where I’m planning to keep the longer blog posts (since Tumblr is so good at losing them).

I finally got my Cherrywood order (which was missing in action in Jacksonville for nearly a week), so I’ve been working on “The Great Catsby.” Right now, Thumper’s mask looks more like “The Phantom of the Cat Box.”

Apliquick 101: I’m using Apliquick fusible foundation rather than traditional paper templates to make my clamshells to keep my seams straight.

Once ironed to the wrong side of the fabric, I like to cut very close to the turning edge. The piece on the right is cut to about 1/8th of an inch.

Using a fabric glue stick (I’m showing a Bohin pen here, but I’ve refilled it several times. This time with Sewline glue), I apply glue to small sections at a time. It’s certainly helpful that the glue goes on in color.

The two main turning tools are long rods, one with a rounded flat edge meant to turn the fabric, and the other with a forked edge, meant to hold your piece in place. With the rounded edge tool I turned fabric in select places and pinched it to the glue. The result first looks like the edge of a pie crust.

I like to use the forked edge to sweep and smooth the rest of the edges to the glue until it lies flat.

The result, even with a seam, is a perfectly smooth turned edge on the curve of my split clamshells.

There are several good tutorials with video on using Apliquick on YouTube, as well as places to purchase the tools. The tools are also available at Amazon, though I always prefer to buy directly from artists and small businesses. I recommend Kathy McNeil’s site, largely because she is the teacher who introduced me to Apliquick.

https://www.kathymcneilquilts.com/

Kathy McNeil Art Quilts | Award-Winning Quilt Artist

Day 4 and 5 of The Great Catsby.

I’m still waiting for my fabric order to arrive, so I’m working on a section of the background. English paper pieced clamshells. To make it more Deco, I’m making split clamshells.

Half Cherrywood hand dyed, half Fairy Frost. Gives it a great contrast. Of course I have a lot more clamshells to make.

Day 2 of Catsby. Usually I’d be working on a face to put my painted eyes, but I’m waiting for my pre-ordered 2020 Cherrywood Challenge kit (because it contains a white I think I’ll be using in my face), so I moved on to a section of the background.

It’s simple piecing, but combined with all the other elements, it should showcase my subject well.

I seldom do any quilting after September as my job gets ridiculously busy during the holidays. But I’m going to try to do something different and work on my new art quilt a little each day during the month of November at least.

I started yesterday with the eyes. Painted on Silk Radiance with Tsukeninko inks. I think it captured Thumper’s wistful eyes nicely.

Cherrywood just announced the 2020 challenge, Princess Diana! I pre-ordered the challenge kit, so I can’t wait to get my hands on these fabrics. For the first time, Cherrywood has white, which is something they’d been trying to get for a long time.

I sure hope this white has the same hand as their other suede-like offerings. I’m using a lot of Cherrywood in my newest art quilt, and I could really use white.

I think Thumper’s hoping my next quilt features him instead of Bobbin. It does (don’t tell him).