Fabric Postcard

                                                  I made my first fabric postcard using Timtex.

It's a fun way to use up scraps and just play. As long as it is 4 x 6 inches and addressed correctly on the stamped side, it will go through the mail. There's lots of you tube videos and tutorials online to guide you.

PIQF 2021 Part 2 - Some of My Favorites

 Here are a few of my favorite quilts from PIQF 2021. 

Great textures and colors.

Closeup

Great color palette in the one above. 

 I'm a big fan of complementary color schemes.

Love the colors and textures in this one.

Check out how the artist used lace to add texture to the waves!

Love the negative/positive balance in this one and the watercolor effect.

This is called Missouri Barn by Le Ann Hileman.  She did a great job of 

choosing slices of fabric to show the colors and textures of aged barn wood.

Wonderful clouds too.

I liked these little compositions put together to create a larger one.

I apologize for not being able to credit all the artists who made these.

Pacific International Quilt Show

 My friend Joyce and I went to PIQF last weekend. Usually this show is very well attended, wall to wall people.  Instead of fighting crowds of avid quilters looking for  just the right fat quarter of fabric, there were hardly any people there.  It made it very easy to take photos of the beautiful quilts that are always in attendance there.

Our Cutting Edge Quilt Group had a special exhibit entitled "Personal Journey with Racism". Each member created a quilt to express their individual experience with encountering racism. Below are some pictures from that exhibit.

On the left is Gay's quilt called Boxes and Kathy's called "Strange Fruit", based on the song

 sung by Nina Simone and others about black bodies hanging from trees in the south.

Mine is on the left, entitled, "I'm Just Trying to Fit In" about racial integration in schools in the 70's. On the right is Jeanne S.'s showing the ratio of Blacks to Whites

 in places she has lived and hopes for the future.

On the left is Paula's Quilt about her growing up in racially mixed Detroit and on the Right is Andi's about Redlining, which is a racial discriminatory practice in which lenders systematically

 denied loans to people of color.

On the left is Sara's, which is a very moving piece regarding the discovery in old family wills,  that her ancestors owned slaves for generations.  

On the right is another one of Jeanne S.'s about Asian Hate.

More Sun Printing

 My good friend Phyllis sun printed over

 a blue and grey lovely printed top which had silver and gold

cranes images. You can see a little bit of one of the crane images

 poking through on the right top corner on the photo below.

She printed with some of her maiden fern leaves which created a lovely design.

You can see it on the left side of the neck opening in the photo above and

in the photos below.

Sun Printing in the Studio Barn

 Been having fun creating sun prints in the studio barn with my friend Phyllis. 

 It's been very hot in Paso Robles lately, which is perfect for making sun prints on fabric.

 I'll post again soon to show how the fabrics turned out.

New Quilt Finished

 Just finished a new quilt that I started years ago in a Rosemary Eichorn Class offered by my Almond Country Quilt Guild. The class was on fabric collage and using a multitude of ways to alter your fabric. I'm talking melting it, painting it, tearing it, gluing it, you name it!

It's hard to tell in the photo that the clouds are slightly three dimensional, as are the silk roses appliquéd to the painted gold felt.  We used a heat gun to distress the acrylic felt and the painted it.

Ice Dye Fun in the Studio Barn with Friends

 Recently I had some friends from my  Cutting Edge Group come over to do some parfait ice dyeing, which is a process where you stack one piece of fabric over another adding dye and ice to each one and squish them into a container. As the ice melts the fabric get bits of dye from the pieces above and below them. 

Above is my  table with lots of tools and materials and a sample piece.

Here is a shirt I made for hubby.

My friend Kate gave me a lovely piece of silk to dye.

Above is a piece I folded and clamped prior to dyeing.

The piece above was just gently scrunched up and dyed.

Teaching a New Class on Painting Fabric At Cambria Center for the Arts

 

More Adventures with Ice Parfait Dyeing

 A couple days ago I did more experimenting with ice dyeing. Most ice dyeing instructions tell you to soak the fabric in soda ash solution for 15 to 30 minutes. That's fine if you are doing it yourself, but if you are doing an ice dye class or party, it makes it difficult for everyone to find their piece of fabric in the bucket, if there are 10 more in there. So I introduced the soda ash after sprinkling the dye powder on it.  

I used two kinds of fabric, a bright, white Kona cloth and a light weight, linen-like, mystery fabric that I found in a drawer.

Below are pictures of each, with the Kona cloth one on top.

As you can see the two fabrics took the dye completely different.

 Wish I knew what the mystery fabric was, 

but alas, I don't. 

You need all kinds of fabric, so I'm keeping both, but I like the Kona cloth one more.

Revisiting a Portrait Project

 In our Cutting Edge Fiber Art Group we set up a Portrait Challenge. For my project, I chose to revisit a portrait of St. Joan of Arc, which I started some years ago in a class taught by Rosemary Eichorn. It's been at least ten years ago that I took the class, if not fifteen. It was a fabulous class where she stressed the importance of playing while creating. She called it PLORK, which is a combination of Play and Work. Play being abstract without a goal and work being more goal oriented, serious and honorable. We used a wide variety of materials. We painted fabric, felt, stabilizers, etc. We heated and melted materials to create more interesting fabrics for our collage.

Below are two photos of my work in progress. The first one was taken at the end of the day of the workshop. The second one was taken a couple of days ago as I continue to make some changes here and there, with more to come.

I plan to add some clouds at the bottom of the arch, and under her feet. The image is from a painting by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, painted in 1854 titled "Jeanne d'Arc at the Coronation  of Charles VII." It's very baroque looking and one can never have too much gold

 and other ornamentation in this style, can they?

Painting on Fabric Using Shibori and More

 Painting Party  in the Studio

My quilt circle met in person (WOW) in my studio/barn to create some fun fabrics using fabric paints and a variety of techniques as you can see in the examples above.

My new rose bush produced this beauty last week.

 I love all the variety of values contained on this one flower!

New Art Quilt Top

                                                         Just finished a new art quilt top. 

I had a lot of fun making this one. I did not have a plan and just 'winged it' as I went along. I loved working with the complementary color scheme and using improv cutting techniques.

Fun With Improv Quilting Techniques

                                             Here's a photo of what's on my design wall now. I've been having great fun using modern improv techniques to slice and dice commercial fabrics as well as my own printed and painted fabrics to design this latest quilt. Have tried  a wonky log cabin block, a checkerboard and one of my very favorite techniques, the skinny inserted line technique.

Adding More Pattern to Painted Fabrics

                       I decided to add more pattern to the painted fabrics I made last week. These fabrics are to use in the modern improv quilt that I have started, so I carefully mixed colors that will complement the ones already in the quilt. 

I used a stencil for the one above. It's actually a piece of plastic

 used for catching leaves in your roof gutter.

On the one above I used a stamp.

On the one above I used a roller stamp with squiggly lines.

On the one above, I placed a rubber silicone hot pad under the fabric

and rolled ink on top using a spongy roller.

Painted and Printed Fabric Fun

 Had a great time in my studio barn this weekend creating more fabrics to use in my latest art quilt. I needed some more  turquoise and orange fabrics. So I decided to create some.

                                                 

                                              Here is my work station where I was mixing just the right colors.

                                        

                                                 Here are all the pieces with paint applied and drying.

This piece was painted and then scrunched up.

This piece was done use Arashi Shibori technique.

This  piece was accordion folded.

The one  above and below were painted and then scrunched up

and some rock salt was added.

The one above was done using arashi shibori technique

with a twist.

 

On the Design Wall Now

 It's been awhile since I last posted on my blog. After finishing the crocheted fabric purse, I just wasn't feeling very motivated and in a funk due to all the negative stuff going on in our country. And, why bother making quilts that I can't show anywhere. Why bother dying more fabric, when I am running out of room storing the fabric I've already created? 

But then the urge to create struck again and here's what's up on my design wall now.