The Circle Game

The book I'm painting in is an old music book that I found at a thrift store. It was the perfect size for making into a journal and the price was perfect. I think if I would have gone out and purchased a brand, spanking new journal to paint in, I wouldn't have felt so free and daring to just play and experiment.

I'm finding that my attempt at painting in a looser style has been much more fun than when I painted in the past. I am sitting down and painting and pretty much completing the painting in the same sitting. Whereas before, I would paint a layer, let it dry, repeat, repeat, and repeat. It would take me too long to complete the painting and I was working toward perfect color blending and no flaws.

FORGET THAT!!!! This is much more fun and I have a finished painting in an hour, give or take.

Wishing you a lovely Sunday. Today I'll be putting my annuals (flowers) out into my flowers beds and pots. Can't wait!

Sashing

This is a bad picture, but all I could get at the moment. Here is where I am with the Green/Purple BOM Quilt. All the sashing is sewn on.

Taking this photo was difficult as I was standing on the bed and holding the camera all the way up to the ceiling. I wanted to take the photo outside on the deck, but it was too windy. Borders are next and I'm not at all sure what I'm doing with those yet. We shall see.

Hope you are all having a wonderful holiday weekend. Happy Memorial Day!

More Painting

I am on a roll with face painting, I tell you. I shouldn't stay away from it for too long at a time because then I go into overload mode I guess. And here I was hoping for one face a week a few days ago. Silly me!

Anyway, this next photo is the next face in the progression of faces and I really don't like this one. Hey, who said I have to like everything I make. It's okay NOT to like it. It's all about the practice and experience. With this one I started with a different base color and her appearance is just too pink for me. So I won't be using that color again for skin, that is, if I can remember which color it was.

I started with Payne's Gray on this next face. While I'm happy with how this one turned out, I'm not so sure I will start with Payne's Gray again. It's all about the practice and experience...right?! Oh and I'm very happy with how this one's lips turned out.

I have been sewing the last few days too, honestly, I have. I am making more blocks to go with one of my BOM quilts. This quilt is one of the versions I made with the blocks from Three Creative Studios Block of the Month project. Here are some of my blocks that I had made a while back.

I had made the original 9 blocks from the block of the month project, then I made the 3 bonus blocks and ended up with 12 blocks (these are 12" blocks). I threw them all up on my design wall a few days ago and decided I'd like this quilt to be larger. So I used my Electric Quilt program and recolored eight of the blocks from the project. I finished the last of the eight additional blocks last evening. At this point all the blocks are too much to fit on my design wall and I can't place them up there and get a good photo. I also have decided to add a dark purple sashing so that is what I'm now working on. I hope to have a photo to share of my progress soon.

Feeling Blue

.....or perhaps a little green and yellow.  Noooooo, not me! I'm not blue.  Or green.  Or yellow.  But my new journal painting is.

I am happy I got another face painted in my journal. I hate this one and I love this one. I was so unhappy with how she was turning out using a more traditional skin tone, so I decided to let loose and just give her some funky color. I am loving how that part turned out. I hate her lips. I really have to work on the lips. Not on this one anymore....but hopefully over time.

More on the Background

I received a couple of questions on the three cats quilt in the last post. I thought I'd answer those here. One question was if I am going to paint the kitties. Nope! These are going to be done like some of my recent quilts with my mosaic collage technique (tutorial in the works as I write this).

Another question was what exactly I did to create that background. The fabric you see is many different creamy/neutral fabrics cut into small mosaic pieces. Again, the tutorial will explain my methods. The tutorial will be available by mid June, if all goes well, perhaps even sooner. Here's a close up of the background.

I shared the many pieces of fabric I cut for this background a couple of posts ago. Remember the cookie sheet photo??? Well after creating the background I did have some fabric pieces left over and I put them all in a zip-lock bag. This bag is 8" x 8" and I could still fit more in there, so it's not overly full. I'll save these for another project.

I have been a very bad sketcher lately. I have fallen very behind in drawing my Creative Cues. Before today I was six words behind. Now I'm only four words behind because I sketched a couple of the words this morning.

Creative Cue #16: Full

This sketch shows a beverage that is mostly full, and a peeking kitty who is full of curiosity.

Creative Cue #17: Pocket

This sketch shows a pocket full of sunshine.

And finally, I completed this quilt a couple of days ago and finally got a good day for photographing it. I finished the edges with a brown fabric binding. I thought of black at first, my usual favorite, but I thought I'd go with brown instead as I thought it fit this color scheme quite well.

Spring Tulips, 20.5" x 20.5"

Available in my Etsy shop

Background

I've been working on this quilt and now have the background down. Progressing right along.

I'm still contemplating a border on the blue/green Indian Orange Peel quilt.

And I'm also trying to figure out how I want to arrange/finish/lay out my Block of the Month blocks that I created through the Three Creative Studios Block of the Month Project. I used fabrics from my stash to create 12 blocks and I was able to complete all 12 blocks with the original fabrics I chose. But I did scrounge by the last block. Now I will have to add new fabrics to the quilt for borders/sashing and so on. Not sure what I want to do for borders and sashing either. Oh the decisions.

I hope you are having fun with your projects. I am, even with all the decisions.

Baking a New Project

I am in the process of starting a new art quilt so today I was preparing some of the fabrics. Looks like I was baking huh? I found a cookie sheet to be perfect for holding my fabric pieces.

And here is the new design up on my design wall. I created this drawing in my sketchbook and then blew it up in a "new to me" online program that is so cool. A fellow SAQA artist mentioned this website to me as a way to enlarge designs. You basically upload your image, and then tell the program how many sheets of 8.5" x 11" paper you want to fill and it produces a pdf file for you to print out. Before I had been creating these in Photoshop and I had to sit there and print each section and it took a lot of my time. You can find this web site here: Block Posters. This works great for me because I don't take my designs to a copy store to enlarge and I don't have a projector.

I'm a little nervous about creating the cat quilt because it is a bit larger than the sizes I'm used to working with. So we'll see how it goes. Wish me luck!

I haven't done any painting for a time and was getting the itch to do some again. So here is a face I painted in an altered book. I'd love to say I would like to try and paint a face each week in my book, but oh the pressure. So I won't say it out loud, okay?

Hope you are having a beautiful weekend!

Tulips

This is what I'm currently working on. I've been very inspired by the tulips that are growing in my garden and despite them having five inches of snow dumped on them earlier, they are just gorgeous this year. Well, they were more gorgeous yesterday than today. Just this morning I found several had been chewed off and eaten. Stupid Deer! I had been really good about keeping my tulips sprayed so the deer would leave them alone, but I got a little lax and hadn't been keeping up with it. My fault, I know!

Anyway, back to the quilt. I'm almost done with it, just a few more things I need to do.

Mandala

There was some interest in this piece which was making an appearance in the photo that I shared a couple posts ago. I have this hanging on the wall in my studio.

I made this mandala a couple years or so ago. I created it with fabric-backed paper, which I teach how to make in my book Creative Paper Quilts. I bonded the fabric-backed paper to a stiff interfacing, such as Peltex or Timtex. I trimmed the piece to the size I wanted and then started drawing my mandala on it. I imagine I found something round to create the circular shapes to start the mandala, but honestly, I don't remember.  The mandala is colored in with black Sharpie marker.  I finished the piece by fusing a backing fabric on and then zigzag stitching the edges.

Fiberactions Group

Converging Layers

20" x 16"

Today is reveal day over on the Fiberactions Group blog. We are revealing quilts that were made with the theme of convergence. You can read more about my quilt there. Have a great weekend!

Caution: Curves Ahead

So here is my progress on the Indian Orange Peel quilt. I've finished sewing all the blocks and the 25 blocks are stitched together. Whew! I was beginning to wonder if I'd make it this far. This isn't a quilt that you can speed through, for sure! For any of you who love working in a slow, precise, methodical fashion, this is the quilt pattern for you.

Now I need to decide what I'm going to do for the borders. The pattern does come with a border pattern, but I'm not going to use it. I suppose I could leave it as is, with no borders. Hmmm, I will have to think on it. By the way, if any of you are wondering, this pattern is by Karen Stone and is called Indian Orange Peel.

A Collaboration Gift

Do you know Vicki? I think just about everybody knows Vicki by now. She's hard to miss! She has a fabulous blog, great personality, and she's retiring in just a few short days.

Well Sue and I wanted to give her something special so we decided to collaborate and make a quilt. We each made six blocks for the quilt and I pieced all our blocks together and attached the borders. I shipped the quilt to Sue and she took it over to Kathy's house who then proceeded to do a smashing job of quilting it. Then Sue completed the binding.

According to Sue, the finished quilt measured about 50" x 70". The 12 inner blocks are 12" square. Vicki got her quilt in today's mail and is so happy with it, which makes me happy too. Happy Retirement Vicki!

Block of the Month

In a few days another winner will receive a prize for sharing a photo of Block of the Month #8. The deadline to get entered into the drawing is midnight on May 15. The winner will be announced the following day. Here's the prize one lucky quilter will receive:

Prize package includes: Sew Liberated, 20 stylish projects for the modern sewist by Meg McElwee; Jan/Feb 2010 issue of Cloth Paper Scissors; May/Jun/Jul 2010 issue of Where Women Create; Tea Time Quilt pattern by Nancy Johnson-Srebro; Sidewinder portable bobbin winder; set of 10 quilt notecards; Dritz needle pullers; Dritz folding seam ripper; Crystal glass head pins, assorted threads and a hand dyed fabric pack by Vicki Welsh.

You can find all the pertinent information on the Block of the Month here:

Three Creative Studios Block of the Month project

Winter in May

I awoke this morning to a white winter wonderland.....IN MAY! Now I know that there is history of getting snow in May before.....but sheesh! We've already had many days of 60 and 70 degree weather, we've mowed the lawn already, and many plants and trees and bushes are in the process of coming back to life after a long winter. Oh well, I can't change it. But just look at my brave tulips!

So here is what has been keeping me busy the past few days. I have been busily stitching these paper-pieced arcs for the blue/green Indian Orange Peel quilt. And guess what??? I think I'm done with the arcs. Oh baby!!

Next I need to trim them to size and remove the paper backing.

I received an email this week from someone asking me if I have ever shared my technique for the mosaic collage quilting. I have created several quilts with this method recently, including two stacked coffee cup quilts and a face quilt. I've had others ask me about the technique as well. Well I replied to the woman who emailed me, but I have no idea if she received my response as I had a mail delivery failure returned back to me. But I just wanted to say that I do intend to write up a tutorial on the technique. I hope to get to that within the next month or so, so if it is something that interests you, stay tuned.

Say CHEESE!!!

Have you seen the Say Cheese blog? A group of quilters are creating portrait quilts using many methods. It's been very fun following their progress. Check them out here: http://saycheesebumblebeans.blogspot.com/

More about the Neocolor II Crayons

Many of you asked questions in the comments section of the Back to the Bluebird post. I thought I'd answer those here in case anyone else was interested in the answers.

Karen asked if I am painting directly on the fabric. My method when using the water-soluble crayons is to color with the crayon directly on the fabric. I'm basically coloring like a kid in a coloring book. I then use a paintbrush to wet the fabric and "melt" the color. I dip my paintbrush into textile medium, which I usually add some water to. I'm not exactly sure why I started adding water to it, but think it was for a runnier consistency.

Deanna asked how I achieve the hard edge when applying water to the crayon. As I described above, I am controlling the amount of wetness applied because I'm using a paintbrush. There are other ways to add water/wetness to the crayons, but this is the method I use because of the control I have.

Sometimes I want to add more color after the first initial layer is down. I have different ways I go about doing that. I will sometimes color with the crayon right on the fabric where I want more color and then add more textile medium with the paintbrush. I sometimes will dip my paintbrush into the textile medium and then rub the paintbrush on the tip of the crayon to pick up some color. Or sometimes I scribble some crayon color onto a piece of parchment paper and then pick up color from that with my wet paintbrush. So there are several ways to go about it and I found that as I got more familiar with the product I was able to easily recognize which method would work best for where I'm working on the quilt or the effect I was after.

I hope this helps you understand more about my Neocolor II painting process. Thanks to everyone who commented and asked questions.

And here are photos of the finished bluebird quilt.  I took these while it is being blocked on my design wall.  The finished quilt measures 34" x 42".

Lava Flowers

This is my result for the color palette that Kristin chose for our Twelve by Twelve challenge this round. The color palette was red, orange, black, chartreuse, and two shades of gray. I found this palette to be a challenge and I thought about what to create for almost the entire two-month period. Last week I decided on a scene from my own little fantasy world. See more on my quilt and eleven other quilts made with this color palette over on the Twelve by Twelve blog.