Till the Storm Passes By

 Storm started out easy. The word was given some time back as a 12X12 challenge at the EtCetera group I belong to. I had a lot of ideas to start out but I finally decided I wanted to do a stormy looking landscape, but it took a while for me to get started. I’m not sure why but it did.

Then I started.

Select fabrics from my stash.

Cut and fuse pieces to indicate stormy sky, hills, watery grassy foreground.

I stitched down all the pieces of fabric with my sewing machine.

Then it stalled.

I always like to hand stitch marks on my work; however, I was afraid to start hand stitching for fear of messing it up. Which really was too bad because I knew I could cover up any messes with more fabric.

Finally, I took a deep breath and started. 

I knew I wanted to add some birds to the scene on the bottom portion. I didn’t feel confident in stitching birds there by hand and I really didn’t want them to stand out from the piece.

And so I stalled again.

Then the light bulb came: what if I painted the birds on with black paint and then just highlighted them with a few stitches?

 I found a bird shape I liked, took it into photoshop and made an outline, resized it, copied it twice so I had 3 birds. Resized one so it was smaller and flipped another one so that it faced the other 2 birds. After printing it out and checking the size in relation to the full piece I was satisfied. I used an X-acto knife to cut and make a stencil of the birds. I was nervous about stenciling right onto the quilt. I used a scrap of the fabric to test the stencil. Then after using acrylic black paint to paint the birds, I placed a piece of felt on the back so I could test stitching some highlights on the birds.

Once I was done I held the scrap piece on the quilt. I liked the way it looked with the felt backing and how that popped out. I still wanted to do some hand stitching on the main piece.

Stalled again.

Finally, I picked up needle and thread, took a deep breath and started.

The stitching is done, the binding applied, and the bird piece glued on. But was it finished?

The binding had been pieced below the hills with fabric that matched the bottom third of the quilt. I was bothered by the light marks on the right-hand lower side. A little dark paint covered up the lower two light spots and now I’m satisfied.

Another one checked off my FoF (Focus on Five) list!

Happy needle pulling thread!

Rose

Color Escapes Black and White

 

Escape is now finished and off my FoF (Focus On Five) list. That’s the word prompt given by one of my art quilt groups. The size was to be 12X14 inches. I had another small quilt I made for another group’s challenge and I thought I could use it for this challenge, but it was larger. So back to the drawing board. I’d been playing with an idea for yo-yo’s and decided to develop it for Escape.

After The Rain a bias tape challenge

In the process of making this quilt without much forethought or planning I ran into a few rough spots. The rough spots have informed me and made me think of and realize better ways to work when I start a larger similar quilt and another improv quilt inspired by this small one. I’m not sure when they will be started (they have to wait for their turn on my FoF list). But I will be making some notes now, so I don’t forget when I do start them.

Escape 

Sewing through all the tightly stacked black and white yoyos plus the background fabric, batting, and backing fabric was a little difficult. I changed to a different needle and increased the stitch length, but it still was hard. I had originally tried to stitch them down by hand but quickly converted to machine sewing. Next time I think I will try and make the yoyo’s into fabric by themselves without the background fabric and batting.

After the first few yoyos I realized that I really wanted them to be as flat as possible but not as flat as I would get from a plain circle of fabric. Normally when I want a flat yoyo I will get it wet and then squeeze as much water out as possible and flatten it with my hand and then let it dry. This time I had so many to do that I decided to lay them on my ironing surface and then lay a wet pressing cloth over them. After that I could use my iron to flatten them. That worked great. Problem though was I had forgotten that some of the circles had been marked along the cutting/stitching line with a blue washout pen. Since I didn’t wet them and squeeze out the water then let them dry the blue marking became permanent and it you look close at some of the yoyos you can see the faint blue marks. I rarely mark the stitching line now as I’ve made so many of them my hand is trained to turn under the ¼ inch without needing a line. But I still have some older yoyos made when I used the marking, so I need to keep that in mind before using the iron to flatten them.

I was delighted when I found some fabric in my stash that was designed in such a way that I could cut out some circles for my yoyos that would give me ones that were half colorful and half black and white. These would work for the ones just beginning to escape.

My next challenge was encasing the black and white yoyos while letting the color ones go free. I wanted to do a facing finish on the color/white section and a black and white binding on the black/white side. I added the binding to the right edge and then wondered how I could do a combination facing and binding on the rest. My solution was to face the rest of the piece including where the black and white yoyos were at the top and bottom. I then did a faux binding over the black and white portion.

Back of Escape

Still working on the official title for this piece. It will be along the lines of thoughts escaping a black and white world.

Keep stitching and adding color to our world!

Rose

 

 

Starting VS Finishing

 

I’m pretty good about getting ideas and starting them. However, I’m not so good about finishing them. I’ve tried various methods to try and overcome this, but I just tend to chase squirrels and go down rabbit holes.

Three of the art quilting groups I belong to issue challenges and I always plan to participate. I get my idea for the challenge and get started. Then for one reason or another I’m starting another one before any get finished.

A few months ago, I decided enough. ENOUGH. Focus. Focus on Finishing.

I selected five quilts to focus on. I could not add to the list of five until one was finished. I keep it at five at a time. I select one on the list to be my main focus until it is finished. The other four are for backup in case the main focus needs to simmer for awhile or I need to get some supply to finish it. I have backups I can work on in the meantime. This is my Focus on Five (FoF) method.

 

Most of my WIPs/UFOs are small; a few are medium (over 36”) and a few are large (50+”). I have one large, one medium, and three small ones on the list.

I will allow myself one plus if there is an upcoming deadline for something not on the list that I really want to do. This is FoF+.

This process is going to take some time.

Recently in one of my groups there was a contest to see who has the most unfinished projects. I had 36 that have been started; some more in the designing/planning stages, and a few more “want to dos”. Yesterday I remembered one more started but not finished project so now I’m up to 37. And there may be a few more in hiding!

So how am I doing with my FoF? Well one has ben completed and replaced. One will be completed today. And I haven’t started any new projects at all!

So it’s working thus far!

 

My list of five:

Escape

Storm

Winter

Clown

Red

 

Red is finished!

 Nine Patches, Five Threads, in Red

Happy stitching!

 

Rose

She Colored Everything Yellow

I really want to get back into blogging on a regular basis. I do enjoy it. I thought I had submitted something on this quilt but I guess not so here goes!

She Colored Everything Yellow Art Quilt

This is the first finished entry in my “She  colored everything yellow” series based on a memory from the past. This art quilt was started in a workshop given by Deborah Boschert in 2016 and finished in 2017.

As an adult I realized that I had a serious problem with the way other people reacted to me. Everything, from not taking me serious, to making fun of what I was saying or of my ideas, to criticizing me or my work. At times it could cause me to start crying my eyes out (in private of course). I have always been a very shy, quiet, and even at times timid person. Sometime in my late fifties I decided enough. I prayed and asked the Lord to show me why I was so sensitive to the words of others. Then a memory surfaced from my childhood. One that I had not remembered or acknowledged since the day it happened.

I was in first grade. The class was a combination class of first and second graders. The teacher wanted to work with the second graders so she instructed the first graders to color a page in our workbooks. I raised my hand and the teacher told me to be quiet and do as I was told. So I did.

As she was teaching she walked around the room, when she came to my desk she took my workbook and held it up to the class. “Look what Rose did” she exclaimed to the class. “She colored everything yellow.” The entire class – first and second graders started laughing. I was embarrassed and ashamed.

What I had tried to tell the teacher was that I only had one color crayon, the color yellow.

That was the beginning of a seed sown in my heart that kept on growing and causing me to be super sensitive to words spoken by others about and to me. Sometimes the weeds would be pulled out but the root remained and continued to grow until I allowed Jesus to exposed the root and remove it from my heart.

Now I love the color yellow. It reminds me of what He has done for me and gives me hope, love and courage!

Winging It Creatively

This goes out to all my friends who sometimes (or maybe always) wing it when working on a creative piece. I’m not one of those people who plan everything out in detail before starting. I tend to dive in and go for it. Of course I do have a habit of thinking and thinking and thinking about something before I actually start doing it but once I start anything can happen.

I’ve been working on a couple of small art quilts using my Stitch Meditations. The meditations were started with no thought of how they might be used, they were just quick (well maybe not so quick) stitching using scraps of fabric and threads. As they progressed though they started presenting themselves as something more and I just had to go with it. Even to the point of not doing stitch meditations on a daily basis. I will get back to that though because I really enjoy it and they seem to spark more ideas.

So I just started seeing how I could put some of these little pieces together. For one I knew I wanted a “white-whitish” background using strips of different white and white-on-white fabrics in varying widths. I wanted to quilt the background using straight – well sort of straight – lines. I originally thought I would do lines very close together but when I just did lines ¼ to ½ inches apart I decided that was the look I had in mind. See less is more as one of my art teachers always told me. I had a tendency to throw everything but the “kitchen sink” into my work. So she always encouraged me to remove something. Nowadays I’m trying to use that principle more and more.

Okay the background is done, now to attach the stitch meditations. Once I had arranged them the way I wanted I noticed the ones in the four corners had a little curve to them and if I arranged them just right it gave a hint of a circle to the piece.

After looking at it on my design wall for some time I thought I wanted to add some stitching on the background to add to the circle effect. After talking with some friends and getting their opinions (some saw what I was getting at, others had other ideas I could try) I went with my original idea and finally dove in and started stitching.

I wasn’t too pleased with the way it was looking but since I had put in the beginning stitches I had to commit to them (I was afraid if I pulled them out I would have big pukas (holes in Hawaiian) that would be difficult to hide. The thread I was using was DMC Pearl cotton size 8 and the needle was fairly thick.

After I started and did the bottom section and part of one side I put it up on the design wall. I liked it but the stitching was a little wonkier than I wanted. I wanted a very organic circle not a perfect circle.

Light bulb moment: I really should have put it up on the wall and then determined where my stitching would be placed. It would have been easier to see where the line should be rather than looking at it flat on the table. I could have used a string or tracing paper to get it placed better. With the tracing paper I penciled in the lines on the paper and then made a few marks for guides and then cut out the tracing paper.

Now it was time to mark the background. Remember the background is white. I did not want my markings to show. I did not want to use an erasure or water to remove the marks. Then I remembered my Hera tool. That will make a small crease in the fabric that will stay there until I have finished stitching. Perfect.

I’m done stitching and I’m not sure it had the effect I was hoping for but it’s done.

Next time I think I would test it out on a small sample first. And of course I have the tips for marking now that I can use at the beginning of the project rather than in the middle!

I’m thinking I may like it better if I added another circle inside the circle and another one inside that. But for now it’s done.

I can always come back and add more circles if I want to because:

Less is more but sometimes, just sometimes, more is better!

Enjoy stitching!

Rose

Here We Go Again!

It’s Tuesday and I meant to post this last night as one of my tips and tricks posts but I didn’t get it done (actually this was written one week ago). The tip is at the end of this post. Okay now for a little update on my UFO’s, Www.allpeoplequilt.com UFO Challenge for 2016.

March UFO Crazy Quilt

March’s number didn’t even get touched. Why? Because I was busy, busy, busy making things to go in the quilt show that my local guild holds every year. I thought I would do a little bit on that project but it didn’t happen. April came along and the number pulled was a good one – number 1 the small aloha quilt. 

April UFO Small Island Quilt

I can handle that. Not. I’m still working on it and here it is well into May. 

May UFO Birds In Flight Crazy Block

May’s number is 7 the Birds In Flight Crazy Block. Now really I should be able to get both of those done this month.

For my tip I was working on this small mini quilt to go in the silent auction held during the previous mentioned quilt show. 

View From My Window Auction Quilt

The small flowers were re-embroidered by me by hand but the fabric was not a quilt quality fabric and I was not happy with the results once I had pieced the blocks together. They were not the right size, and they were not consistent in size. So I did something I rarely do, I took it all apart and started again. Since the flower fabric was a fairly loose weave I decided to stabilize it by adding a muslin backing. I thought the best way to do that would be to use a spray on quilt basting glue. I really didn’t want to do that in the house but I didn’t want to set up a large table outside either. Then I spied this:

TV Tray

Now I know some have covered these and made them into a small portable ironing surface and/or cutting mat. My thought was to cover it with freezer paper (shiny side out) and use that as my glueing table. Worked perfectly and now I have something I can use outdoors when I’m using a spray or a glue that needs a lot of ventilation. I can also use it when I have just a little painting to do. When the freezer paper gets too bad just replace it with a fresh sheet.

Freezer Paper Covered TV Tray

How simple is that!

Oh and the quilt show? My rag dolls “The Slow Stitchers” took second place in their category Textile/Fabric Items.

The Slow Stitchers Rag Dolls

Happy creating!

Rose 

What’s On My Wall WOMY

I mentioned my design wall last post so I thought I’d share what’s been up there lately besides the redwork quilt. It gets changed frequently depending on my mood and what I’m doing. I love having a design wall. I really don’t know how I managed without one for so long.

Towards the end of last year I decided it was time for me to try my hand at something I’ve always wanted to do. Art Quilting. I’ve bought the magazines and books, followed art quilters online and heard a view live programs. I dabbled a little over the years starting with this piece created to celebrate my hometown’s 100^th birthday.

Then I made a small island scene and a dancer.

All three were wall hangings. I started another island scene. It’s on my UFO list.

Then this month I attended a program by art quilter Deborah Boschert at my guild meeting. The next day I attended her workshop. So from that start these are now on my wall as I consider what stitching I want to do on them.

The first one Winter Sunrise was inspired by photos shown on Facebook by a resident of Mobridge, S.D. I did that one in class. The next day I started putting together one for my series called “Look what Rose did – she colored everything yellow”.

What’s on your wall? Or table. Or floor.

Happy creating!

Rose