Leaves 101 Tutorial

Hoop up some woven water soluble stabilizer, lower the feed dogs, put your darning/hopping/embroidery foot on for free motion embroidering, choose your thread color and let's make leaves!

This shows Steps 1-4. Below is a close up of Step 1. You start by making a nice sturdy stem, sew out the leaf shape of your choice, and run a vein from stem to tip top.

Step 2: Start sewing from tip top in 'tear drop' loops, from larger, smaller, smallest.
See 2 below.

Step 3. Start at stem or tip top and 'snake' back and forth down the length of the leaf.
           You now have a good strong base to sew your leaf so the threads will all hang       
together when you wash away the stabilizer.

Step 4. Final step is to 'fill in' your leaf. I usually start at the bottom, at an angle, and work my way to the tip top, going right on down the other side. I love variegated thread, it does most of the work for you! But I do make solid color leaves at times, and when I do, I will choose a darker contrasting thread to ziggy zag the outside of the leaf and the stem and run up and down the center vein a couple times.
Once the leaves are completed I rinse out most, but not all, of the stabilizer in warm water. By leaving a smidgeon of the stabilizer in the leaf, it acts like a bendable stiffener when the leaf is dry, making it somewhat poseable.

Have fun with your leaves!

Program Prepping

I am scheduled to 'be the program' for the quilt guild I attend each month. I am to tell a little about what an art quilt is, how I got into fiber art, and show-and-tell scads of my work. What's not to have fun with?
So, I have a growing pile of notes and books and online research, but today I finalized a sample sheet to show why I am a fiber artist; no rules, try anything once, endless variety and do I have to say it? FUN!

From top left, clockwise...

1. I colored the flower cartoon, then tried ironing it onto fabric. Not good...
2. Then I colored directly onto fabric and ironed. Oh, yes!
3. Next I used fabric markers. They were okay.
4. Then I tried crayon onto light heat n bond stuff. Hmmm... further research needed.
5. Satin stitched individual cloth petals then joined them into a lily. Not overly impressed.
6. Free motion embroidered on a sparkly nylon fabric. Kinda cool!

Butterfly Blue-quilted

I am fairly sure a new addiction has been born...

Quilted Butterfly

11" wingspan

Technically, this butterfly is a quilt...three layers, fabric/batting/fabric. Free motion embroidered colors on top of a cheery yellow commercial fabric. I stitched pipe cleaners to the underside of the wings, so this butterfly is pose-able! I attached it to the top of one of my wild flower quilts. The quilt was already 'over the top' so why not send it soaring! :?}

More WILD Flowers...

Joy I

I guess you might say...these are exactly the same, only different. :?}

 

 

Joy II

WILD flower quiltlets are like rabbits...

Good Afternoon!

Fall II

Fall I

Mini-WILD Flowers

I had several people interested in the large WILD Flowers, but one of them preferred, 'just a taste' rather than the entire buffet...so, I made a mini-WILD Flower. There will be several more minis, as I have had so much fun making the flowers I have a miniature Mount Rainier pile of them ready to use!

Hand dyed background. Free motion embroidery leaves. Hand wrapped, machine 'quilted' flowers and grass. 11"x14" artist canvas mounted, ready to hang.

Poinsettia 'leaf' Applique'

Tree Skirt with poinsettias appliqued.

Here is another 'leaf' you may play with. I used the same basic method covered in my Leaves 101 tutorial ( http://quilts-artfromtheheart.blogspot.com/2012/05/leaves-101-tutorial.html ) and similar to my 'daisy flowers'. http://quilts-artfromtheheart.blogspot.com/2011/07/how-to-build-flower-101.html
Because you are using the rinse away backing to sew on, you must link the center's yellow portions a little, but the method is great-it allows air space around each one, just like the real plant. This one is rather large as it will be one among many in a larger piece of work, but you could 'whip up' miniatures in no time to mount on pin backs. The Holiday bazaars are coming soon! Get to it! :?}

Last Vestige

 

 This was started during my very fun, creative, restive Art Camp week. Just finished it yesterday. I had to be in the proper mood to make design decisions...I loved creating the quilting; free motion/no pattern/leafy leafy. The gold background is one of my hand dyes, the tree is of commercial fabric. The leaves are the ones I tutorialed on this blog. I cropped the photo too closely to show, but there is traditional French binding around the perimeter, except in the root area of the tree. I left that 'raw'.

WILD Flowers 101

WILD Flowers tutorial-another free motion embroidery play!

Pick your palette. Light, medium, dark works well. Any kind of thread. Variegated is fun to use on the 'bubble quilting'!

Choose your shape(s). Sturdy cardboard (cereal boxes, cardboard that comes in stacks of scrap booking paper, packaging-my rectangle shape below came from the box my surge protector came in) or strong paper plates. I cut one paper plate circle, then re-sized and stitched it back together to get the egg shape. Flatten the ends for easier wrapping! Circles are difficult to wrap-the thread wants to slip and slide. Place double sided tape around the perimeter to help tame it. Don't try for precision wrapping on circles, unless you want the huge hump of crossed threads in the center of your flower. Slightly sloppy disperses the threads and is easier to 'nail down' in the 'quilting' stage. Squares and rectangles are the easiest shapes to wrap, so they are a good shape to start with for practice.
The larger the window, the larger the finished shape. The wider the border, the wider the finished fringe. (you can always trim it down shorter when finished)

First wrap, North to South. I usually choose the darkest thread.

Second wrap, East to West, same dark thread.

Repeat the wrapping process with the second color, North-South, East-West. (I usually choose the lightest shade) The more you wrap, the thicker the fringe and shape. Wrap to taste, or as long as your patience holds! :?}

*Be sure and set your machine up for free motion embroidery. Feed dogs down, less tension, less pressure foot, hopping/embroidery foot.

Begin by sewing a straight stitch around the window's perimeter to initially secure the threads. I have now changed to the third thread, 'star of the show'. If you struggle with threads tangling in the hopper foot, just place a piece of clear 'Solvy' on top of the thread to keep your foot free to move and not tangle up.

Begin the decorative stitching in the window. I like to use 'bubbles', but there are no rules, just the need to 'link' all the threads together to make 'whole cloth' when released from the cardboard frame.

Bubbles completed.

Time to snip all the threads free from the frame, releasing the fringe.

Fringe released, piece complete. Begin again-it's addictive!

WILD Flowers-work in progress. I am creating the stems by wrapping various fabrics around cotton rope. I free motion embroidered the leaves in all kinds of colors and variegated threads. I am auditioning borders. PLAY! IMPORTANT UPDATE
Choose your background colors and size, piece, quilt and bind it, THEN place your flowers, stems and leaves onto it. So much easier than trying to work around all that fluffy stuff, stems and leaves! :?}

Iris completed

La Couleur Pourpre is complete, made its debut at the Chelan Art Show. I have finished some other things as well, but just haven't been home to photograph and download. I will try and do so this coming week.

Morning Glory aka...

Exuberance!

Now that I have used the skill saw to cut a thin piece of plywood to size, put a layer of batting on the front of that plywood, glued and stapled blue, then green, hand-dyed fabric on top of that, then placed the quilt, then applied some more flowers in the border with a grand finale' of a few hand stitched stems, Husband has changed his mind about the 'Elvis velvet painting'.  He now proclaims, "That'll sell!"   :?}

Detail

Falling

 This is a proud moment! I scanned leaves onto fabric about 10 years ago, when I got my first scanner. Didn't know about prepping the fabric so the ink would 'take' and the picture be bright, so it was dull and boring in appearance. It has made move after move, been unearthed, sunk to the bottom of the UFO pool over and over...But I have grown and learned and when I dug it out again a few weeks back I had the tadah moment!  I sliced one fabric sheet into strips and sliced the other to receive the weaving, creating a nice subtle background. I then appliqued the batik leaves on top for vavoom, then stitched that, sandwiched with a thin batting. onto the batik gold and brown fabric. I fringed the edges of the woven fabrics.  A UFO no longer! It's nearly a miracle!

Summer Promises

I began with a photo taken near my home, printed it on photo canvas, thread painted the balsam and fence post. I made a balsam applique to bring the flowers off the canvas onto the background. The background fabrics are my hand dyes layered over a second white fabric, layered over cotton batting, and all stretched over the artist's frame. I am having fun now!!!

Some closeups of this photo/thread play method were requested on another forum, so here you go!
Sold- Private Collection