Phewww!!!

     The thrill, and relief, of getting my Quilt Festival International of Ireland 2012 submissions mailed off. I spent over a week getting them ready. I made two of the hydrangeas, a frog and the blue butterfly for donation to the quilted garden portion of the show. They will be given to charity by the Festival after the show.

Much improved!

Pretty-but wrinkly...

     As far as quilt entries are concerned, those pieces admired by the chair of the festival here on the blog meant taking them apart for shipping ease. Le Couleur Pourpre had to come off the stretched canvas, which was something I really should have done earlier, as it had a few 'bobbles' in the stretching. I gave it batting, backing and then quilted it divinely using shades of thread to match the background shading. I think it helped pop the color! Putting the dark maroon on as binding helped pull the center framing forward. It looks great now!

     I HAD to enter one of my Wild Flowers-it is for the quilted garden section of the show you know! I chose this one. All I had to do was add a hanging sleeve, in case the hangers of the show can't use the wrapped stick.

And the most work, but my pride and joy, was removing Exuberance from its 30# plywood mounting, adding the batting and backing, making more of a quilt out of it. The line between fiber art and quilt art gets murky. Fiber art needs to be 'hang on the wall like a painting' framed out. Quilt art needs to be, well, more 'quilty'.

So, those are off to Ireland. And today I threw my batik quilt 'into the ring' on McCall's design star contest. More on that later...

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! :?}

Batik II

Thanks to the encouragement (and guilt inducing support) of an online UFO finishing group this batik is now a done deal! Yes, the scrambled layout is on purpose-it took me days to arrange! And the free-motion machine quilting (on my 35 year old Viking) includes my favorite 'snail shell' pattern plus lots of uplifting words, such as joy, peace, love, bless. All this in response to the last class instructor's comment, "I love quilts that make my eye travel, search for, and find surprises".

Snow-dyed Results

I am thrilled with the results of my snow dyeing session...I only re-dyed one boring piece. But there is a tremendous mystery in this house. Where is my yellow piece? There should be a bright lemon yellow, nice and scrunchy. I see it in my photo of the bins full of snow and dye. I remember debating whether to run its own little bath to scrub the excess dye out of it, but decided that if the washer were agitating all the pieces with soap and lots of water, it should be okay, the dyes were 'dead', the chemical reactions had all taken place. I have checked and rechecked the washing machine, the drier, the garbage can for Pete's sake!!! I keep lifting the fabric thinking it may have clung to other pieces. I can only surmise that the soft pink piece may have been the yellow, but took on the red? Wouldn't that have made orange? Oh, bright lemon yellow! Where art thou?

Quilter's Snowcones?

My 3 bolts of PFD fabric arrived yesterday afternoon...

 

And it snowed during the night...

So, you KNOW I had to have a 'snow day' and dye!

I will post the results tomorrow afternoon!
I can hardly wait to see what I get...

Want to play in the snow?

If you type in snow dyeing in your search engine you will find a LOT of instructions. Since I buy my dyes from ProChem, I used that result/recipe from my search.

Hydrangea Tutorial

You will need;

batting, both cotton and poly, threads, needles, scissors, sewing machine, marking pen/pencil, cotton cording, light or medium weight wire, seed beads and water soluble stabilizer and embroidery hoop.

I started with my hand-dyed fabric.

I drew the circle size  I wanted on the top layer of 4 layers. I used the bottom of a full cone of serger thread as my 'template'.

Cut them out. Repeat with batting.

OR

Draw your circles on the top layer of 2 layers, then insert batting between the layers and cut out individual 'sandwiches'. I tried it both ways. I had no preference.

The first couple dozen blossoms I thought they should be quilted, so that method is shown at left and below.
BUT

The next batch I simply began the running stitch by hand to create the 'scrunchy' blossoms skipping the machine quilting step. Once they are on the flower, no one can tell the difference.

Pre-quilted circles-or not! Ready to paint, then 'scrunch'. Or scrunch, then paint.

I used red, white and blue. I mixed the red and white first with a touch of blue for a light pinky lavender.

I then mixed in the blue for dark purple, eventually adding in more white for strong lavender. Variety of shades adds dimension and depth.

Painting may occur before 'scrunching' or after. I tried it both ways. It didn't seem to make a difference... The scrunching is simply hand stitching a running stitch, from the center out, north, south, east and west. I knotted well in the center, did the running stitch out to the edge, tugged a little until I liked the look of the scrunch and tied it off well. Repeat, repeat, repeat! The choose your seed beads of color choice (I used yellow, peach, pink, blue, lavender and white) and stitch them randomly in the center of each blossom.

Painted, scrunched, beaded.

Completing the hydrangea...

The 'pillow' I sew the blooms onto. (this one was too skinny!)

Stem - Measure off apx. 14 inches of cotton cording. Spiral wrap the same length of light or medium weight wire, starting at one end, from top to bottom. Repeat the spiral wrapping with a half inch wide torn piece of fabric. Glue stick the finishing end down. Fold in half, and twist tightly.

Leaves - Make a 'sandwich' of two layers of fabric and the water soluble stabilizer. You may sketch a leaf shape or free motion it, what ever you are comfortable with. Hoop this sandwich and free motion stitch the veins of the leaves. Cut out 'ziggy' edged leaf shapes.  When completed, rinse lightly, leaving some of the stabilizer as 'stiffener' in the leaves.

Flower Head - I used some more of the lavender fabric and made a small 'pillow', stuffed with poly batting as the base to attach all the blossoms. Leave a small opening at the bottom to insert the completed stem and stitch in place. Hand stitch the blossoms to the head, attach the leaves and you are finished!

There really is no need for the batting, you could simply create the scrunchies in single layer of fabric, but this flower is going to Ireland to be 'planted' in the Quilted Garden of the International Quilt Festival of Ireland 2012, so it needed to be a 'quilt' of 3 layers. The Festival will have an online book showing the entire display and all the quilts. It takes place in June. http://www.iqfoi.com/  Check it out!

2012 International Quilt Festival of Ireland

I had the honor of receiving an email from the above titled quilt festival asking if I would be interested in sending some of my work. You bet! And when I had 'run around' the site advertising all that will be offered the Quilted Garden really caught my imagination! Below is a creation that I will send to be included in the garden, then donated to charity. ANY one that wants to create quilted flora and fauna, according to the info page, may send their donation in. Are you feeling creative? Go for it! I plan to do a demure quilted frog, and an over-the-top huge butterfly. Art quilting is all about no rules, sky's the limit, and it is the venue I thrive in creatively.  Here is the link, if you want to read about all the interesting and unique categories they will feature. www.IQFOI.com

Hydrangea for the Quilted Garden

 I will be placing a tutorial on here tomorrow. Check back if you think you would like to build your own hydrangea!

Outrageous Crocheted Bag!

 

Okay, so this isn't a quilt...But it is almost art! One of the goals I have before we move to Scotland is to use up/finish up lots and lots of odds and ends from my eclectic stash. This bag is the result of using up almost all of my Cream and Sugar cotton yarns. Just grabbed at the pile and crocheted it in, not a lot of planning, but a whole lot of fun. The next step was to put ribbons through the handles, flowers on the bag, beads on the flowers and the bag. I plan to use this crazy bag to tote my crazy quilt blocks I will work on in the UK.

New page!

Greetings!
     I have now set up my blogging page, 'A Year - A Broad', regarding my upcoming 'artist's year in the UK'.  We have purchased the tickets-we leave June 18, 2012- and soon begin the Homeland security and visa process. My husband has researched the car we will buy in Scotland, the possible place we will live, Dingwall or the vicinity, and the plane, train, and automobile options for getting us all around.  
     Today I paid for my residential class at Missenden Abbey, which is very exciting and makes this life adventure seem a little more real! The rooms at the abbey are converted monks' cells, the monastery, circa 1130, and grounds are intriguing and beautiful, and I can hardly wait for the day we fly off into the wild blue yonder!
     There are two camps among our family and friends. Camp #1 How exciting!  Camp #2 Are you nuts?
     But away we soon shall go! Go to A Year-A Broad Tab above, next to Home Tab, to follow the journey.