Quilting a background

Most of this past week has been spent quilting a 4' x6' whole cloth background for last years weekly leaves. I've only got a few more outline rows to go, then I'll block it, cut it to size, face it and then the real work of sewing each of the 52 squares on. This is how it looked yesterday.

Our assignment this week for sketching and watercolor was to do flowers. I had a pot with a few violas in it so they became my models.

The Weekly Leaf
My Valentine bouquet had some very sturdy ferns in it, the flowers didn't last very well but the ferns are doing great. I've got some being pressed and picked one that had a nice curve to it and did a gelli print. I forgot to take a picture until I'd cleaned everything up, but here's the results.

I've used the one on the right.

Weekly Leaf #8,year2

Daily stitching updates

Silk Fragments #49-#54

The Daily Paper #342-#347

Linked to "Off the Wall Friday"

A few more finished projects

I had a pretty productive week. First were the valentine postcards for some special young people in my life.

Second, I finished knitting a pair of fingerless gloves.

I may not need them this winter because here in the Northwest we are having unseasonably warm weather, unlike the many parts of the rest of the US. Not only have we had record breaking highs, we have no snow left and the snow is very important in supplying our water for the summer.
 I took advantage of the warmth to use my garage floor to finish up a quilt that I finished stitching back in December. It is part of my black and white circle series. The garage floor is the only area that I have enough space to lay it out flat to paint. The car got moved to the street, the floor got swept, a large blue tarp was put down and then the quilt on it. Below you can see it with the bright sunlight shining on it.

 I put it on the floor to paint it because I stand in the middle with a syringe filled with paint and spin around in circles. Next picture is of it all painted in the partial sunshine.

I had to close the garage door to keep out any curious cats. Here it is with the lights on sitting there drying over night.

I will have to take it in for professional photography, I have no really good space to photograph it in and the blacks tend to look grey. Below I have it hanging on my design wall in Studio B alongside  a 40" sq. companion piece. This one is 80" sq.

And a closeup.

The Weekly Leaf
This week I used a stencil and a paintstik on hand dyed fabric.

Week #7 year 2

Daily stitching updates

Silk Fragments #41-#48

The Daily Paper #334-#341

The lesson this week in my sketching and watercolor class was to do a continuous contour line drawing in ink.

Linked to "Off the Wall Friday"

Chaos and Calm

In March of 2010 I did a mono print of a circle everyday. The first thirty days the prints were on a 20" square of linen, the last day I did a print on a 52"square of cotton. The last one got turned into a quilt almost immediately , the second quilt from the group took about two years, the third almost four years and now I've done another. I cut up each of the mono prints into 9" squares and used my favorite pieces. I have a whole bag of squares still waiting in the wings. I got them out around Christmas and started playing with different arrangements and came up with a few that had possibilities. My favorite one got sewn together and the rest of the squares are back in the bag. I used a big portion of the very chaotic prints with some pieces that were the centers of the printed circles and had little or no printing. Then it took me six weeks to decide how to quilt it, but yesterday I made a decision and got it done.

"Chaos and Calm, Fractured Mono prints#3"

31" x 31"

textile paint on linen

 I've been a bit slow getting my sketching and watercolor done this week, but I have a start to show you. This week is greens and leaves, you'd have thought I would have jumped right on it!

The Weekly Leaf
This weeks leaf is  different than any I've done before. My good friend Jeanette saved a couple of her poinsettia leaves for me, one pressed and one not.

I took lots of pictures of both, they have both made an appearance on my daily photo blog back in January. I held the pressed leaf up to the light for most of the pictures and loved how the light really showed the small little veins in the leaf. This is the one I chose.

I cropped it in photoshop and printed it on cotton treated for ink jet printers.

Week #6, year 2

Daily stitching updates

Silk Fragments #34- #40

The Daily Paper #327-#333

Linked to "Off the Wall Friday"

Voids, sketching and watercolor

I finally got all sixteen of my "Voids" wrapped around canvases.

I have them all next to one another to get the picture, I doubt if they will be displayed this way. I still have labels to put on the backs and hanging wires.

I did my first sketch and watercolor assignment. Not perfect, but then it's a learning experience and it was much easier than I expected. I should do one a day, then I probably would improve.

While clearing some things out about a year and a half ago I found a small bag full of 1 1/2" squares, fabric samples I had ordered a very long time ago. I dumped them into a bowl by my sewing machine and sewed a couple together almost every time I'd sit down to sew. Then threw those in a bag. I've now pieced them all into a quilt top.

It's about 44" square. I have no current plans for it, but it was fun to do.

The Weekly Leaf, year two.
I printed this weeks leaf last summer with a variation of deconstructive screen printing. It's a grape leaf that I coated with thickened dye, placed on a screen and let dry. This is how it looked on the screen after the dye dried and I pulled the leaf off.

Then using clear print paste I printed it on hand dyed green fabric. I did about five prints, the first three were very faint. I've used the last one, on the right below.

Week #5 year 2

Daily Stitching updates.

Silk Fragments #27 -#33

The Daily Paper #320-#326

Linked to "Off the Wall Friday"