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Monday, February 29, 2016

Painting a Quilt for the porch

I've been thinking about painting a quilt to hang on my front porch, I figure if they can hang them on barns, I can hang one on my porch. On my last visit to the craft store I picked up a 24" square canvas. This week I decided that it had been sitting in the corner long enough and got to work. I will probably never make a double wedding ring quilt, but since I like circles that's what I painted. I made a twelve inch circle template and traced my pattern onto the canvas and got right to painting. My background color is red.


Then one set of circles is a deep turquoise.



Next set is gold(I forgot to take a picture) and the overlapping parts are green.



My color selection was based on the limited selection of acrylic paints that I own. The green was made by mixing the gold and turquoise, it was quite dark so I thinned it with water, which was not the right way to do it and it didn't cover well. After the paint had dried I covered the green areas with  transparent fabric paint which worked quite well. The green actually looks textured, more like a tone on tone print fabric. To finish I outlined everything with a black paint pen and then a coat of matte gel medium.


All thats left to do is to get it hung! I promise a picture when it happens.

The Weekly Leaf

This weeks leaf is just stitches. I drew a group of leaves, light traced the drawing onto my fabric and started stitching.


The tracing is so light that it doesn't show up in the picture.


Week #9




Daily Stitching updates

Gelli prints #54-#60





Sari Ribbon #347-#353





Linked to "Off the Wall Friday"

Monday, February 22, 2016

SAQA Benefit Auction and sewing leaves together

SAQA is starting to collect 12" x12" donation quilts for the fall benefit auction and I have one ready to send in. A few years ago I made a composition out of some of my indigo dyed fabrics and a piece of rusted milk filter, I was unhappy with where I had placed the rusted piece and never finished it.
The rust circle ended up right smack in the middle. I got it out and cut it apart, finished the stitching on it, faced it and now it is ready to go.
Indigo and Rust


The auction is not until September, but it feels good to have something done and ready to go.

The Weekly Leaf

There was a brown paper envelope in our  recycling pile that I rescued and turned into a leaf. This leaf was my inspiration.

 First I cut out the back of the envelope, got it wet and massaged it into a ball.

Next, it was sprayed with walnut ink.


Ironed flat and put misty fuse on the back.


Then the leaf was cut out and fused to the fabric.


Week #8



I've also started sewing the finished leaves together. First I cut strips of fusible light weight interfacing and fuse it to the back of two leaves butted together.

Then did a cross stitch from the front.


At the end of the year I will back the whole thing with one large piece of felt.

Here's how the first 8 look.


Daily Stitching updates

Gelli Prints #47- #53





Sri Ribbon #340-#346





Monday, February 15, 2016

Sunshine

After what seemed like weeks of grey clouds, fog and just plain yucky skies we have had some sunshine! Superbowl Sunday was one of those beautiful blue sky days, so I took advantage of it and did some SolarFast printing. There was still snow on the bench, but it worked just fine. The leaves I used were from my pile of pressed ones.


I did four prints altogether, it's always good to have extra prints, they will show up later.


The Weekly Leaf #7
I used the green print in the lower left, avocado SolarFast on a hand dyed light green.
After stitching.




The color is correct on the full picture, but the camera refused to do that for the close ups.

Daily Stitching updates.

Each year I do a heart on my daily stitching on February 14.  There is no heart shaped gelli plate, so I cut out a heart from a 3 inch square and after I put the red paint on the gelli, I placed the open heart over the gelli plate.



Of course I had to do several  more prints while I had everything out.


Gelli Prints #40-#46





Sari Ribbon #333-#339