Stitching it together

It's been a while since we've posted.  (oops)  In all honesty, the last couple of meetings have been a small group, and there hasn't been a lot to share with the world anyway. 
In September we did some stitching, inspired by Laura Wasilowski. Martha led this activity, after showing a couple of the pieces she had used to try out the techniques. 


On this one, Martha used stitching to enhance some of the motifs in the fabric.  She said after she did it she realized the threads were too close to the same colors, so it isn't very successful or interesting.  

 
This is a free form piece, where the only thing drawn on the fabric was the stems.  This follows along more with the ideas in Laura's book,
Joyful Stitching".  Laura uses wool as her base, but Martha liked this piece of fabric she created with fabric paints. 












Martha decided that  Laura's Leaf on Wool "stitch along" would be a perfect way to try the technique.

Leaf on Wool by Laura Wasilowski

Most of the ladies made the outlines at the meeting, and were excited to get home to finish!





While we were stitching, Cynda came in just long enough to show us her current project, which she was hoping to finish that evening.

This was based on a photo she took, and is a gift for a friend.  This picture does not do it any favors.  It's a beautiful piece!

In October, we had a sort of help session, where everyone brought something they are stuck on for suggestion.
Mary Ellen and Lori had done more stitching

Mary Ellen plans to stitch hers to a long piece to make it a door hanger or runner.

Lori really enjoyed doing the seed stitching in the background.




















Lori enjoyed the technique so much she did one of the other projects from Laura's book. 
















Martha also finished stitching her leaf, but feels she left too much "air" in some of the sections. 
















The help me portion of the evening was full of great projects.

Mary Ellen painted this in a class given at RAFA with Pam(?) DeGroot.  She has done some of the stitching, but wasn't sure what to put in the bright green or dark areas behind the flower.  














Most of us agreed anything she puts there would detract from the painterly quality of the piece, so it needs nothing.  She will add some texture to the center of the blossom.

 

Lori was looking for advice on how to quilt this baby quilt for her niece.   Except for the largest motifs, we all thought outlining the animals and simple meandering everywhere else would be the easiest option.  The large motifs need to have a little quilting on the animals' details to ensure sufficient quilting. 

 Kathi made this fun little doll, but wasn't sure what to do for hair.  We all thoughts tiny pigtails would be perfect!

















 Kathi also showed this piece she did with some friends.  They all had a large piece of painters canvas and used chip brushes to paint on it while it was on the floor- using long stick as handles.  Kathi looks forward to playing with this now.





Martha had finished stitching on her free form piece, but was having trouble deciding how to finish it.  Martha had thought of putting it onto a canvas, but wasn't sure how to finish the edge for that.  A layered finish was suggested. Kathi also suggested checking out Lyric Kinard's article on this, published several years ago for Quilting Arts magazine.  (you can still get it through Lyric's blog)
The suggestion to float it in a frame was made as well.
Stay tuned.











Mary Lee was looking for ideas on how to quilt this panel she got, which she hopes to hang on the front of her house for Halloween this month.  spider web was suggested, then there was a thread discussion.  All machines have a favorite, it seems.












Our Telephone Line game is still in progress.  We are talking about making it a party when we can reveal them- maybe at the first meeting of the new year!  It will be an exciting meeting, to be sure. 

Painted picture transfer

Chris led a very fun technique at the August meeting.  This technique, by Esterita Austin, was published in Quilting Arts in June of 2013. I was a bit hesitant because painting is not something I do well, but this was simple, fun and turned out beautifully!

The steps are simple-

Martha's

Choose your image, tape it to a smooth surface and tape a piece of parchment paper slightly larger than the image over it.  Using acrylic craft/ textile paints, fill in your image.  

Cynda's

Lori's (look for the eye)

MaryLee's

Chris'

This is the one Chris did to test the technique.  Once you've finished painting, and the paint has dried completely, You make a sandwich of plain parchment, organza, misty fuse, and your painting, face down.  Press gently, then flip it over and press again.  

 The paint sticks to the misty fuse, which sticks to the organza!  Let it cool, the carefully peel the parchment away.  The image can then be trimmed down and fused to a background fabric. 

I can't wait to see how people use their images. 

Only a couple more months to the big reveal of the telephone line game pieces!  What's the telephone line game, you ask? (since I'm not sure I said much about it when we started this project)
It's a game many of us played as kids.  Sit in a circle and choose a leader. That person whispers into the ear of the person sitting next to them- a simple word or phrase.  That person whispers into the next person's ear and so on around the circle.  When it gets back to the first person, he or she tells what they said and the last person tells what he or she heard.  There is usually a big difference! (Except at one slumber party where the thing I said came around only slightly changed, but into an embarrassing thing and I was mortified!)  So we're doing it now, but with quilts.  Stay tuned.

Spirals

At the June meeting, Mary Ellen led the activity.  Using techniques from RaNae Merrill's book, Simply Amazing Spiral Quilts, Mary Ellen made this quilt several years ago for a challenge. 

She had previously done a demo on this at a meeting of the Museum Quilt Guild, so had some nice teaching aids. (she used to be a teacher, can you tell?)

Here are different types of spirals she said are easy to design. (Piecing is a different story!)










Using the outline provided, we each designed a spiral and colored it in. 

Then the construction techniques were discussed. 

For now, we used glue to lay out our pieces, a step that is helpful when making them for real.

Martha cheated and cut each spiral as one piece. 

Kathi's

I think this is Elaine's???

Although most of us have no plans to make a quilt like this soon, it was fun to play and experiment with design.

Our telephone line game is about halfway done.  I don't know about the rest of the girls, but I am dying for the reveal- more to see if what I'm making for each one has anything at all to do with the original quilt in each series than anything else!  (I can't recall if I've explained this, so comment if you want to know more about it)

Shibori dyeing in Two Parts

Our activity for April and May was combined by the members whose turn it was to lead.  In April, Cynda shared with us some techniques for creating shibori.   Then in May Susan had us all come over to her house for the dyeing process. 

Part I

At the April meeting, we did have some show and tell!

 Lori finished the piece she started at the landscape workshop she led, using a piece of fabric she had dyed as a focal point.  

 Lori used some new techniques for the leaves on the tree in this, to be donated at the bigfoot conference later in April. 

 Mary also finished her landscape, using a beautiful piece of lace for the trees in this moonlight piece!

Mary also finished making her face, using fussy cuts.  She is doing some very modern stitching in the background!

Cynda brought plenty of examples of shibori she has done so we could choose the techniques we wanted to try.

Martha's pieces- scrunched, folded and stitched.

Kathi did some interesting stitching.

Chris is trying out circles

everything in one piece!

Part II



On a beautiful sunny day that decided to rain during our meeting, we met to do the dyeing- using the "pig barn" instead. 

Pieces held in the dye for 5 minutes at a time

 

Oxidizing between dips in the dye

 And a few of the results!

Cynda's scrunched piece

Cynda's fabulous mandala

 Lori got very nice color on her pieces, even after rinsing.  (others weren't so lucky)























 These are Chris' before she rinsed them. 

Hopefully everyone will bring their pieces to the next meeting for show and tell.