A Rippling Quilt

I've been working on an abstract piece that has a lot of quilting going on in  straight lines across the width of the quilt, both handwork and machine stitching.  There's also a variety of fabrics into the mix on this one, some are pretty thick pieces of hand painted fabric, some burlap and white cotton are commercial fabrics, the rest are hand dyed fabrics I made months ago.

When I finished I noticed that there was enough rippling happening to disturb me because it would keep it from hanging flat.  So, I went onto the SAQA list group and asked for some advice.  It turned out there's one way to avoid it that I learned - stitch only in one direction!  Allright!  For the next time.  But there were a few good options to straighten it out after the fact as well.  I tried the path of least resistance first - the simplest method was to "block" it.  And it worked  - hooray!  Easy, too.  Just took a lot of time to put that many pins into it.  If I hadn't just picked up a new box of pins, I would have had to run out to get them - lucky me and my impulse to buy these little accoutrements to the quilting habit.

Here it is all pinned up and drying:

I still have to bind or face it and I may have to do it again afterwards but that's not a problem - it will lay flat when it's finished.

Serendipity Study One

Believe it or not, it took me the entire day yesterday to make this little 10" X 7" art quilt.  I started with a gelatin print I made a few months ago. First, I made the stencil and it went from there.

Gelatin Print

 I traced my stencil onto parchment paper, reversed it, went over the image again in pencil, adhered it to fabric that was adhered to Misty Fuse, cut it out after it cooled down. Same technique for each of the shapes.  Ironed each piece onto white cotton then free motion quilted it between batting and backing. I then "faced" it to finish:  facing tutorial.

Art Quilt - fused raw edge.

Close Up of art quilt.

Pineapple Drawing

After  a nap yesterday, I finished my pineapple drawing.  Now, I'm trying to figure out how to use Photoshop to select just the image and place the top on top of the bottom - Grrrrr.... I figured out how to select the pixels with the quick lasso wand but not how to save it.

At the Drawing Board

So many things on my To Do List! I've been working on 3 different quilts and starting another in my head now.  All I've done so far on it is to begin a drawing.  My attention span for drawing seems so limited these days.  I used to spend hours on a drawing with no problem, but I have to do it in stages now.  Here's a pic of what I accomplished today so far...out of practice!  But good enough to turn into a template for a quilt element.

I guess that's why zentangling has been my favored form of drawing in the past few months. I often do my zentangles in bed and find myself sitting up in bed sound asleep, pen in hand, with ink on my sheets!

 

This might explain my nightmare!

 

Other times I sketch possible free motion quilting designs:

 

Then again, they may become more zentangles:

 

 



                                            

Multi-block Acorn and Oak Leaf Print

This is a multi-block print I made a short while ago.  All of the stages are here except the acorn which was the last to be added.

Seeking order out of the chaos.

I've been feeling my way through my life one foot in front of the other, sometimes dragging myself into the next moment.  I thank the gods and goddesses for my art that focuses me on making some semblance of order out of the chaos.  Here's a detail of a piece I've been working on -
 It needs a hawk or two.

 

 



Quilt As You Go - The Process

I started this quilt out with blocks squared to 12 ".

Laid out on the table is a row being quilted, complete with top, batting and back.  More rows hang on the design wall behind it. When the quilting is completed on all rows, you can begin to assemble the rows into a whole quilt.

Below, 2 rows have been joined together and flipped to the backside:
Next, I trimmed back the layers on the left side.

 

Next I pulled out the batting and flattened it out.

 

 

 Then I used my long cutting edge to feel for the underlying edge and mark it by turning it on it's edge to mark out a line that's slightly perceptible. 

 

 

 Below, if you look closely you can see the line left behind to use as a cutting line.

 

Cut along that entire row. 

 

Sigh...this is not a perfect world we live in.  We need to be flexible to overcome some of the difficulties we encounter and in quilting, I think it’s key to success.  I’m sharing with you some pictures of what can go wrong in the Quilt As You Go process and one example of how I adjusted for my flaws.

It all seemed so right until I got to the end of the row and realized I had trimmed it too short on the left side!  Well what could I do?  I couldn’t add onto the piece I’d cut  - it would not look very good at all.  So I added another length on that side.



After that seam is sewn, I flipped it over and folded it together with the seam of the right side and sewed along the entire edge for another seam on that side.

 



 

You can put as many lines in as you want.

 

 

 Voila!