5 ladies art quilt - part 6

This is a continuation of 5 previous posts about the making of the 5 ladies art quilt.

Once the figures were all placed on the background, I inspected for areas that needed some tweaking.  I could see that the figure on the far left had some issues with the neck and head placement.  And some of the legs disappeared against the background.  I fixed those areas and got everything pinned to the background instead of the design wall and then fused down the faces, shoes and hands.   It took a day to get everything sewn down and then I sketched in more facial features and thread sketched the hair and some more of the facial features.

I had enough background material to use for the backing and got it all layered up and ready to quilt.  Here it is part way done with the quilting.

I found it pretty easy to quilt the background by just following the dots in the fabric.

I hope you like it so far.

Exhibit at the Gray Space Gallery in the Downtown Vancouver library

The 10 Garden lady art quilts will be featured in a solo show at the Gray Space Gallery in the downtown Vancouver library for the months of September and October.  This is the last time all 10 quilts in the series will be exhibited together.  They're all for sale and up for grabs to anyone that wants to purchase them.  

I enjoyed making the series of quilts over a 2 year period.  And I'm thrilled that they are in their 2nd gallery showing.  I hope you get a chance to go and see them!  Here are 3 of them.

The Vancouver Library is located at 901 C Street, Vancouver, WA  98660.  Hours are generally 10:00 am to 6:00 pm.  The gallery is split between 2 of the upper floors.

5 ladies art quilt - part 5

This is a continuation of 4 previous posts about the making of the 5 ladies art quilt.

Once all of the pieces were pinned up on the design pattern, it was time to move them to the real background.  This is always a tricky step, because the pattern is what keeps all the pieces in the right place.  What I did was to pin the pattern just at the top and then lift and cut out one of the figures at a time.  It was easy to place the ladies in the right spot by just filling in the hole.   Below is one lady already placed and he hole cut out for he second one.

Now, you can see that the 2nd lady has been placed in her corresponding hole.

Here is the 3rd lady cut out and placed.

And the 4th one.

Then the 5th one.

When they were all placed and pinned to the design wall and background, I cut away all of the paper pattern.

I hope you still like it so far!

Rusty Lady and Lady in Blue

I made a couple more class samples both during and after the Saturday workshop day.

One, I'm calling, "Rusty Lady", and the other, "Lady in Blue".

I had so much fun teaching other members of Clark County Quilters how to do chop and drop applique.  We were having so much fun that I totally forgot to take pictures of my class and their projects.  Gosh darn it.  I did get one sent to me later and someone else snapped a picture of me teaching the class.

Here is my student's piece.

And here the two that I made, all quilted and ready to show.

I hope you like them and let me know how I should display them.  Sew them together?  Add some floral interest?

5 Ladies - part 4

This is a continuation of 3 previous posts about the making of the 5 ladies art quilt.

I moved next onto the face and hands.  Have you noticed yet that I kept avoiding them ?  Yes, I'm still full of anxiety about doing them the right way.  It is a very slow process with lots of tiny pieces.  But, I decided that I just needed to dive in and do it!

I pulled out fabrics and then treated them with dilute Mod Podge.  After they sat overnight to dry, I was able to start cutting out the tiny pieces and moving forward.  I forgot to do the lip and shoes, so I did that a few days later. A couple of the lips weren't treated and I remembered that those tiny pieces fray pretty badly without the treatment.  Also, when you look at the picture with just the fabric, their faces still look a little odd.  They start to look a lot better when the thread work starts happening.  Here's the art quilt with all of the ladies done and pinned up against the pattern.

I hope you like it so far!

5 Ladies - Part three

This is a continuation of 2 previous posts about the making of the 5 ladies art quilt.

I continued making clothes following my chop and drop applique method.  Since I've shown that already many times, I just took pictures as the outfits were pinned up on the design board.

My husband popped his head into my studio to check on the progress of this art quilt.  He said, "It looks like clothes that you would wear?"  Why, yes, I responded.  Why else would I have saved this picture with all of the green outfits.  I could easily wear any of them and love it.  I might even name this piece "My Alter Egos".  

What do you think?

Five Ladies - Part Two

This is a continuation of a previous post about the making of the Five Ladies art quilt.  I uploaded hands from the original picture and sized them to fit the size of the pattern.  Its interesting that I started with the face and hands... both are my nemesis.  I've thought a little bit about putting sun glasses on all of them.  Hmm, have to think about that.  In the meantime, I've picked out some fabric for the outfits.

I looked at the fabric in my stash that I could use for the background, and all of my larger pieces of fabric were too light (blah) or too dark (dreary).  So, off to the quilt store I went.  And I went a long ways!   One of my favorite quilt stores is called Stash, and it's 4 hours away in Walla Walla, WA.  It wasn't too hard to talk my husband into a quick getaway for wine tasting and some nice meals out,  and, of course, a quick stop at Stash.

They have the largest selection of fabrics for the modern quilter and I found a nice Tula Pink fabric.  Here it is:

I made one of the outfits and pinned it up on the pattern.  It is lightly sparkly and very fun.

I hope you like this quilt so far!

Bees on Flowers - Painted Art Quilts - Verbena Bonariensis

This is a continuation of several previous posts about the making of the Bees on Flowers painted art quilts.  This one is the verbena bonariensis.

Here is the painting part completed:

After thread sketching:

And the final.  It measures 9-1/2"  W x 12-14" H.

I hope you like it!

Bees on Flowers - painted art quits - Verbena Bonariensis

This is a continuation of a few previous posts about the making of bees on flowers art quilts.

The second piece that I painted was the bee on the pink flower.  I believe it was on a verbena bonariensis, which is actually purple.  I'm not aware that I have any pink flowers that look like the picture, but I know that I took it.  Anyway, instead of trying to recreate the actual color, I used the color as it appeared.  I mixed the paint in a palette that allowed me to mix a lot of shades of the colors that I wanted to use.  It has a cover that allows me to paint a bit, and then come back the next day to finish it off. 

Here is the piece with just the flower and bee painted.

I painted the background after the flower had dried.

I'll show the thread sketching and quilting in a future post, and I hope you like it so far!

Bees on Flowers

OK, these are not quilts.  But I do have to post some of the pollinators that are in my garden this year.  I love having a garden filled with plants that are welcoming to all kinds of bees, birds, and bugs.  Enjoy!

                                                                    On a zinnia

On a dahlia

                                                            On a drumstick allium

Bees on Flowers - Camasia - part 3

This is a continuation of 2 previous posts about the making of the bees on flowers art quilts.  This is the bee on the native Camasia flower.

I layered the painted fabric with a stabilizer and did some light stitching, or thread sketching, to bring the piece to life.  Many things can be done with thread that can't be done with the paint alone.  But too much threadwork covers up all of the glorious painting.  So, if you do it, make sure its with a light hand.

The piece was layered with batting and backing and quilted.  The edges were faced to complete the piece.

I hope you like it!

Bees on Flowers - Painted art quilts - Bee on Camasia

This is a continuation of a previous post about the making of 2 bees on flowers art quilts.

I decided to paint the one with the purple Camasia flowers first.  They are a native plant to my region and when they bloom, they are such an amazing shade of purple with stark yellow stamens on long stems.  The bees just love them.   And so do I, especially when you are sitting in a field of them.  Below is a picture of my sister and mother near Yelm, WA.

After I had the sketch enlarged, I placed the image on the light box and traced it onto the PFD fabric.  When transferring the image to the fabric, I usually use an engineering pencil and use a light hand so that the lines virtually disappear after the painting is done. 

The PFD fabric was then taped to a foam core board.  I got out all of the painting supplies in the colors that I picked for this picture.  I find that trying to closely match what's in the picture yields the most realistic results.

I mixed up all of the colors and added a bit of extender and white into their own paint cells.  Coffee stir sticks come in really handing when mixing paint.  I have to admit that some of my paints were old, and even though the tops were tightly screwed on, the paint basically hardened a bit.  I have to remind myself to get newer paint next time.  So, here is the painting part all done.  I let it dry overnight and then ironed it.

Stay tuned to see how much this piece changes when the thread sketching part is done.

Five Ladies

I decided to really stretch myself and make an art quilt with 5 ladies on it.  This was a jumping off point after the series of the 10 Garden Ladies.  Every time that I've made faces and hands, there is something that just didn't look right.  So tackling 5 in one piece is going to be a knuckle biting experience.  Wish me luck.

I found an inspiration photo of 5 ladies making slightly goofy poses in an ad for Gundrun Sjogen clothing.  I traced the picture and had it enlarged 700% at my local print shop.  I'ts 38" H x 53" W. Here is the starting pattern for this piece.

As you can see, the faces all look ghoulish, and I know from previous pieces that at this stage that's OK.   I needed the relative size and placement of eyes and mouth to make the faces look realistic later.  I went searching on the internet and found 5 copyright free images of different women that would work for this piece.  I downloaded them, sized them to fit and tacked them up in place on the starting pattern.  A little more work needed to be done to get the sizes just right; one face is too small, another is too large, etc.  And, of course, they will all look very different when done in fabric.  

I hope you like following the steps so far!

Bees on Flowers - painted quilts

I made a few small art pieces with bees on flowers several years ago.  A recent sale of a couple of them led me to wanting to paint a few more.  I have hundreds of pictures of bees on flowers, and it was hard to narrow it down to the ones that I thought would look good as art pieces.  Here are 2 that I landed on:

The technique that I use for this kind of art quilt is to trace the details of the picture using a light box.  I don't draw the background, though.  That part comes with the painting of the blurry details.  Here are the tracings of the photos:

Next, I took the tracings to my favorite print shop in Portland and had the tracings enlarged so that they would be 12" on the long side.  That seems to be a size that is attractive to buyers.

I hope to show you some progress on the actual pieces in the next post.  

Mod Squad Challenge 2025 - Part 3 and Final - J.A.R.

This is a continuation of 2 previous posts about the making of the Mod Squad Challenge for 2025.

I decided to quilt the piece with 4 different colors of thread - purple to match the background, yellow, peach, and sea green.  The stitches are 1/4" apart and were randomly placed to both show and highlight the threads.  Like most quilts, it looks more interesting in person than in the picture.  

I named it J.A.R. (for Joanne Adams Roth and for the colors of Jonquil, Avid Apricot, and Retro Mint).  It measures 24" W x 36" H.

I hope you like it!

Preparing fabric for applique

I prepared some fabric for my machine applique class by following a technique using Mod Podge.  This was shown on The Quilt Show by Kestrel Michaud in episode #3303.

You  mix 1 part Mod Podge with 3 parts hot water.  So, 1/4 c. mod podge with 3/4 c. hot water makes 1 cup of dilute "glue" to bind the fabric threads to each other.  What it does is to keep the tiny thread edges from fraying as you stitch them down.  For a lot of machine applique, it doesn't really matter.  But when you're make an art piece using raw edge techniques, especially the face, it looks so much better when the threads don't ravel.  

I laid the pieces out on a Teflon sheet, then mixed the Mod Podge and painted it on the pieces.  

I let it dry overnight, peeled them off the Teflon sheet, and then cleaned up the Teflon sheet with a scratch pad.  The pieces are pretty stiff, but the color doesn't change once it's dry.  (Below is a picture of the pieces when they were still wet.)

I hope you get a chance to use this technique!  And I hope my students appreciate the extra step I've taken to ensure their success. 

Bernina Stitch Regulator

I bought a Bernina 440 many years ago when they first came out with the Bernina Stitch Regulator (BSR).  At that time I was doing a lot of quilting on my domestic sewing machine and I thought that this new foot would take my quilting to the next level.  Well, it was too slow and clunky for me, so I didn't use it.  Several years ago, I got a Bernina 570 machine and it also came along with a BSR.  I never used it either.

So, this year, I decided that I would give it a try on my newer machine and if it just wasn't going to work for me, that I would sell both of the stitch regulators and get them out of my sewing room.

I watched several videos on YouTube about how to use the BSR and got myself jacked up and ready to go.  But, as luck would have it, my sewing machine broke.  The spring that operates the presser foot went SPROING!  

So, while the newer machine was in the shop, I pulled out my 440 and tried to used the BSR.  There's supposed to be two modes, one with the needle that only moves when you move the fabric, and one where the needle keeps going up and down.  I could only figure out how to find one of the modes on the 440.  In mode one, it was just as slow and clunky as I remembered it to be.    So, no way its going to be used on the 440.

I got the 570 back from the shop and tried the BSR in both modes. Nope.  Still isn't working the way that I would have hoped.  I posted them for sale on our Clark County Facebook page and if I don't get a sale there, I'll put them on Facebook Marketplace.  Wish me luck!

Mod Squad Challenge - 2025 - part two

This is a continuation of a previous post about the making of the 2025 Mod Squad Challenge.

I pulled a few pictures off the internet and landed on one for this challenge.  I used that as my idea and drafted up a couple of designs to fit the 2' wide requirement.

I liked the one with 3 rows the best, so that is what I used to make the foundation pattern for the triangles.  Well, first, I did a little math to make sure that 2 yards would be enough for this pattern.  And yes, I had plenty.  Did I tell you that I like to do math and drafting?  This exercise was right up my ally.

I made up a sheet of the triangle foundations and copied them onto Carol Doaks Foundation Paper.  I also made some cutting templates out of freezer paper, by adding 3/8" to all of the outside edges.    Since I had triangles going in opposite directions, I made the templates for each foundation and marked them as "A" or "B".  I also added directional arrows to be sure to cut them on the grain of the fabric.

Its hard to see in this picture, but following a method that I learned from way back, I placed a post card along the seam line and used the Add-A-Quarter ruler to trim the seam to 1/4".  This was them matched up with the next piece of fabric and sewn.

You can see the sewn seam in this picture.  

The whole piece was then pressed and trimmed.

I placed the completed foundation pieces on the design board, making sure that the color placement was just right.

The final step in piecing the top was to sew the strips together and add the outer borders.  Here is the finished top.  It measures 24" W x 38" H.

I hope you like it so far, and I will show it to you again after it gets quilted.