Lady in a Forest Dress - Part Three

This is a continuation of 2 previous posts about the making of the Lady in a Forest Dress.

The moss that I made in the previous post was too dark for the lighter side of the dress, so I made some with lighter components.  It was made with the same layering technique, topped with Solvy, stitched in a fairly tight grid, then soaked and dried.

The bodice was then worked on.  I made a base layer of brown fabric with stabilizer on the back and turned the edges after doing a bit of stitching.

then, I made some patterns of bark pieces and cut out some of the bark fabric.

I pinned those pieces into place and inserted some pieces of the moss.

Then, I lightly glued the bark in place with just a dab of glue in the center, then stitched them in place with beads in brown and dark green, using beading thread.  I was pretty happy with the way the bodice turned out.

I think its turning out to look like a lady from the forest so far!

Exhibit at Gray Space Gallery in downtown Vancouver

I went to see the exhibit of my 10 Garden Lady art quilts in the Gray Space Gallery in downtown Vancouver. It was a bit serendipitous because I was supposed to have hip surgery on Sep 24th, but it got cancelled.  The Mod Squad scheduled their monthly meeting in the downtown Vancouver library on Sep 25th, where my quilts are being exhibited.  So, I got to go to the meeting and was able to walk around with some of the Mod Squad members and give an artist talk to them.  (Be quiet if you go though, we got shushed by one of the librarians for making too much noise!)

Here are some of the pictures showing how the quilts looked against the gray concrete wall.

I loved how the library posted the artist statement in both English and Spanish and left a comment box!  

The show runs through October, so if you're in the area visiting or live nearby, please stop by to see the exhibit.  And if you do, I hope you like it!

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.

Buzz and Bloom - Dual show at The Second Story Gallery in Camas, WA

The Buzz and Bloom show at the Second Story Gallery in Camas, WA was held in February 2025.  I had the 10 Garden Lady series of art quilts, 3 Bees on Flowers art quilts, and my co-artist, Cindy Wilson Geffel, had metal and wood pieces and paintings on glass.  We had a reception at the gallery on February 7th, and an artist talk on Feb 12th.  Here is the poster and a few pictures.

I was so humbled that so many people came out for both events.  It was like being enveloped in love for my art.

Garden Lady #10 -- Final - Wintergreen

This is a continuation of 5 previous posts about the making of Garden Lady #10.

The final few steps were to add a facing around the edges, sew on a sleeve and a label. 

The finished quilt measures 40 "W x 55-1/2 "H.

She's called "Wintergreen".  And she is the final quilt in my garden lady series.  

I hope you like it.

Garden Lady #10 - Part Five

This is a continuation of 4 previous posts about the  making of Garden Lady #10.

I decided that I wouldn't add a lot of distracting flora and fauna to this piece.  The idea of a bird feeder and a chickadee would have been a stand-alone figure that didn't seem to fit with this piece.  I still wanted the holly and red berries, but not much else.

I quilted the piece on both my longarm and my domestic sewing machine.  I find that I can use more delicate thread on my sewing machine for the face and finer details.  After it was quilted, I stitched down the wings and added the belt.

I made a small sprig of holly by sewing together 2 shades of green fabric and fusing and gluing them to a solid back piece.  

The berries were made of two layers of red fabric fused together.  I embroidered a stem and glued the applique pieces down.  then I made some tacking stitches.  

I hope you still like it!

Garden Lady #10 - Part 4

This is a continuation of 3 previous posts about the making of Garden Lady 10 - Winter Interest.

I wanted to produce the background by painting the fabric and then embellishing it this time.  I started with PFD white fabric, laid it out on black garbage bags and using Inktense blocks, diluted fabric paint, diluted acrylic paint, and splatter techniques, I did the first pass, and let it dry for a couple of days.

I put this up on the design wall after it dried and put the pieces already made on top.  I'm sorry to say that I was stuck for days trying to figure out where to go from there.  My quilting friends, relatives, and searches on Pinterest gave me ideas, but I didn't have the inspiration I needed. 

After another sleepless night, I had the genius idea to take it back off the wall and do some more painting to darken the lower section to make it grounded.  I put it back up on the design wall and liked it much better.  I still had to decide what to add that would be of winter interest....holly, chickadees, bird feeder, red belt, red berries.... 

Anyway, stay tuned to see what else I did for Garden Lady #10.

Garden Lady #10 - part 3

This is a continuation of two previous posts about the making of Garden Lady #10 - Winter Interest.

Face and hands were the next components.  I tried a technique recommended by Kestrel Michaud to eliminate/reduce the fraying of  the edges of fused applique.  She uses a diluted Mod Podge that she paints on the fabric and lets dry overnight.  I didn't know if this would work with Steam-A-Seam because she uses a different fusible product.  Well, I tried anyway.  I cut out pieces of the 4 values of fabric for the face and hands, fused it to Steam-A-Seam, then painted it with dilute Mod Podge and let it sit overnight.  The pieces curled up when they were wet, which they were supposed to do. 

Then, I prepared the face and hands the normal way.  When I pressed them together, they buckled a little bit, so will have to see how they look when applied to the background!  I decided to give this lady bright red hair~

Not sure if I like it so far, but I hope you do!

Garden Lady #10 - part 2

This is a continuation of the making of Garden Lady #10, Winter Interest.

I tackled the dress next.  I found a commercial fabric that was off-white with flecks of gold that seemed like it was perfect for this quilt.  The top of the dress and the bottom of the dress were made as two different pieces.  I used freezer paper underneath the fabric and traced the lines with a water soluble blue pen.  Then I used two different colors of Tombow ink pens to draw the seam lines and shadows.  

When the inking was done, I pressed an interfacing to the back, sewed on the outside lines, and glued the seam allowances to the back.

I put the pieces up on the design wall and liked the way they turned out.

I also bought a couple yards of an off-white tulle and placed a double layer on top to see how I liked the effect.

I like it, but think that I will wait until the piece is quilted and add it at the very last.  (That was a suggestion from one of my artsy quilting friends!)

I hope you like it so far.

Garden Lady #10 - Part One - Winter Interest

Nearly everyone that I asked told me to make a winter scene for the final Garden Lady in the series.  She is going to be #10 and I'm going to name it "Winter Interest".

I found a digitally generated design that I liked on Pinterest.  I tried very hard to find the artist who was the source of this pin, but couldn't find it.  Dang it.  I really want to give credit to the originators of my ideas. It was pinned by Anouklaga, who has pinned many artists on her pages.  It is a very sweet and fitting end to my series of Garden Ladies.  It'll be a challenge to make so many wings!

I traced it and had it enlarged at my favorite blue print shop in Portland.  For this piece, I decided that I would definitely start with the wings.  I like wings to be transparent and so organza was the obvious choice for the fabric.  I made wings for my second Garden Lady the same way, which was to layer 2 pieces of organza between dissolvable stabilizer, draw on the veins, stitch it around the edges and along the veins, soak it in water, and press it into shape.  I found a couple of sheer fabrics at JoAnn's and decided to layer 2 different ones on the wings.  Here are the 2 fabrics, which I know are hard to see in the photos.  One is iridescent shimmering, and I put that one on the top.

I traced the wings onto freezer paper to make the pattern.

This was laid down on my cutting table.  

The next layer was Aquamesh, a product from AES.  

Then the two layers of sheer fabric.  And finally, the top layer of Solvay.  I traced the pattern onto the Solvay with a permanent ultra thin marker (this gets washed away!).

I pinned it all in place then removed the freezer paper pattern from the back.  I used gold metallic thread in the top and the bobbin of my machine and zig-zagged on top of all of the drawn lines.  

The next step was to cut around the outside of all of the wings, leaving a scant 1/4" from the stitching.

It got soaked for a few minutes to dissolve the top and bottom products, then laid out to dry, ironed, and placed on the design wall on top of the pattern.

 I hope you like it so far!

Garden Lady #9 - FINAL - Caretaker

This is a continuation of three previous posts and is the final one about the making of Garden Lady #9.

After stitching the lady to the background, I did some thread work on the hair and did some shading with colored pencil.

It was finally time to quilt the entire piece with the backing. I know that it seems strange after all of the stitching that was done already, but I really wanted to mash down the background and get the foreground to pop.  Here is the final quilt.  I named it "Caretaker".

It is 32" W x 49" H.

I hope you like it!

Garden Lady # 9 - Part Three

This is a continuation of 2 previous posts about the making of Garden Lady #9.

I started on the applique lady by working on the hair.  I found a good picture of a ponytail that I used for the pattern.

Here is the hair that will be used as the base before the detail stitching.  I always try to remember at this stage, that this is an art quilt and not a photograph.  

Then I made the shirt.  I used a cool little blue and white stripe and enhanced it with inking and directional cutting.

Next were the legs, wheelbarrow, skirt, and arms.  Sorry, I forgot to take pictures along the way.  When I get in the zone, I'm totally immersed

The pieces were pinned, then fused to the background, and then sewn down with an invisible zig-zag stitch.

I hope you still like it so far!