Clark County Quiltfest 2024 - Annual show by Clark County Quilters

Clark County Quilters recently held their quilt show at the Clark County Event Center in Ridgefield, WA.  It was a spectacular show, as always.  I entered 10 quilts this year (our guild went 1-1/2 years between the last show, so I had quite a few ready to go!).  Some of my friends came to see the show and we had a great time catching up and enjoying a few hours together.  

Here are a few of the winners from the show.

Best of Show

Sharleen Rainville

Best of Show - Wall quilt

Judith Phelps

Carnival Vibrancy

by Joanne Adams Roth (me!)

Boise Basin Special Exhibit

Boise Basin special exhibit

Synaptic

by Joanne Adams Roth (me)

by Audrey Prothero, Joanne Adams Roth, and Linda Taccolini

And finally the list of all of the winners.  I didn't get around to taking pictures of all of them; the show was huge this year and there were so many fabulous quilts.

I hope you made it to the show.  If you didn't, I hope you enjoy this little taste!

Garden Lady #7 - Part Two

This is a continuation of a previous post about the making of Garden Lady #7, based on the artwork of French artist Gaëlle Boissonnard.   I continued to make the clothing for this garden lady with materials and ephemerals that I had on hand.  Here is a pile of some of them:

The pants started out with a hand dyed dark teal fabric.  I layered it underneath with dissolving stabilizer and cut and placed yarn and seam tape on top.  This was covered with a dark green tulle and stitched with two colors of thread.  Both of the legs were placed in a tub of water to dissolve the foundation and allowed to dry.  When that was done, I placed the freezer paper pattern back on the top, sewed around the edges and trimmed the seam allowance.  The final step was to glue the edges and press them towards the back.  I like how they turned out!

Next, I'll go backwards a little bit to pick up some details about the pattern. 

Dissolving products used for turned edge machine applique

I've been asked quite a few times how I use dissolving products to do turned edge invisible machine applique.  I'm pretty sure I first learned the technique from Sharon Schamber many moons ago.  She was selling a few products then, and I have since morphed into other ones that I recommend.

First, I use Ricky Tims Stable Stuff Poly.  It is a non-woven stabilizer that can be used in the printer, drawn on with a pencil or permanent marker, accepts glue readily, provides a clean edge to machine applique against, and finally, dissolves into fibers when you wash the quilt.  I use it on my art quilts extensively, even through they don't get washed.  I purchase it in sheets and in rolls.  The sheets run through the printer easily and the rolls help me make large pieces.  It is available on The Quilt Show and many other on-line sellers.  (No longer available through Ricky Tims himself.)

Second, I use the washable school glue stick from Elmer's that starts as purple, but dries to clear.  You can purchase these cheaply when school supplies hit the stores in late summer.  A box of them lasts me the entire year.   I use the smaller size; the bigger one is too messy.  Well, the small one is messy too, but not so much that you can't work with it.  Remember, it's washable, so whatever gets on your fingers or tool can easily be washed off.

And finally, the tools that I've come to love are the small Ritz iron, an awl, a wooden clay carving tool, tiny scissors, a small ironing surface covered with Duck cloth, and freezer paper.

Here are the steps that I followed to do small flower petals.  First, I draw the shapes onto the stabilizer.  I place them quite closely and cut them out on the lines.

Next, I place some glue on the outside edges of each piece and place them glue side down on the wrong side of the fabric.  (My ironing surface, which lets me sit down, is covered halfway with freezer paper that is used to slop the glue onto and the freezer paper is tossed at the end of each project.  It's cheap and handy to have it on the right side of the ironing surface.)  These pieces then get pressed with my Ritz iron.

I leave a small seam allowance when I cut out the pieces.  1/8" is all you'll need, and it is much easier to turn the edges neatly when they are small.  If you're doing larger applique pieces, you can leave a larger seam allowance.  The trick is to have no tucks on the edge, so any excess fabric will try to form a pleat.

I take this piece back to the freezer paper area and cover the edges with glue a second time.

Using my tools to keep my fingers out of the way of the hot iron, I turn the edges and make sure to smooth out any tucks on the edges.  I have found that using the awl on the edge and the wooden tool to hold the seam allowance while ironing works the best.  The point of the awl can really smooth out any edge wrinkles.  If you get a small tuck, just use your awl to pry up the seam allowance and try it again.  The beauty of using the Ricky Tims stable stuff poly is that you can do this second step without ripping the foundation.  Ask me how I know?  I have to do this a few times on the really small pieces.  When I've tried using other foundation products or glue, they grip tight the first time and there's no going back.

When I am done with a small area, I press the seam allowance well to mash down the excess fabric, making sure to press from the edges towards the center.  

After it cool off, it can be used in your art quilt.  Sometimes, I spot glue this applique to the background before I stitch it to hold it in place.  If you do tiny spots of glue either with the glue stick or a small pointed glue delivery tip, you can do this well in advance of stitching down the pieces.  It will hold for quite a while.  Sometimes, I don't bother with that step and just pin the pieces in place right before I sew them down.  On the quilt with the daisies, I've pinned them up on the design wall to play with placement.

This technique works for any shape you can draw.   You can also use the foundation product to use an irregular shape from a printed floral or graphic material.  In that case, you place the foundation product on the wrong side of the fabric (with no glue), sew around the motif (just inside the edges) with dissolving thread, cut away the excess foundation, and turn the edges in the same steps as above.  You will have to use water to dissolve the thread.  This is a personal choice - rather to baste with regular thread or use dissolving thread.  If there are a lot of pieces, I prefer to use dissolving thread as the ripping out of the basting thread can be tedious.

The last step of course is to applique the pieces to your quilt.  I prefer to use invisible thread and do a small zig-zag stitch - 1.3 width to 1.6 width, and 1.1 stitch length.  

I hope this helps some of you!

Garden Lady #7 - Part One

I got the inspiration for this Garden Lady from the French artist Gaëlle Boissonnard.  I loved the playfulness of her series on ladies in nature.  Her signature is skinny arms and legs, and exaggerated height and body dimensions.  I made a sketch that minimized the exaggerated height, but still kept the essence of the artist in mind.  The sketch was blown up to size at my favorite blue print shop in Portland.  

I found the perfect ombre background fabric at Sharon's Attic in Hillsboro, Oregon.  It is a lime green shade of Moda ombre bloom by Vanessa Christenson.

Usually, I sketch a few features, and on this one, I changed the face and hands.  I found a clothing advertisement with a face that I liked.  So I traced it and uploaded it to Adobe Photoshop; flipped the direction of the face and sized it to fit the art piece.  The original tracing was about 2", and the final size was about 4".

I wanted to try a few different techniques on the outfit, and the first thing that I thought about was doing some daisy-like trapunto on the pocket.  I sketched up a couple of daisies and imported them into Photoshop.  I copied and pasted it 3 times to fill up the sheet.

Here are the cut out the daisies that were placed over the pocket to get a layout.

I took a photo and used this to copy and transfer the picture to a dissolving stabilizer.  The stabilizer that I use is Ricky Tims Stable Stuff Poly ricky-tims-stable-stuff-poly and I buy it on a large roll.  It's pretty curly when it comes out of the tube.  (Note:  Ricky Tims no longer has a store,  but can clink on the link above and buy it from The Quilt Show store.)

I thought that I could just run it through the printer, but it totally jammed.

So, I cut another 8-1/2" x 11" piece and ironed it to freezer paper.  I covered it with my wool pressing mat and let it sit overnight to get flat.  Then, I ran that through the copier and was smart enough (just barely) to notice that there is a paper selection for thicker paper!  Anyway, that time it worked.

I didn't invent the process, but am so glad to pass it along!  I actually think that the first time I noticed it was on a quilt that  Philippa Naylor exhibited in Paducah, Kentucky called "Flower Power".  

Anyway, Ricky demonstrated this on one of his segments on The Quilt Show (#2606).  I picked the pocket fabric and placed the daisy pattern on the wrong side of the fabric.  Using dissolving thread, I traced the outline of the daisies.  

I flipped it to the right side and stitched the inside of the daisies with micro stippling.  Then, I layered it with batting on the backside and sewed around the daisies on the front side with a tight meandering stitch.  When the stitching was done, I cut away the excess batting, then the excess stabilizer.  

The whole thing was dunked into a sink of water and the stabilizers dissolved, leaving only the material, the batting, and the decorations done in thread.  These photos show the front and the backside of the finished pocket.

I hope you like it so far!