Bee on flower painted art piece

I've finished another bee on a flower fabric art piece.  There is a huge pile of pictures that I've taken over the last several years of bees on flowers.  I winnowed down the list of candidates and this one made it the final 5.   Here is my original picture:

I traced the picture onto tracing paper.  Then, I used the Susan Brubaker-Knapp method of tracing the lines onto prepared for dying (PDF) fabric, painting it with fabric paints, highlighting it with thread and finally quilting the piece.  Here is the piece all painted and ready for thread highlighting.  You can see that I use a lot of different threads and colors for this step.

And here is the piece after thread highlighting and quilting.

All that was left to do was to make the wings.  I placed a layer of organza between two layers of dissolving product; in this case I used Solvay.

After the wings were stitched and the Solvay was dissolved, I let the wings dry and attached them to the art piece.

I hope you like it!

Painted Flower Completed

I wrote an earlier blog about how fun it was to take a class from Susan Brubaker-Knapp.  She taught her painting on fabric technique at Asilomar this spring.  The flower that I chose to paint was from a picture taken by my friend, Rachael Brake.

In an earlier post, I showed the painting part.  Now I'm showing you the finished piece.

I quilted it in several colors of thread.  I did rocks and gravel in the gravel background, leaves in the leave background, and very little stitching in the flower so as not to cover up the painting.

Rachael's flower by Joanne Roth

close up of gravel quilting

close up of leaf quilting

I hope you like it!

Empty Spools class with Susan Brubaker-Knapp

I have been wanting to take a class in painting on fabric, and the expert is Susan Brubaker-Knapp.  One of my friends mentioned that she was going to Asilomar to take classes and that several other people from my guild were heading that way in April 2017.  So I jumped at the chance to take this week long class and have some fun traveling with my local quilting friends.

I didn't think too much ahead about where Asilomar was and how long it would take to get there.  But a few weeks ahead of time, my husband asked me where it was, so I looked it up.  Wow, I discovered that it's a long ways away and 4 days of travel R/T is what it took to get there.

I also started looking at the supply list and realized that I need to get my rear in gear and take and print the pictures and match thread to what I think I wanted to paint.  Yikes!  One of my friends takes fantastic up close pictures of flowers in her yard.  I asked her if I could use one of her images and she said yes!  So here is the one that I chose to paint in the class.

Photo by Rachael Brake

The class decided that the white tips on the flower petal should be "up", so I painted it that way.  The technique is super easy.  Well, easy when the teacher is in the room with you for 5 days!  You enlarge the photo to the size you want to paint, trace it onto tracing paper, trace the design onto PFD (prepared for dying) fabric, then just mix up your paints and paint the traced areas.  Add a little thread stitching, and that's it.  So here are some pictures at the class and at the retreat center.

Paints all mixed

Photo on bottom; painted piece on top

Here is my shot with Susan.

Susan Brubaker Knapp and Joanne Adams Roth

Here are some pictures of my friend's pieces.

Cat by Wilma Scott

Bird by Wilma Scott

And here are some pictures of the beach at Asilomar and my friends relaxing in the lodge.

Beach at Asilomar

Sharry, Margie, Audry and Wilma