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 #8 - Fall Princess - Part 8 - FINAL

This is a continuation of 7 previous posts about the making of Garden Lady #8.  After I pinned the leaves on the top, I hand sewed them down the middle with beading thread.  It was mentally hard to cover up things that had already been done, especially the dress.  So, I resisted pinning leaves on top of he dress.  But, I wanted it to look like she was wading through a pile of leaves and they had to go on top.  I also added stitching, both hand and machine to the bouquet.

The final embellishment was on the fascinator.  I added a couple of chukar feathers from our collection, ribbons, and hot fix crystals.  

I added a regular binding.  And then blinged it up with more hot fix crystals. 

It's all done!

I hope you like it - my Fall Princess.

(Note:  My husband raised chukars for a couple of years and the feathers were collected from their cage.  They are a small game bird).

Garden Lady # 8 - Fall Princess - Part Seven

This is a continuation of 6 previous posts about the making of Garden Lady #8.  I quilted the background in circles in two different sizes, 1-1/4" and 1", by using a machine template from Quilters Apothecary.

The dress and sash were quilted in meandering and circular shapes, and the face and arms were quilted on my domestic machine in matching threads.  I don't know about you, but sometimes when I'm in the depth of quilting, I feel like it takes forever!  Of course, it is only days, perhaps closer to a week.  I guess I'm spoiled by all of my cool machines that make it easy for me to complete my art quilts at home.  I did have to put some leaves on the quilts before quilting because they needed to be behind the pumpkins.  And, of course, I forgot to take another picture when the quilting was done.  Dang it!

I put the quilt on the floor of my sewing room and scattered the leaves from about 5' above, letting them drop wherever they wanted to.  Here is the picture after they were scattered:

And here I am on my hand and knees, pinning them in place.  (Well, I'm taking the picture while I'm on my hands and knees!)

I hope you like it so far.

Garden Lady #8 - Fall Princess - Part Six

This is a continuation of 5 previous posts about the making of Garden Lady #8.

The next thing that I made was the fascinator for the top of her head.  I decided to name this quilt "Fall Princess", and thought about trying to make a tiara.  But I was already committed to making a fascinator and went with the idea of putting leaves and gems and twirly things on it.  I looked at a bunch of pictures (mostly of English royalty going to royal events) and was amazed at how large and ornate some of them are!  Well, in the end, I sketched up my idea.

Here is the base of the fascinator.  I decided to decorate it after the piece gets quilted.  

My friends suggested feathers and flowers and here are some ideas pinned in place.

I made a bouquet of fall flowers that were based on pictures of  flowers from my own garden.  The picture of flowers was traced onto freezer paper, then transferred to Steam-A-Seam and pressed to the back of different fabrics.  

These were cut out and embellished with Inktense pencils.  The original flowers made were all a bit too small, so I traced around a couple of the flowers and enlarged them at the same time.   Here are the small flowers:

Here is the bouquet pinned to the background with the large and small flowers.  It looked a lot better.

The next step was to make the stems.  I picked out a few different green fabrics, cut them on the bias to a shy 3/4" and turned in both edges.  I placed them underneath the flowers and through the hand.   

My quilting friends took a look and offered the opinion that the bouquet needed leaves and a few drooping flowers.  It looked so much better after that change!  I like to get advice from my friends and feel like my art pieces are enhanced with their eyes and ideas.  I hope you ask your friends for advice too.

I loosely stitched down the flowers and stems with invisible thread and intend to go back over it all with colored thread to add dimension. 

Oh, and after making all of the fall leaves, I piled them in a box so that I will just pick and place them after quilting.

I hope you like the progress so far!

Garden Lady #8 - part Five

This is a continuation of 4 previous posts about the making of Garden Lady #8.  I started making all of the leaves with a ton of different fabric and thread.  I like the look of transparent leaves, shiny leaves, mottled leaves, and tons of fall color.  This was so much fun, I almost forgot to take pictures.  My experience with making leaves is that two layers of fabric sandwiched between dissolving products works the best.  When they are all done being sewn and rinsed, they retain a little bit of stiffness that allows me to manipulate the leaves when I'm adding them to the quilt.  I knew that I needed to design the fascinator on her head too, so you'll see some "gems"  that I could put on top of the hat the same way.

Years ago, I picked up a bunch of fall leaves and pressed them into my sketch book.  I used these leaves for the patterns for the leaves of this quilt.  They're drawn onto freezer paper with a permanent marker because the darker line helps to trace the lines later in the process.

I used 2 different dissolving products to make the leaves.  One product was clear Solvay.  The other was Aqua Mesh, which is a white mesh, but also somewhat see-through.  I like both products - one that is more stable, and one that is see through for placement.  So in the following pictures, you'll notice the two different products.   I layer the dissolving foundation on top and bottom and sandwich the two layers of fabric between them.  Then I trace the leaves by slipping them just underneath the top layer.  I try to place them close together so that I use most of the fabric.  I mark this also with the permanent marker - but don't worry!  The marker is on the piece that dissolves and it goes down the sink with the rest of it!.  

I used several different fabrics and different metallic and/or rayon thread.  

Using a tight zig-zag stitch of 1.8 to 2.0 mm width and 0.40 to 0.45 mm width, I stitched around the outside edge and on top of all of the veins and stem.

Then, I cut out the leaves with a small amount of seam allowance on the edges.

These got soaked in water until the product disappeared.  It happens pretty fast with Aqua Mesh and takes a little longer with Solvay.  I feel like the Solvay also leaves a bit of residue which stiffens the leaves a tad.  After they're soaked and blotted with a towel, I laid them on a sheet of non-stick Teflon.  (These sheets are sometimes called applique sheets.)  

One last thing that you'll notice in the picture above are the transparent leaves.  I made a base "fabric" with threads that were sandwiched between dissolving foundation and quilted.  Before I rinsed that out, I followed the same steps for transferring and sewing the leaves. 

 

Some of it fell apart, but most of it stayed together and I laid them out along with the other leaves to dry.

I hope you like my process for making leaves!

Garden Lady #8 - Part Four

This is a continuation of 3 previous posts about the making of Garden Lady #8.

I added white backing fabric to the arms, hands, and face so that the background didn't show through.  Since all of these were made with Steam-A-Seam on the back, I just ironed them to the white fabric.  

Then I placed the pieces between the layers of Steam-A-Seam with the backside on the sticky part of the paper.  I cut them out with a little bit of the white fabric showing and then pressed them.  The non-sticky paper came right off and the new layer of Steam-A-Seam stayed on the back side of the white fabric. 

The final step was to cut off all of the white fabric on the original edges.  At this point, I stopped working on the original paper design, and moved all of the pieces to the background fabric.  I added a strip of black fabric around the edge so that I knew where other design pieces needed to go.

I sketched up a few ideas for a layout that would look like fall.

I used my ideas to cut approximate pumpkin shapes and leaves.  These were pinned on the piece to see if the scale was OK.

Then I made the pumpkins by cutting out different orange fabrics, highlighted them with Inktense pencils, glued them to dissolving foundation and turned the edges.

I made the pumpkin tops with brownish-green fabric and Inktense pencils , backed them with dissolving foundation, turned the edges and stitched those in place on top of the pumpkins.

Stay tuned to see what I did with all of my ideas for the leaves.  And I hope you like it so far!

Green Butterfly Lady - Part Three

This is a continuation of two previous posts about the making of the Green Butterfly Lady.  I started making flowers and leaves out of some of the fabric that I bought and some that was in my stash.  When making the flowers from the organza and organza ribbon, I placed two layers of fabric between two layers of Solvy, drew the design with permanent marker, and stitched around the edges with a tight zig-zag (2 stitch width; .5 stitch length).  

After they were stitched, they were cut out and soaked in warm water to dissolve the stabilizer.  Here's the pile of the flowers and leaves.  

And here is the face with the flowers approximately where they will be placed.  

I think it's turning out OK so far.  I hope you think so too!

Fall nest art quilt

It is starting to feel and look like fall outside.  The change in the season has made me want to come back inside and make some more nest quilts in my mixed media fiber art series.  Naturally, I started thinking and planning for a quilt with fall colors and one that would have that feeling of changing colors and nature's last gasp before winter.

I started this art quilt by making the nest with Angelina fibers, wool roving, yarn, lace, shredded material, and.....  It was covered with brown tulle on the top and the back, then stitched and trimmed.

I remembered something that I read somewhere (who knows where?) about stiffening fabric with glue.  I started with 4 different fabrics and mixed regular school glue half and half with water.  I painted the glue onto the fabric and let it dry overnight.  Freezer paper worked really well for the base; when the glued fabric was dry it just peeled off the freezer paper.  Oh, if you're going to do it, make sure you paint the glue on the shiny side.

I used some sketches of leaves that I had made and traced them onto Golden Threads quilting paper. I love this paper because it is see through, is easily stitched through, and is easily removed.  It's also a great paper for quilting designs.

These were stitched through (from the back side), then the paper was removed. 

On the right side, I zig-zag stitched again over the top of the first line, and then added the veining.  I used a small zig-zag, 0.6 mm long and 1.4 mm wide, that was just right for these leaves.  After I did all of the stitching, I carefully trimmed away the excess fabric.  

The finished leaves

 I made a couple more leaves with organza and tulle, although they were a little more finicky to make.  The variation in fabric, leaf shape, and color of thread makes the pile of leaves for this quilt more realistic.

Autumn Brilliance by Joanne Adams Roth

My background is an ombre fabric that fades from yellow to orange.  I found this at the wonderful quilt store in Centralia, called Quilters Junction.  The fabric is Daiwabo Selection for E. E. Schenck Company.  I added 3 feathers that I found this year on my walks and tilted the nest to give that feeling of a nest that has fallen out of the tree at the end of the season into a pile of leaves.

I hope you like it.