Arielle's Nest

My youngest granddaughter, Arielle Taylor, loves to draw pictures, and she knows that I like nests.  So, she colored this nice picture for me.  I thought it would make a great addition to my nest series of art quilts.  

I traced her picture, had it blown up at Rose City Blueprint, and traced it onto prepared for dying fabric.  I used Inktense Pencils to color it to match her drawing.  It was quilted on my domestic sewing machine. 

I can't wait to give it to her!

It's 17" W x 18" L.

I hope you like it too!

Art Nest Quilt #22 - Confetti II, The Eclipse

This is my 22nd nest art quilt.  It is the second in my confetti nest series.  I used scraps from making charity quilts to make the nest.  It worked well with a blue ombre fabric that I had in my stash.  And I thought that it called for a pop of color in the birds.

I sketched up some ideas for the birds and placed them on the background.  My plan is to make it a little bit funny by adding eclipse glasses on all but one of the birds.

And here I am showing how I have auditioned the orange fabrics that I thought about using.  I love how much freedom I get in the design process with my design board.  I can get a much better idea of how things are going to look by pinning stuff on the wall, then stepping back for a better view.  Do you have a design wall too? I hope so!

I ended up making the birds with several colors of orange and (my favorite) lime green.  Embroidery and beading were added, as well as a small bit of shading with ink.  Here are a few close ups of the birds.

And here is the final quilt.

Nest #22 - Confetti II, The Eclipse by Joanne Adams Roth 2017

I hope you like it!

Confetti Nest Art Quilt - Nest #21

I saved scraps from making children's' charity quilts and bunched them together confetti style to make a nest.  Then I scrunched together some green tulle to get the darker center area. I found a perfect background fabric from my stash.  The quilting was done to give some kind of ground effect to the nest.  After the quilting was done, I used Inktense pencil and shaded in the area underneath the nest.  then I attached the nest.

This time after I attached the nest, I went back and did some "long stitches" with invisible thread so that I could weave in more fiber on top of the nest.  I did this by taking a few stitches in place, then raised the presser foot and moved the piece an inch or so, then took a few more stitches.  I did this over the front part of the nest only.  Then I pulled out a bunch of fiber things, including yarn, thread, hand dyed fabric and rick rack from my collection.  Did I ever tell you that people bring me all kinds of things to use in my fiber art pieces?  I love getting all of this cast off stuff and especially like using it in my nest art quilts.  So here's the pile of stuff.

After I added the fluffy stuff on the front of the nest, I decided it looked too blah!  My husband said it needed eggs.  So I tested out several colors of black/white and orange.  He liked a marbled orange the best, so that's what I used.  I added highlights and shadows with Derwent Inktense pencils.  And here it is what it looked like after I added the eggs.  I'm sure I have the light source all mixed up, but it's OK.  I like it like it is.

And here it is after I did the facing.

It has been fun to make another nest quilt after all the time has passed, and I hope to make some more.

I hope you like it!

Nest Art Quilt Show in Camas

My nest art quilt show in running this September at the Second Story Gallery in Camas, WA.  It is a joint show with Wilson Cady and his paintings of the Columbia Gorge and areas nearby.

The staff of the gallery is so wonderful and they did an amazing job of hanging this show to blend all of my 19 art quilts and Wilson's paintings.

The opening night was on September 2nd, which turned out to be a rainy night -- one of the few during the last couple of months!  We had a great turnout anyway, and the musician was perfect.  Nice food, nice company.  It was a great night.

I even got a little picture in the local newspaper.    I hope you get a chance to see the show!

Sandhill Crane Art Quilt Part Two

The nest art quilt with the Sandhill Crane is done!  I'm showing you a few of the steps that got it to the finish line.

The ombre blue fabric for the pond was pieced into the background.  Then I fused pieces of the grass fabrics on top.  

The top of the pond felt too jarring, as one of my friends confirmed and as you can see below.  I love having an independent set of eyes to give me feedback.  Do you have your friends give you advise too?

With more slivers of blue fabric and several colors of thread, it looks more realistic.  The birds were fused to the background, then stitched with invisible thread to secure them permanently to the background.  Then I added thread details.  The look of the pond is much better, don't you think?

The bird was thread painted and then the quilting was added.  I added a facing and then the nest finally got added.  I loved the last piece (nest #19) that I did with pieces of the nest hanging off the edge, so I duplicated that feeling with this quilt.

Nest #20 Sandhill Crane

I hope you like it!

Sandhill Crane Nest Art Quilt Part One

I'm in the countdown towards my shared art show with Wilson Cady, who is an avid birder.  I asked for permission to make a sandhill crane art quilt using his photos as my inspiration.  So this quilt is a nod to his photography, while keeping within my series of imagined nests.

Sandhill cranes photo by Wilson Cady

A little background: The first time that I saw a Sandhill crane, I had no idea what I'd seen.  There were two of them in an open field inside of Grand Tetons National Park.  As my husband and I approached them on our hike, they took off, so we just barely got a glimpse of them.  Later on, we saw them in a marshy area and the picture we got was so blurry by the time it was blown up, that we weren't sure what it was.  All we knew was that they were big, had long necks, and had red on their heads.   Later on, we figured out that we'd seen a pair of Sandhill cranes.  OK enough about the bird, onto the nest art quilt.

I sketched up a few ideas, traced a bird from Wilson's photo and then flipped and enlarged it in Photoshop.  I decided to make this piece twice the size of my other nest art pieces.  Partly because the bird is so large, and partly because I have a bigger machine to quilt with now!

Rough sketch

The fibers for the nest included fancy yarn, shredded fabric, felted wool, raw alpaca fleece, bias binding, vintage piping and thread.  I sandwiched the fibers between a layer of organza and a layer of gray tulle, then lightly stitched them together.  This nest is huge, and I made it as a big rectangle to trim to size later.

Fibers being laid down

Nest after sewing the layers together

I often find a great background fabric already in my stash.  I'm not sure where I bought this one, but it works.  I loosely placed other fabrics on top to get an idea of what the background might become.  Here is a progress shot showing the loosely placed materials.  At this point in my design process, I'm never quite sure how it's going to get sewn together.  What method would you use for this background?

Here are the baby birds and the adult crane after the pieces were fused together.

Sandhill Crane adult

Sandhill Crane babies

I hope you like it so far!

Center of gravity on Art Quilts

I've never had to think about the center of gravity on a quilt before.  Normally quilts get hung from a rod through the sleeve and the person hanging the quilt can adjust the rod height so that the quilt is level.

Now that I'm making art quilts to be hung in a gallery setting and have been inserting boards with a center loop, I've noticed that the center of the quilt is not necessarily the center of gravity.  OK, I'll give you some examples of what that means.   If you take a yoga class and you have to stand on one leg, you'll gently compensate by shifting your weight, and center of gravity, towards the one leg on the ground.  Or if you've ever been in a boat and your husband is reaching out while netting a fish on one side, you try to move farther over on the other side to keep the boat from tipping over, which equalizes the weight in the boat.  OK, get it?  

The nests on the quilts are slightly heavier than the rest of the quilting materials.  If they're centered, no problem.  But if they're offset, problem.  One of my recent quilts had the nest all on one side and at the bottom.  So... problem.  As soon as it got hung up by the center loop, it tilted towards the nest. 

What it needed was a little weight on the other side to move that center of gravity back to the center.  My husband suggested some of his fishing lead and so I tried it.  

My husband's fishing led

 My husband cut a length of the lead from his stash.  I straightened it.  Then sewed it into a little muslin case that was 4" long and about 1" wide.

Encased in a muslin

 I put the quilt up on the hanger and placed the encased lead just where it needed to be to offset the nest and it's weight; thereby getting the center of gravity back in the center of the quilt.

Weight in the bag ready to stitch down

I hope this tip helps you on your art quilts!