Bride Dress quilt

I joined a new small group and am up to taking on a challenge that they have been working on for a while.  They all bought used bride dresses for $5 and have to tear apart the dresses and make a quilt from the dress.  The quilt has to be 70% dress, and up to 30% of other materials.  No other restrictions or size requirements.  Here's the dress I was able to buy from one of the other members who had an extra one.  It's all polyester, with some lace and beading.  Unfortunately, I was holding it backwards when my husband took the picture, so you can't see the front of it.  Oh well, trust me in that it has some lace and beading on the front.

Here are some of the ideas I had for this quilt.  If you read my blog on a regular basis, you'll recognize that some of these design ideas are quilts that would fit into my series:  Nests, power lines, trees.  Sometimes that works, and sometimes it just doesn't fit.  This one just couldn't shoe horn itself into this challenge.  

I landed on the one below, and decided it would be about 30" x 36".  In a blog many months ago, I wrote about putting up some thin black strips to mark off the size of the quilt.  It's taken straight from the artist's toolbox... they start with a canvas a certain size!  I've been using this technique ever since I took a seminar from Nancy Crow.   It's such a wonderful way to visualize the work in progress.  I hope you try it sometime too.

The straight lines on my sketch represent pin tucks.  I used two huge panels of the dress to make the tucks.  There are 33 in each panel - just enough to cover the area requiring the tucks.  I made the pieces extra large, then pinned a tracing of the piece onto them.  Since I didn't want the seam to rip apart, I sewed through the paper to hold the tucks in place, then cut out the panels outside of the paper.  Just in case something goes a little haywire, I added an 1" all the way around the piece too.  I hope you measure twice and cut once... and still allow for those haywire things that happen during sewing.

I traced the center piece too and sewed around those edges.  Here are the 3 pieces pinned to my design board.

This challenge, as many come to me, screamed out for some fun and different techniques.  So I played around and  made a lot of different "material" by painting, foiling, catching lace between netting, and catching fibers between dissolving sheets.  These were made to use for the circles that I planned to applique down on the center piece.  Here are some of the pieces that I made:

Gold foil on bride dress fabric

Painting with iridescent and glitter paint on dress fabric

 Here are some of the fibers that were used in the woman-made sandwiched fabric:

Thread, lace, yarn rick rack, Angelina fibers

Sandwiched fabric #1

Sandwiched fabric #2

Sandwiched fabric #3

Lace sandwiched between tulle

(To be continued)

Hope this inspires you to step outside your box and try to some fun things.

Sewing clothes for a cruise

I've been sewing clothes lately.  Not something that I usually do since I am so passionate about making quilts.  But we've signed up to go on a cruise - MY FIRST EVER!  So I decided to make a summery dress and a couple of tops to celebrate and take on the trip.

I have a body double made out of duct tape that is a super good tool to use to fit patterns on yourself.  However, you have to stay the same weight and shape for it to be useful.  And you guessed it, I'm not the same shape as when that duct tape body form was made.  So, I made a few adjustments to the patterns, cut them out of light weight muslin and had my husband do the fitting changes while I wore the muslin mock-up.  This was his first time doing it and I could tell he didn't really feel like this was something he wanted to learn or could learn to enjoy.  I told him it was good for his brain to learn something new.  He is a trouper.  Hey, a husband that finds pins and needles and thread all over the house and doesn't grumble is a good man in my book.

And, because I haven't sewn clothes in a while, I had to do some reading up on how to handle chiffon fabric, how to do french seams, how to make fabric button loops, and how to preshrink interfacing.  So, now my brain has gotten more workout too.

Here are the patterns I am making:

lime green with short sleeves

ivory silk slip dress as base layer

Crepe de Chine dress, short sleeves, 12" longer than pattern

I hope you also do different things from time to time so that you're brain stays active!

Reflection art quilt - Part Two

This is a continuation about the post on the making of a reflection portrait art quilt.

Bit of background:  After I finished the face and the reflection of the face, I pieced the upper and lower background and spliced in a piece to add the water in the tank.  I took it to my class and although they generally approved of the portrait (with a few small changes), the background left something to be desired.  I worked on it in the class, but in the end, I didn't like how much of a botch job it looked like.  So I started over on the background.    I'm glad I got the critique and advise from my teacher and my small group.  Their input was invaluable in making a better portrait quilt.  I do hope that you have advisers in your life too.  And not just in quilting.  Life is all about the journey, after all.

Here is the piece getting ready to go to the quilting stage. It has some of the thread work and inking done, and the organza has been sewn to the bottom portion for the reflection.

And here it is all done.

"Arielle's View" by Joanne Adams Roth 24 x 21

I hope you like it!

Quilt Guild Auction

Clark County Quilters, my local quilt guild in Vancouver, started an auction a few years ago to raise money and have a fun program.  This year, we went all out and had it in a ballroom downtown, invited lots of guests, and collected donations from not only our members but also our community.

It was super fun and we raised lots of money from our generous members and guests to support our charitable programs and our primary designated charity of the year - FISH.

Here are a few pictures of the fun event:

The tally ladies: Glenda, Carolyn, Dell, Arden

The excellent auctioneer

I hope your guild has fun programs too and steps it up a notch to raise funds for not only your non-profit, but others in your community too.

Photo quilt with a reflection Part One

I tried something totally different with this photo quilt.  It is a picture of our youngest granddaughter taken at the beach while she was looking into a vat of lobsters.  I loved, loved, loved the reflection of her face in the picture.  So I enlisted the help of my good friend, Lynn Czaban, who was teaching this class to my small quilt group.   She said she was help me figure out how to do it.

Here is the original picture and the posterized and black and white for the quilt.

I decided to do my granddaughter in tans and browns, and keep her jacket pink.  For the background, I simplified it and used shades of gray.  I planned to put a layer of organza on the reflected part with the hope that it will add to the feeling of the reflection.

Here is a picture of the face and reflection all ready for the background.

And here it is on the background, read to add stitching, ink work and quilting.

Masterpiece quilt from Katie Pasquini-Masopust class - part Two

This is a continuation of a previous post about a tree quilt that I made based on lessons I learned in a Katie Pasquini-Masopust class.

I originally thought that I would add light gray organza to the background in this quilt to give it that really foggy look.  But I changed my mind part way through and decided to use tulle over the top of everything.  That helped to hold all the little pieces in place while it was being quilted.

I quilted the piece using cotton batting, several different colors and types of thread,  and faced the piece.

The Snag by Joanne Adams Roth 2017

I hope you like it!

Masterpiece quilt from Katie Pasquini-Masopust class - Part One

I wrote an earlier post about a class sample that I made in Katie Pasquini Masopust's class.  She encouraged us to take a picture of our own and, using her technique, turn it into our masterpiece.  I decided to use a picture that was taken of a craggy tree on a foggy hike.  Here is the picture with the overlay of the intended quilt.

And here is the drawing blown up to size (32" x 62") and colored and labeled.

I pulled three stacks of fabric colors - orange, red, and black/white.  These were sorted into 7 steps and the fun began.

I used the colored piece as my map, and used the second piece for my pattern.  The pattern was cut out one piece at a time and used as a template to cut out the material.  This quilt has raw edges throughout, since the turning of all the edges of all those pieces didn't seem like anything I wanted to do.  So, I used a combination of basting spray and fusible web to get the pieces stuck up on the design board.  These pieces were stuck right onto the batting.  Here is a progress picture:

Once I had all of the pieces cut and put up on the wall, I took a black and white photo and saw some problems.   Here is the picture, can you see the problems too?

The problems:
1.  I felt that there was too much dark on the left side, which made the piece feel unbalanced.  Even though that was the way it was in the original picture, it just took away from the effect of the tree.  The great big piece of dark gray needed to be changed to something lighter and smaller pieces of light material needed to be added on top of the dark red.
2.  It needed more dark values and branches of foliage on the right hand side.
3.  The pink circle on top looked chopped off, so some of the pieces needed to be changed to match this pink at the top.
4.  Some pieces looked chopped off where the colors changed, so a few pieces had to be added to have continuity in the shapes.
5.  Some of the orange at the bottom was too light.
6.  Some of the orange at the top was too light.

Here's the top with all the changes.  I hope you noticed these issues and can critique and fix your art quilt tops to improve them before you continue onto the quilting process.