This and That

So I've been working on a little of this and a little of that.  That's another way of saying I'm just doing what I feel like at the moment.  One day it might be sewing, another day it might be artwork, or it could just be doodling. 

Artwork. 

I finally finished the collage I started working on some time ago. This started as a canvas covered in narrow strips of fabric, painted in shades of purple and used and the backdrop for the smaller squares the small squares are made from thin strips of various purple fabric prints collaged onto painted card stock paper that was then cut into 1 1/2" square and the edges dipped in dark purple paint. The squares were then glued to the background canvas and coated with clear acrylic gloss medium. 

Doodling. 

I decided to try to turn this doodle idea into a font using the iFontMaker app on my iPad so I could use that font in another idea I have to create a print in Photoshop. 

My cell font idea. 

Sewing. 

I love all the new fabrics with unexpected prints especially all the text and graphic elements. And I love the Grunge Basics line of Moda fabrics especially the turquoise blue, so I decided I needed a new pen/pencil case made from this fabric because it will be something I use every day. 

I didn't like how the first one came out (that little misalignment is driving me crazy) and it wasn't quite the right size for my collection of gel pens, so I made another one.  

This is perfect and big enough for my growing gel pen collection. 

I started using gel pens when I found out they don't bleed through any paper especially Moleskine paper and I have several Moleskine notebooks and planners I write in daily.

How many gel pens in your collection?

And I had this little crazy piece of over stitched patches that I made just as an experiment and decided to make it into a little bag. 

It's full of sharpies. 

Thanks for reading. 

Aileen

Mosaic Scrap Quilt

How does that pile of scraps keep growing? Am I really doing that many projects or are they secretly multiplying at night after I go to bed. Either way it's annoying to me and at some point I just start sewing them together into little mosaic blocks. At least at that point they are no longer a pile of scraps, they graduate to a pile of quilt blocks. Then I can decide later what to do with the blocks. Last November I posted about this.  Well now I've finally got around to sewing those colorful blocks into larger blocks and then into strips and finally into sections large enough to try and machine quilt. 

Three sections to machine quilt and then join. 

Now all I have to do is make the quilt layers and machine quilt it. 

And I thought it would be awhile before I did that when I started writing this post. 

But then I took a couple days and finished it and didn't bother to stop to take photos. 

I tried two different methods of quilting and joining sections. (Method1, Method2). Both methods worked but both have different drawbacks. Personally, at this point in my experience, I think all machine quilting methods are challenging in some way. No wonder so many people are paying others to do it for them on the professional quilting machines.

For now I'm still trying it out myself. There are a few other methods out there and I haven't yet dared to try free motion quilting.

And now the cat testing commences. 

Looks like I have a 100% cat satisfaction rating.

What else matters?

Thanks for reading. 

Aileen 

A Little Prototype Book Project

I just finished this prototype little book.  It's 5 1/2" by 3 1/2" and filled with an assortment of papers including old book pages, atlas pages, drawing paper, graph paper, old blank workbook pages, painted pages, and brown paper. Basically stuff many other people might throw away. The cover is made from bonded fabric that has been folded (and ironed) instead of using a heavy paper for the cover. The binding is a simple long-stitch bookbinding method. 

The fabric for the cover was actually also an experimental project. It was a simple navy blue cotton that I stenciled with freezer paper and sprayed with bleach water to make the checkered heart pattern. I called this project a prototype because I've never made a book with this kind of bonded fabric cover. I didn't have any instructions to go by and I had no idea how it might come out but I suspected it would work. 

The book construction method is not new. There are many places you can find instructions for long-stitched books with heavy paper covers. There are a number of books and examples I referenced to understand the basic construction techniques. The experimental part was making a stiff paper like cover using fabric without glue or cardboard. 

Thanks for reading.

Aileen

The Guy Block

I haven't done too much in the past couple weeks. Distracted by springtime, gardening, video's and some new craft supplies I guess. But I did reorganize one of my fabric cabinets while I was straightening up my craft room and pulled out this assortment of rocks, wood and nature themed fabrics. 

I don't remember having a specific purpose for these pieces but they are an interesting addition to my fabric collection. And I have to admit I 'collect' fabric like someone else might collect salt and pepper shakers or teapots. I don't just buy fabric for projects, specific or imagined. I often buy a piece of fabric because it is beautiful, unique, a color I love, or a theme I'm attracted to. Lately I've been picking up colorful geometric patterns and anything map related.

 I may or may not use them in a project anytime soon or ever but I enjoy having them, looking at them and may just pulled them out and use them in an out-of-the-blue project one day just like I did with the pile of stone, bricks, rocks and wood prints. 

I call it the The Guy Block because it's seems manly and I made it for a guy. No pink colors or flowers. Just rocks, bricks, wood, and well, ferns. 

Thanks for reading. 

Aileen

St. Patrick's Day Placemats

The St. Paddy's Stonehenge 2 fabric placemats are coming along nicely. I drew up several design options but initially settled on a couple clover patchwork designs. I searched my design encyclopedias and found nothing that looked like a clover so I sketched out an idea for a very simple to construct clover block.

After making several of the smaller clover blocks I found some heart patchwork patterns and realized they could be adapted to a clover layout and made this simple but larger clover block. 

After making several of the smaller clover blocks I began sketching different layout options and I decided on this simple plan for a 14" x 20" placemat. 

The larger clover block is also set in a 14" x 20" layout with side checkerboard blocks. 

I have two more placemats to piece and at this point I think I may try to scale the larger clover block pattern down in size and make a third clover block pattern. I also have some ideas for Celtic ribbon patterns that I am may piece last. These are a little trickier to piece and look best with a directional fabric.

Thanks for reading. 

Aileen 

Cat Tested Heart Patchwork Placemats

I finished the Valentine's Day placements yesterday and they are currently undergoing intense cat testing for sleepworthyness. I'd say they were doing a good job. Too bad that bright light is an issue for the kitty. 

The completed quilts before washing:

And after washing:

I love the crinkled softness of the quilted pieces after they are washed.  

My next project: St. Patrick's day placemats with this awesome St. Paddy's Stonehenge 2 fabric. I'm thinking of some sort of celtic knot design but haven't graphed it yet.

Thanks for reading.  

Aileen

Make Room on The Wall

Groan...  I have to clear off my design wall to make room for new exciting projects. Of course the projects up there now were new and exciting at some point in the past. And I left them up there determined to finish them because I get attached to them. I really do want to finish them. I have already migrated a few things off the wall. This is what's left. 

I just have to sit one day and sew. For quilt projects on the design wall I complete sewing the top. Then it goes in the cabinet on the 'to be finished' shelf. The quilt top has to be completely sewn to quality for that shelf. Otherwise it's just an unfinished quilt and goes someplace else. I have a couple of those. 

So I have multiple stages of 'doneness':

Genesis - idea, sketched, designed, fabric picked out. 

Unfinished - cut pieces or most pieces cut, maybe some blocks sewn. May or may not be on the design wall. 

Top Complete - the quilt top has been sewn and put away. 

Ready to quilt - top, batting and back are basted and ready to quilt. 

Partially quilted - quilting design decided on, thread picked out, quilting has been started. I do this by hand. 

Ready to bind - Quilts done generally don't get stuck here for very long. Once the quilting is done all I want to do is finish. 

Complete/Waiting for embellishment - This is a special category for wall hangings or art quilts. The actual quilt piece is complete but I have embroidery or beading I plan to add.

Now I want to make room for the Star Trek quilt, some Halloween placemats and Christmas fabric projects. 

I actually have another category. 

Completed - Quilts I've made but don't have a use for. They are brand new, never used, stored and waiting to be given away. 

Buried under Purple Choices

I have over 100 different purple fabrics in my collection. I had a plan, many many years ago, to make a purple quilt for my Mom. I decided on a design, bought light purple/lavender fabric as the background and began collecting purple prints for the main design elements. 

The Overlapping Purple Print Design Plan

That was so long ago. I never got that quilt made. My Mom died years ago. But I still have all this fabric and just recently it has been on my mind. With all the other projects I have on my plate right now I don't know why this has come to mind. I don't know why I feel compelled to look at this again after all these years. It's beyond my comprehension. But I'm going along with it and to see where this goes. 

I decided I wasn't going to make the quilt I designed for my Mom but I've gone through every single piece of purple fabric I have and cut one 4 1/2" square from each print. It's been an interesting journey, looking at each one of these pieces of fabric and trying to remember why I have it and where I got it. I know I've had some of this fabric for over 20 years. Some if it seems ugly to me now and I can't imagine ever having bought it. Some if it I can't renumber at all and probably got it when I was subscribed to a monthly fat quarter club. But that was a choice also. I choose to blindly get fabric sent to me every month even when I didn't like a lot of it. But some of the fabric I love and clearly remember where and when I got it. 

At this point I'm playing with design ideas. I think I will at least sew a quilt top. It may never be finished beyond that. I have several unfinished tops because that's the part I like to do. But I haven't decided if I am just going to make it with only one square of each fabric or go ahead and cut more squares. 

Quilt size calculations and new design ideas.

One square of each print could easily be fashioned into a lap quilt or a larger wall hanging. I have enough fabric, if I repeat prints, to go to any size larger I want. But I don't need another bed size quilt and there is a better chance I will actually finish it if I keep it small. 

And now I have this huge pile of trim scraps! Normally it would all just go in the trash but since I've started doing collage art and mixed media, a pile of what used to be trash now looks like a pile of opportunity to me. There are a number of things I can think of to do with this "trash" including collage elements or fabric beads.

 

The purple trims trash piles.

You see here some of the trimmings already stiffened with a mat acrylic medium wash laid out on freezer paper to dry. It's a very easy way to make fabric usable like a paper, stiff enough to cut small shapes with no fraying but still pliable. I do this first when I plan to use fabric as a collage element.

So besides one or more purple quilts to add to my project To Do list, I'll also probably do 'something' with the scraps. I may end up doing that first. Art and collage is so much easier than sitting and sewing for hours and I have a whole lot more wall space for art than beds to put yet another quilt on.

Butterfly Outlines and Indigo Fabric Design

I have all these outlines of butterfly wing patterns I have been sketching on and off for the last couple years.  

I use them as a reference when doing butterfly artwork. I thought one day it might look interesting to create a simple black and white fabric pattern using the butterfly outlines. I just needed to do a few things like create digital and neater complete versions of some of the outlines, import them into Photoshop, clean it up, arrange it and slice and dice that to make it into a seamless repeat pattern.  That's all...  I let that stew in my brain awhile and played with different art apps on my iPad until I found one that had a line I liked and the controls I needed to make the reflected drawing. Once I solved that problem I made a few butterfly outlines.

The next step is to import them into Photoshop (I use PSE8), extract the line objects so I can move them around and change their size or clean up edges. Fairly simple things easily done in PSE. Somewhere along the line though I decided that instead of doing black on white I would do white outlines on a dark background.  I choose a dark indigo blue as the background color. So the next step was to make my butterfly objects white.

Add some more butterflies and throw in a little crosshatching texture with a Photoshop brush tool.

Add some little flowers.

Now I'm getting somewhere.

Now do it all again in a perfect square. Try to make a balanced arrangement, slice it, rearrange the pieces, fill the center, finish the crosshatching and tadah...  

an indigo butterfly seamless repeat pattern.

And I will probably do this all again, make more flowers, add vines and dots, draw new butterflies. This was a first draft exercise. I want to refine it and eventually have it printed on fabric to see how it looks for real.

You can find instructions on the web for creating a seamless repeat pattern.

Where is my Round TUIT II

In my last post I summarized my projects up to around June. Now I'll finish that list to get to where I am today, maybe. But I am never doing just one thing at a time and most projects span days, weeks, months, sometimes years. They come in and out of rotation depending on my mood, interest, or outside events like holidays or gift giving moments. Some of what I do is just for the fun of doing it and learning something new. Sometimes I have new materials (paint, yarn, paper, pencils, etc.) I want to experiment with. Sometimes I actually want to make something to use in my home like a bed quilt, place mats, wall art or a photo collage of the family. And holidays, usually Christmas, always inspire me to make something, usually many things. 

June, July, August...

* Tray collage from an old cookie sheet

What do you do with an old cookie sheet that has seen its last cookie? It's still a piece of metal, it should be useful for something. It may be scratched, stained, dented, rusted or you just don't want to use it anymore because you got fancy new cookie sheets. I had one I was using as a shelf on a wire bakers rack. Not pretty but functional. I never really thought about painting it. I think I just automatically dismissed that idea because I didn't think the paint would stick, it probably would scratch too easily and maybe peel off.  But I've been doing a lot of collage with acrylic gels and paper lately and find that combination seems to stick to anything and creates a great surface to paint and do more collage on. So I took that old cookie sheet to my craft room and completely covered it front and back with a base paper collage layer, painted it some and collaged some colorful cutout papers on the top. It actually came out better than I ever expected. It's not something that can be washed anymore, but it can be cleaned with a damp cloth. Acrylic paint is really tough, it's basically plastic. I wouldn't submerge this tray in water but I would have no problem keeping it clean.

* Streets and blocks collage

This was the collage I started back when I was still trying to make something to put the red harts on mentioned in an earlier post. Like many of my mixed medial projects it became something other than I first imagined as I worked on it. I called it streets and blocks because the first layer of papers were squares of security envelope papers and strips of text pasted in a grid like configuration.  I was playing with an idea but didn't know where I would end up. I still had those hearts I want to put somewhere. After several go rounds with paint and auditioning the hearts I settled on color, placement and the addition of some painted string for accents. I don't love it but I'm moving on to other projects. 

* Inktense blocks, butterflies and Photoshop

I don't do watercolor. My self-taught art experiments are typically acrylic paint over a pencil sketch. As a kid I loved to color and I like making art and improving my skills. I dusted off my drawing pencils and colored pencils a couple years ago and started drawing butterflies. They aren't exactly realistic but I was focusing on the wing patterns and colors. That's really what I wanted to capture. To me, the body is just an oblong shape the wing is attached to. While working on these drawings I saw a blog post or something about colored pencils that were water soluble and that intrigued me. I've been experimenting with them ever since. I first got the Staedtler watercolor crayons and the Derwent Aquatone pencils.  Later on I got the Derwent Intense pencils which are, exactly as they advertise, intense color. Recently I finally got the Derwent Intense Blocks and you can use them in so many ways, they are very nice for making watercolor like artwork. 

This butterfly is one of my little experiments. Of course, one of my pictures is never done until I scan it and create a digital composition with it in photoshop. Then I can print it on a card or something else or post it online.  Then I'm happy with my amateur art. 

*Just painting and playing 

I've been reading a number of books on mixed media techniques and acrylic painting. They inspire me to try different things with color, texture, materials and composition. I never know when an idea will hit me. I absorb all the information and wait for inspiration.  I woke one day up with an idea for a collage and was squirting paint on a canvas in my PJ's before I even had my morning coffee. It wasn't suppose to just be a painting, I had planned other layers of papers and paint, but after adding some alcohol inks and acrylic gloss I liked the result and left it as simply a painting. 

I've also been experimenting with texture base layers for my artwork. This painting had a texture layer I created with wall texture compound. Last year I covered a wall in one of our bedrooms with this stuff and created a stucco texture to cover damage and other imperfections in the wall. It turned out really well but now I have a ton of this stuff leftover. I'll be doing more experimenting using this as a texture base layer for paintings and collage. 

*Star Trek fabric

I love fabric and I love Star Trek. How could I resist Star Trek fabric. Of course I couldn't. It didn't matter what I might end up making with it, if anything. If I had it I would make something, eventually. I first got the fat quarter bundle with a sample of all the prints because I wanted them all. Then I decided I needed more of some of the prints because I liked them the best. Finally I decided I was going to make a single bed size quilt with this fabric and bought extra fabric of some prints. At this point I have enough fabric to make the quilt top and a design planned. Making it is on my To Do list. 

*And a few othr things
To be continued...