Stretching For More ATC's

For the latest round of ATC's I made for the CQFA exchange I started with this fabric I'd made with Shiva Paintsticks and an arched design rubbing plate.  I layered it with batting and backing and did a bunch of linear quilting in rainbow rayon thread.

Then I cut out the ATC size (2.5 x 3.5"), focusing on choosing interesting color and texture combinations.

I experimented with which color to satin stitch around the edge.  First with the rainbow thread, and then with a darker purple.  I liked how the darker purple looked so I did the rest in that color. 

They didn't look "done" yet, so I went to one of my boxes of collage stuff to find something interesting.

How about these small colored rubber bands?

They look pretty cool and I like how the colors pop against the background.

Just stitching them down didn't look very good.

Should I add more? No, just one of each color per ATC, I decided.  These are from the Container Store by the way, although I bought them a long time ago so I don't know if they are still available.  I love finding unusual office supplies don't you?

Going back to my "collage stuff" box, I found the plastic sleeves from slide development (remember those days).  Turned out that worked perfectly, like a little clear envelope.

Here's a closeup so you can see how the stitching looks on the plastic.  I liked how contained the rubber bands looked now.This time I made labels in Word and printed them out on fabric, adhering them with fusible web.

Proverbial Quilt

What a thrill and surprise to receive in the mail this scholarly international journal, Proverbium.  It is the yearbook of international proverb scholarship published by the University of Vermont. 

 A while ago, the author of the article my quilt is in,  Marsha MacDowell , contacted me to see if she could use the image of my quilt and my artist statement from the quilt challenge I participated in a long time ago.  The Proverbial Quilt Challenge has some really excellent  and creative quilts, you should check them out.

And here's the quilt in color.

Closeups Of Recent Works

Some recent detail photos  of quilts that I've completed and/or photographed for submitting to various shows.The first two are from "Taking My Lumps" which is made with a heat-set, shape-resist technique.  Also shows the beads that I added to help hold the 3-d piece of fabric to the quilted background.

This is from "Corpus 3", third in a series using discharged, recycled cotton/lycra fabric.

Inspirational Small Art

Looking over some of the goodies I bought on our vacation, I thought I'd share these fun art-related ones I purchased in Portland at Reading Frenzy.  Reading Frenzy is an "independent press emporium", selling zines, screenprinted cards, small art, and handmade books like this one.  A very cool place that I enjoyed hanging out in.   Once I picked this little book up I couldn't put it back down.  It is shaped like a matchbook, with  rich, intense colors and an intriguing little fable with engaging illustrations. 

This is from

Red Star Art, which I was unable to find a link for unfortunately, I'd love to find more of her/his/their work.

When you open the book, the folded pages of the story stick up like the matches would.

 And here is the back of book. 

I loved the "close cover before striking" nod to the matchbook format.

I really liked the quote here, plus the design of this screen-printed card was really cool.

Finally, from a more well-known artist, Nikki McClure, a great image of a woman sewing.  Don't you love that one spot of red in the image?

River, Lake, Pond

I came back from our vacation inspired by all the many forms of water I'd seen.

I couldn't list them all of course since I only have six words to work with. What else did I see, hmmm, rain, fog, snow, ocean, etc.

All the words were stamped onto fabric with two of the alphabet stamps that I have collected. (I think I have 8 now! Really love all those fonts you know.). The words say: "River, Lake, Pond. All Our Water."

Seeing Many Miles

I can't believe that this is the 30th in my year-long series of weekly six-word memoir quiltlets.

This time the words say:

"Going To Seattle. Seeing Many Miles."

The eye you might recognize from my hand-carved stamping I recently blogged about.Sometimes these embroidered words show up so much more clearly. I know it has to do with the fabric I'm using, or maybe the batting, definitely the thread, and probably the newness of the needle. Lots of factors. I'm glad it came out so clearly this time as I wanted a more clearly graphic look to the words.

Stuck In The Forest

Twenty-ninth in the series of six-word memoir quiltlets. Words say: "Stuck In The Forest. No Horizon"

I used one of my favorite alphabet stamp sets, actually from Disneytm. It had that fairytale lost in the forest look that I was thinking of for the words this week.

Can you "see the forest for the trees?"

Testing My Patience

28th in a year-long series of six-word memoir quiltlets. This one was made during the week I was trying to make several quilt blocks that were really challenging me.

The words say: "Block Making Tests My Patience. grrrr"

I like the contrast of the heated words with the cool colors.

Ticket To Park Lunch To Eat

No, I haven't stopped making the six-word memoir, just haven't posted them for a while. I got to the half-way point and got off-track on actually sharing the pictures of what I've made. Anyways...This one is #27 from back in July!The words say: "Ticket To Park Lunch To Eat" although the way I wrote it, I suppose it could be "Ticket to Lunch Park to Eat" almost the same thing, but not really. The stitching reminded me of the bird tracks I saw on the sand. A ticket to park at the harbor for lunch, and a label from some random piece of my son's clothing. Yes, he's still removing all labels from stuff...

Woven Rainbow

Here's another piece I've just finished, titled: Woven Rainbow. It has been in my to-finish pile for quite a while and I'm glad that I can finally call it done.

I loosely wove together strips of my hand-dyed fabrics with some beautiful commercial yarn-dyed plaids. For a while I was stuck on how to quilt this, and whether or not to make it into something wearable (since I like the colors so much).

Finally, I hit upon something that I thought worked to keep the causual, loosely woven look. Not overly quilted, still pretty unstructured and yet anchored down enough to hold together.

Wired Birdhouse

One of my newest quilts, Wired Birdhouse.
All collaged from scraps and quilted in a mostly grid-like pattern, the edge is a fuzzy, multi-colored yarn.

Pieces of old jewelry, sewn on with beads.

A bird with a tassel tail from a former mobile.

Computer guts. And an embellished shisha mirror.

Making Mixed-Media With Free Stuff

Here's my story of making something out of free stuff. All of which is from the last time I visited FabMo. I hadn't gotten around to putting it all away, so I thought I'd see what I could make by combining as much of it as I could. These painted wood pieces were interesting colors to start with, and I liked the size. But, the question came up immediately as I considered using these. How will I either cover up or utilize the hole drilled in such a strange place?

This ring of journal cover samples was irresistible, the shape, the colors, the textures. Unfortunately there is printing covering a lot of the surface, and the reverse side is uninteresting.

Several of these neutral wovens were appealing, some are wool, some linen and/or cotton. I plan to use them in dyeing and painting somehow. But one of them made it into this project uncolored.

I chose these tiles because of how they felt when I touched them in the bin of tile samples. They also reminded me of buttons.

First I glued down three of the tile buttons along one edge. That solved the hole in the wrong place problem!

Next I glued down some of the mesh-looking fabric, I made sure it was very frayed just because I like how that looks.

I found a sentence I liked out of a book and glued it to one of the journal cover sample shapes. Deciding which end is up was a little hard.

Here's how all three ended up once I was done.

I decided there needed to be one other fabric involved, so I chose this gold/red woven silk/rayon. I wanted to have mostly the same materials on each one, but with enough of a difference to make it interesting. The journal cover sample shape and size was not too easy to work with compared with the shape and size of the wood piece. So I ended up cutting them up for the other two pieces. I'm not sure that I like how the words look on this one compared to the other two. I may cover them up like this one below:

I photographed these on a background of the red/gold fabric, just because I liked how the colors all looked together.

So there's my story of making something new out of free stuff. These three are all going to hang together on my wall just as soon as I nail some hangers onto the back of them.