Craftsy class, Lola Jenkins' Thread Art

I've actually finished a quilt! Ok, it's only small and no piecing but it's finished.

I bought a couple of Craftsy classes just before Christmas and I've been looking forward to doing Lola's project. Then I had a need to make a "Don't touch the quilts" small quilt for our show next month. Putting the two together made sense.

Here's my quilt, about A4 size.


I was originally thinking of using the first photo below of my daughter for this technique but I was going to remove the Christmas hat. Then she sent me the second photo and the idea for an "eyes only" quilt was born.


I cropped the photo and printed it black and white. Then I went over the main lines of contrast with a Sharpie.

I transferred the lines on to fabric with the same Sharpie but used a fine pen for the eyes.

All the hatching is done with black thread. I also quilted Bec's hair with a variegated thread and tight spirals.

I think I used five colours on the iris of the eye! Most of that is coloured pencils but I used Derwent Inktense for the shading on the face. As you can see I follow the less-is-more school when it comes to painting. The rose print on the fabric was already doing a lot for me but I found that by adding just a hint of brown to suggest the eye socket (following on from the eyebrow) was enough to stop it looking flat.

I finished off with a satin stitch edge, using the same colours that I quilted the hair with - not because I'm lazy and couldn't be bothered getting a different thread - well, mostly because I'm lazy but I liked it anyway! So there!

Usually I would do the satin stitch edge with a stabiliser on the back but even with tear-away and a close stitch, you sometimes get little bits of paper poking out. I decided to do an experiment. Sharon Schamber stabilises the edge of her quilts with glue and then glues on the binding. I thought that was a great idea so I glued all the edge with 'No more pins' and got all the pokey threads stuck down. I'm pleased with the satin stitch and there are no pokeys!

All in all, a fun project and one I will try again. More finishes to do for the show before I can start anything new though. Hopefully I'll be posting again soon with my next finish!

Bits and bobs

Work has been getting in the way of my creativity. However, some of my work has been creative so that's not so bad. I've been a bit busy with my ESOL ladies.

We made pincushions with button bases and elastic to either go on our fingers or wrists.

Then we made needlecases. I made mine using inklingo. It's a pdf file with the pattern pieces that you print on to the back of the fabric. My printer is a pain in the proverbial so I didn't print them for my 16 ladies. That would have been a mission. It was a good exercise in accurate cutting and making sure that you used a quarter inch seam allowance. Out next project is the Winding Ways pattern.

I used a piece of discharge dyed black fabric on the inside. I think I should have washed the fabric first. It didn't discharge very much.

Last weekend I made a scarf with Cindy. She was complaining that I hadn't updated my blog in a while so here you go Cindy but nothing new for you I'm afraid!

I love it! It's alpaca wool on top of fine black silk chiffon. The purple blobs are merino and the coloured bits are silk roving. Then I also meandered a fancy yarn through the whole thing but since it was synthetic, it hasn't felted in very well. I'm going to sew it down with a fine silk thread in grey. I hoping the stitches won't show.

As you can see in this photo, it's very fine. I'm going to have to buy some purple clothes to go with it!

I've also quilted the background of the clown quilt but I'll put a photo of that up with I've done it all. Now I need to concentrate on finishing some things for our show. Hand in day is next month.

If you are in Auckland, come along to the show, 11th and 12th May at the Papatoetoe town hall.

Mystery quilt revealed

I've really wanted to post this but I had to wait until our first guild meeting so that the ladies who made it could see it first (apart from a select few who saw it in person :D).

Clown - border still to be added, 36" by 48" so far

As promised, I will share how we did this. 

Firstly, I found an image on www.canstockphoto.com that I thought was simple enough and that filled a rectangle nicely. It cost me about $2.50 and I don't begrudge paying such a small amount. We should be supporting artists - one day it may be my daughter that you are paying! 

Print out on A4 size paper and draw a grid on the image of 4cm squares. That's it on the right of the photo below.

That gives you 6 squares across and 8 squares down. A4 is slightly smaller than that so the outside squares will have more background than shows on your A4 print. Try to position the grid so that the lines cut through the drawing at convenient places. I'll show what I mean in the next diagram.

Freezer paper is 18" wide so you can get three 6" squares across the paper. Tape two sheets together and draw a 6" grid on the freezer paper, 6 squares by 8 squares.

Do we all remember making enlargements in Art at school? Look at the intersections of the drawing with the grid on the A4 print and transfer those marks to the freezer paper grid. Connect the dots - with flair and panache! (see below for hints on flair and whatever!!)


Number the squares on the A4 print and freezer paper pattern.

Cut up both A4 and freezer paper into the squares and attach the 4cm colour square to the 6" pattern square with a paper clip, ready for the needleturn applique.

I made a video for the needleturn applique but it never uploaded to YouTube and I forgot that when I handed in my iPad to school for wiping! I will try to remake it and cover that in another post. In the meantime, I will try to explain how I drew this.

Draw in pencil to start with. Although you are going to try to enlarge the drawing to look like the original, this is an opportunity to change it a bit so that it is easy to put back together again. You may have to adjust the position of the 4cm grid on the A4 sheet depending on how it falls. I found that if I started with a line touching the bottom of the mouth, the nose was divided into reasonable sized sections. If you find that a lot of slivers of colour end up just going over a line, can you shift the grid to get more of a shape falling in a square? You're not going to manage to get it fitting 100%. This is where the flair comes in.

 

Looking at the pattern of the hat on the left, you can see that I made the hatband follow the line of a square on the left side. I really didn't want to have to sew a tiny blue bit and it looks fine as it is. I've also made some of the curls of the hair go into a line as well. I must have drawn the flower about 10 times and I still wasn't happy with it but it ended up looking ok. You can see my many pencil lines!

After adjusting lines, I stuck the pattern on the wall with masking tape and stood back to see if any of the adjustments looked a bit too kooky. More rubbing out and more pencil lines!

Once I was happy with it, I went over the lines with a permanent pen with a 0.25mm nib and then rubbed out all the pencil lines.

This has been a really fun project and I'm very pleased with the results, as were the women that worked on it at guild. Some didn't even realise that this was the project they had worked on! I really fooled them - in a good way. I hope you consider doing this with your group. Send me photos if you do!

This quilt will be displayed at our guild exhibition in May and we will be making a matching quilt at the show. If you are in the Papatoetoe area in Auckland on the 11th and 12th of May, call in and make a square. The quilts will go to children in care. Two lucky siblings should get these ones.

Bento lunches

School starts tomorrow and I'm planning my lunches. I'm not going to be teaching in one class room this year so my usual lunch of left-overs may be difficult. One of my classes is at the opposite end of the school from the staffroom and I don't want to be spending all my time walking about so cold lunches I can eat in the resource room or class room would be better. Yes, the exercise is good for me but the stress isn't! Stress = eat on the run = muffins! So I'm planning some nice healthy bento lunches.

Here's my current lunchbox scenario.

My lunchbox is the right size and has a divider. Did you know that your bento box has to be the right size for your sex and age? More info on that on Just Bento. I bought a new ice pack as my old one was an questionable number of years old. But I can't find a better cold bag that this one. It's the right size, made by the same people as the box, but it has problems. It only fits the box and ice pack but I'm not going to pack any extras so that's not a problem. The main problem is that it stands up. The box should be leakproof but if I'm made my lunch horizontal, that's the way I want my lunch to stay. Also it doesn't have a carry strap for when your hands are loaded with books etc. And, the biggest problem, it doesn't look CUTE! Sorry about the caps shouting but I want my lunch to look nice!

So I made a strap.

This part velcros so I can still get into the zip pocket. Designed to be carried over my wrist.

I've also added a long strap so that I can carry it over my shoulder. 

I've hot-glued the strap assembly to the bag and I think you'll agree, it not only looks better but is more functional. 

It was also an opportunity to improve my binding sewing skills. I watched a video of Sharon Schamber's on binding (from Monika's blog? Can't remember!) and picked up some great tips. I will now use ladder stitch and not the slower applique stitch that I've been using up to now. Maybe all tutors teach ladder stitch nowadays but I've come from a dressmaking background and I'm basically self-taught over the past 30 years. I can't believe I've been doing this for 30+ years! And there is still more to do and learn!

I picked up this great tip on another bento blog. Take any minced meat (either as it comes from the butcher or add breadcrumbs, seasoning and egg for patties as I did here), put it in a large ziplock bag, squash it flat and then score into portions. When it is frozen, the portions snap apart. Clever!

This recipe is 450g chicken mince, 450g pork mince, one egg, about 2 cups of wholemeal breadcrumbs, small bunch of chopped parsley, 2 tbsp Thai seasoning from the tubes that you find in the veg section at the supermarket, 1 tsp veg stock powder, salt, pepper. I used my quilting ruler to measure the squashed bag, divided it by 3 and then pressed down with the edge of the ruler to score it. I think the middle portion is slightly fatter than the others so maybe next time I take that into consideration and make the middle section slightly less than a third.

All set for my first day back at school!

Timmy Dog

I really want a dog so I made one!

This pattern was designed by Abby Glassenberg. It's incredibly clever! I learned a lot about sewing accuracy, clipping and stuffing (I would do it better next time) but even given my slapdash approach, it turned out great. The darts in the underbody and shape in the pieces made even my sewing look good.

This is where the opening in the underbelly was, between the arrows. I started sewing the ladder stitch at the right hand side without reading glasses, found my glasses when I got to the join in the brown fabric and finished it with much better stitching! I should have unpicked the first bit but I didn't realise I could get it so good until I had done about half of the rest.

I enlarged the pattern from A4 to A3, so doubled. This shot gives you an idea of the size. You can also see that I've stencilled 'dog' on his head. I have used fabric paint, Derwent Inktense blocks, Fabrico pens, rubbing with crayons on net, onion bags and other stuff my flowers were wrapped in as well as stencilling with crayons. Then I've added scraps of wool tweeds and organza. It's a lot of fun to make.

Timmy Dog is curious.

Windswept model shot!

I also bought a bird made by Abby. Here's what happened when they met...

Hello! I'm Timmy Dog. What's your name?

I'm Little Birdie. I was made by your designer, Abby Glassenberg.

Nice to meet you Little Birdie. Will you be my friend?

OK.

Timmy Dog and Little Birdie in their house (aka The Bookcase).

2013 Visual Diary

I've started a new sketchbook or visual diary for this year. It needed a cover, of course! I painted these flowers with Derwent Inkentense blocks. I've even made a title page.

My original photograph was not the best, too much shadow, but I love the flowers.





I applied the colour in three different ways. The red anthuriums were painted by directly applying the block to the fabric and then going over it with a wet paintbrush. It's a good way to get a intense colour on larger areas. For the pale blue background, I wanted more of a soft wash. I scraped a few little crumbs of the block into my paint palette and added a lot of water. I wanted more control and blending for the orange daylilies. For them I wet my brush and then picked up colour directly off the block. Sometimes I blended the colour on the fabric just by putting the two colours together and adding water. Other times I blended directly on the block or the paint palette. I've quilted around the anthruiums only in black thread.

This is the back, quilted in feathers. The macro function on my camera changes the colour considerably!

Now I just have to fill it with exciting ideas! I'm following Heather Thomas making art every day. She is challenging herself to produce a small piece of art every day. I think if I can put something into my sketchbook every day, that will be enough of a challenge for me. But I'm finding Heather's work very inspiring. One of my current projects that is just at the thinking stage is to produce a fabric book. I think some of Heather's techniques will make it into my book, via my sketchbook of course.

I'm off to Kerikeri  this weekend to see their quilt show and catch up with friends, hopefully meet some new friends. I'm stopping off at Waipu on the way up. I'm going to see the Waipu Grand Pageant, a performance telling the story of the migration of Scottish Highlanders to Waipu following the Highland clearances in the 19th century. I'm looking forward to it. It includes horses, carriages, bullocks and I'm sure I read somewhere that there is even a burning croft!

Quilt within a quilt

This is my first quilt finish for 2013. Maybe I should only make little quilts! I painted the daisies with the art group (with no name), cut them up into the little quilts (they're quilts as they are quilted and bound!) and then put them on this batik quilt that I quilted with crochet cotton in the bobbin.

I thought I hadn't done much in 2012. I moved house three times so that made it hard to finish things but when I look at my posts, I've actually achieved a lot. I made a few of these painted quilts. More table mat sized quilts! I seem to work best in in this size!

I also made three bags.

Then I made the purple/black/white quilt for a challenge (12" by 12"), finished a community quilt (yeah! a full size quilt!) and completed a couple of projects with the art group. I've really enjoyed some of the things we've done in this group. I'm looking forward to more creative stuff this year.

I started a lot of projects last year so I should manage quite a few finishes this year. I may even get on to remaking my Onehunga quilts, the painted quilt I made in 2011. I've got a series of three quilts planned and never even started them last year. I'm staying put at this house so maybe I'll actually manage to start them.

Wishing you all a Happy New Year and may it be a good one.