Dorothy Collard Challenge 2015

Look what I won! A ribbon!!

I entered the Dorothy Collard Challenge last month. This is a competition run every year by the Auckland Quilt Guild. The theme this year was "my impression of a book written by a New Zealand author". I chose "Tu" by Patricia Grace.

If you would like to see the exhibition and you live in or near Auckland, it is on at the Lake House arts centre in Takapuna until the 3rd May.

I'll write more about this quilt at a later date and hopefully show you some detail shots. Meanwhile, I'm just thrilled to have won my first ribbon!

Wallhanging using Inktense monoprints

I see that I made the monoprints last November and blogged about the stencils in January. Well, it's only March and I've done something with them!

I decided to make a wallhanging and to print a backing for it. I made an overall tessellating pattern, something I learned from Lisa Walton's book. I knew how to make a tessellating shape (I teach it!) but I had never thought about making a repeating pattern. The pink is my backing fabric. You can see the repeat block but hopefully you can also see that those leaves form an overall pattern that repeats.

I wanted to do some bobbin work using my leaf pattern on the back. I tried out some beautiful soft bamboo thread that Lisa included in an order. It was just the right colour for what I wanted and created this lovely boucle effect when stitched but as you can see, I didn't get very far before I had to stop and rethread. I'll save it for something with more straight stitching. I used a crochet cotton instead, leaving the needle tension quite loose so that it creates a couched stitch. I used a variegated thread in the needle.

I also trialed some quilting in between the leaves. I was originally going to pebble the whole thing but I felt that it was going to build up too much thread and the printing and stencilling would be lost. The echoed curves are also in some of the printing so that seemed appropriate.

This is the bobbin work on the wallhanging. Since I was working from the back, I could follow the shape of the leaves in my backing design.

And I've done some of the quilting between the leaves.

Playing with Evolon

Ann from our Arty Farty group showed us the leaves she made at Quilt Symposium last month. She did a class with Betty Busby, who also had a quilt in the Living Colour exhibition on display at the Symposium and recently in Auckland too. I saw it in Sydney last year and it was a real treat to see it again! The standard of the quilts in that exhibition are quite amazing. One day I would like to enter a quilt for one of Brenda Gael Smith's juried exhibitions. I think I've got a way to go yet!

Anyway. we all loved Ann's leaves so this month she showed us how make them. Evolon is a product I hadn't heard of before. It's a non-woven product that is quite sturdy but has a soft suede-like feel to it. It is manufactured by the company that makes Vilene and Lutrador. It's quite amusing reading up about the product. They market it as a dust-mite proof cover for mattresses and other such uses. Us quilters print and paint it!

Here are the ones I made.

We stamped leaves using Lumiere paint on the back of leaves.

Added fusible web to the back and cut them out with a soldering iron.

Then painted them with a transparent paint.

Last year I made these free-motion embroidery leaves on Solvy. They may end up in the same project.

Stenciling

I had a play with the stencils I bought from Lisa Walton. I put Sun Dyes (also from Lisa) in spray bottles and sprayed the middle of the stencil, then turned the stencil over and printed with the excess paint. Just using two colours and the positive and negative shapes from the stencil makes interesting patterns.

That splodge of blue was a mistake. I use my outdoor glass table for these messy activities and I hadn't realised that one bit wasn't dry. When I got to that bit of the table and sprayed, the blue paint just spread under the stencil. So, after I had finished stenciling that piece, I put the stencil on top of the blue spot and left it in the sun. As you can see, the sun painting method has worked and there are lighter lines where the stencil was sitting.

The stencil at the top of the above photo is a street map of Paris. I love the spiderweb effect. I will probably chop these up and make something sort of abstract. In any case, I'm much more likely to use this fabric now it isn't a solid pale yellow!

And while I had the paint out, I had a go at an idea I had for sun painting combined with stenciling. I made this by wetting the fabric first and then applying paint under the shapes (paper and leaves) and then spraying on top. I ended up going darker than I intended and I was going to crop it but I like the edges. I have no idea what I'll do with it!

 Progress shot. The paper stayed in place just by sticking to the paint. I put pebbles on the leaves to keep them from blowing away. The thread and immature grape trusses are not sprayed/stencilled but left just to do the sun painting thing.

And the finished piece from the same angle.

linoprints without lino

I had a few issues with technology this week so I'm actually staying late at work to do this! Blogging on an iPad is hopeless and my little netbook has finally given up. I think it needs to be put to rest.

How do you do linoprints without lino and sharp instruments? I saw this video by Derwent using foam and Derwent Inktense blocks (and you know I love my Inktense blocks) so I thought I'd give it a go on fabric. The only thing I did differently to the video is that I placed the fabric on the table and turned the foam over and pressed from the back of the foam. It worked well so I shared it with our arty farty group.

Very simple materials list: foam from Spotlight, Inktense blocks, bamboo crochet hooks instead of expensive embossing tools, rubber gloves and the one thing I don't have in this photo is the small spray bottles I picked up at the $2 shop.

I asked the arty farty group to bring white, cream or light coloured fabric. This is what we made.

 

Ann managed to get quite fine lines with a pencil.We started off just printing one colour.

Then Mel showed us a printmaking technique called a reduction print. Her Peace Lily is to the left. She started by pressing out the outlines and the white bit for the flower and printed yellow. Then she pressed out the yellow stamen and printed light green. The foam only takes so much abuse so rather than try to emboss the leaves, she just painted the background with dark green and then printed it. My attempt at a leaf is on the right!

Helen made this lovely woodgrain using two colours.

This was my reduction print. I did it in three stages. Embossed the main outlines, printed yellow, embossed the centre of the flowers, printed orange, embossed the whole flower and then coloured different sections of the the remaining print to get this effect.

This feather below has been washed. I think I lost a bit of colour. Derwent Inktense is permanent after it dries but you have to wet it on the fabric first. It dries so quickly when you print that I think it isn't reacting to the fabric fully. I'm going to try a spritz of water after printing and drying, then let it dry again to see if I get better colour-fastness.

Another doll finished

I'm announcing this as if I've been really productive. The truth is that this is the doll I cut out months ago! But he's finished now.

Around the World Blog Hop

My good friend, fellow educator and blended e-learning guru, Monika, invited me to join the Around the World Blog Hop. See Monika's blog post here.

This is my first blog hop and I believe I have to answer some questions...

What am I working on?What I should be working on is my quilt for the Festival of Quilts, my Keith quilt, I haven't touched it in weeks and I don't want to rush it. So, sorry, no pictures of that yet.What I have started is another doll - and learning to play the ukulele! The doll is another Abby Glassenberg design, like the girl doll I made at Christmas.

 

My last finish was this challenge quilt. I never posted a photo with the shells attached so here it is, completely finished.

 

Our guild had a retreat recently. I made these heart squares in class with Carol from Carols quilts. It was meant to be a scrappy quilt, as in four colours for the hearts. I went a bit overboard and created my own fabric from scraps. I save any squares left over from other projects, bits of binding and anything with a straight edge, and then put them together at random. It works quite well and you feel very righteous for being so frugal!

 

2. How does my work differ from others in its genre?

I like to work with two main colours, usually opposite on the colour wheel, but lots of shades and prints. I may set myself a rule that I'm going to make, say, a yellow and blue quilt but then see how far off yellow and blue I can go. A lot of pondering goes on at the fabric choice stage. This quilt ended being called Teal Dragonfly, which is strange since the dragonfly is shades of beige and orange. I love those teal to turquoise fabrics.

This quilt was inspired by Katie Pasquina Masopust's book, Ghost Layer. Working in a series really helped me come up with this final design. My other ghost layer quilts are here.Layer Upon Layer: ghost layer quilts

The other thing I like to do on quilts is paint them. I'm really drawn to painted quilts, like Annabel Rainbow's Life series. My painting doesn't have quite the sophistication of Annabel's quilts. Annabel doesn't just paint the quilt but also appliqués and even makes the quilts in the painting using English paper piecing. You should check her out of you haven't seen her quilts before. Here is my painted quilt.

3. Why do I write/create what I do?

Short answer is because I would go crazy if I didn't! I have a need to make stuff, even if it's only a nice dinner. I also have a love of fabric and a passion for colour. I have a memory from when I was four years old when my Dad bought a new car. I was playing in the car, as you do at four, and stuck my head under the dashboard, as you do at four. What I saw blew my mind. There were all these beautiful coloured wires. I've been hooked on colour since then and hooked on sewing since I made my first dress at nine.

I made my first quilt, a log cabin, in 1980, when I lived in Washington DC. It was the first time I had seen anything other than a hexagon quilt. I loved the geometry of traditional quilt designs, still do. But I've also tried other hobbies that I then wanted to incorporate into my quilting. I've dabbled in watercolours, silk painting and batik, all things that have made it into my quilts. A lot of my quilts could be classified as art quilts and I find that satisfies the creative need for me.

4. How does my writing/creating process work?

I usually start with a technique I want to try. Sometimes the design takes time to come to me and sometimes something will catch my eye and I know that will work with the technique. I use a sketchbook to try out an idea but the final piece can be different. Sometimes the sketches will be detailed as I try out different shapes, designs or drawings. Other times it's just a scribble to get the proportions right.

I do a lot of design in my head. Only about 10% of my head design makes it on to paper and then only about half of them get made. I love looking back through old sketchbooks or even better, scraps of paper I've put inside books. Sometimes I have no recollection of my thought processes. The design can be totally new to me. It's like a whole new discovery. Maybe I should make some quilts for fundraiser for dementia research. I think I'm going to need it.

Catherine Parkinson is following on from me next Monday. Yes, I know it isn't Monday but we had a total internet failure at the weekend so I couldn't get this out. Ours was a physical problem, unlike the goings on at Spark.

Catherine started the group that I belong to. We tend to just call ourselves the arty farty group. Catherine is an amazing artist, published in Quilting Arts no less! She is involved in a sketchbook challenge, which is always inspiring. Her sketches have a distinct style to them but not necessarily all the same, sometimes representational, sometimes stylised. I look forward to what she has to say about her process. You will find Catherine physically in rural New Zealand (the reason she no long runs our group) and on her blog here.

And I will leave you with a thingy that I'm making in the arty farty group. It may be a tea light cover.

Collage of paper on net viewed against glass

It's a rectangular vessel, sort of.

 

 

 

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