13 posts tagged “color”
This post is a bit later than planned, but the past few days have been a bit busier. Note to self--- Don't even pull one weed without gloves if you have a history of breaking out in itchy blisters. I found many perennials buried in the weeds at work, and decided to give some Hibiscus plants a break, pulling just a few weeds out from their pots and surrounding area. I then didn't think to wash my hands after doing it, and now I am paying the price-- fat, red, itchy fingers-- It's not the first time, so I should know better. Ice packs are wonderful things!
Now to the fun part.... I played with my chalk pastels a few days ago. The weather hasn't cooperated with sunprinting, so I decided to use the breezy, humid weather for other paint play. I learned about using chalk pastels with acrylic and textile paints from my workshop with Elizabeth Busch this summer. The chalk stays put when used with the paint, when the paint dries the chalk doesn't rub off. I got some great effects, and got myself a larger selection of pastels to play with. Irises are one flower I have used in my quilting a lot, but they don't do well for sunprinting. They are great subjects for the chalk!!
Another thing I did that I don't normally do, is to stack 2 pieces of fabric on top of each other to see what I would end up with on the bottom piece. For this I used a more open weave fabric than I usually use. The photo here shows the 2 pieces together.
A lot of the chalk did go through to the second piece. The green for the leaves shows the most, and the lightest colored flowers in the middle are very faint. I will have to try again with the tighter weave fabric I usually use. I don't know if as much will go through.
Here is another set of "twins". I tried for a landscape look, here. I think I really like the under piece better than the top one. It is interesting how the greens transferred through.
Here is another landscape type piece. I was trying to get the look of a pond with grasses growing around it. I used sea salt on the green area for a different texture.
It felt good to be back to my more cheerful colors to work with, instead of the "rocks and mud" colors I have been using so much of this summer.
One good thing about the rocky stuff is that the journal quilt I entered into the Houston show was accepted!!
For something I wasn't even thinking of trying to enter, it just happened and ended up being one the jurors wanted. Now everyone will have to wait until late October for the unveiling of the whole piece. The sneak peek is here. You'll have to scroll to the end of the post.
Now back to a fresh batch of sunprints!! I actually got some done yesterday. I just need to finish heat setting them. I will show some in another post.
Being challenge leader for the Color Play challenge for the Janome6500 Yahoo group, I have decided to pull out some old UFO's to see what will happen. In the earlier post, I showed photos of some of what I found. I began to play with 3 of them, and here is what has happened so far.
Here are the photos of my first subjects. The little "blahhh" hangings are small pieces I used to make and sell at craft shows. These two didn't get finished for some reason. The one with the butterflies didn't even have the quilting finished, and some of the blue markings are still there.
The star and paisley wall hanging top was another of a series of hangings I sold regularly. This one never got finished probably because I had moved on to other things or that style of hanging wasn't selling as well. I know that I would not use that paisley fabric in anything I do now.
There is nothing I can do to hurt any of these, so there is no pressure to end up with a "masterpiece". Great pieces to try things I would not have otherwise tried.
I usually paint on plain white fabrics, so this is a bit different for me.
After coloring with the pencils, I added a layer of diluted Super Sparkle textile paint over it to add some glimmer and to keep the color in place. I then added touches of yellow and white chalk pastels to add more interest onto the wet paint.
I also added different shades of green pastel to the leaves. This piece definitely looks different from it's beginning, but it still needs something- more quilting...
This is the result after the quilting with clear thread in the background. I still am deciding as to whether I will add a hint of color behind the flowers or not, but this one is done for now. I will probably trim the edges neatly, and add my usual couched yarn binding. The pillowcase finish on the edges here are a bit ruffled.
Next is the butterfly piece. I didn't even finish the quilting to outline the butterflies, so started with a quick drawn line with blue pencil, then quilted with the clear thread.
The quilting lines will give me an outline to color in.
I'm getting a bit better with this blogging, just over a week since last post. Since then, I'm a year older, attended a weekend long family reunion, spent time with grandkids plus one, and attended my quilt guild's annual picnic at Round Top Park- a park between home and the NYS border.
Here are some photos of a few UFO's I dug out. I am hosting a "Playing With Color" challenge through Sept. on a Yahoo challenge group. Members are being challenged to pull out all those art supplies laying around the house such as paints, crayons, colored pencils, pastels and more, to see what they can do to change the look of fabrics. I am challenging myself to take some old UFO pieces and change or add to them by painting, stamping, drawing, or more to see if they can become something better.
Here are a few pieces of fabric I pulled out to play with one day. I am also playing with printed fabrics instead of just the white I usually paint. I had just gotten my supplies outside to work when my son arrived with our grandson and his cousin (4&5 years old). As soon as they saw I was going to play with paint and fabric, they wanted to join in, so I set them up with their own pieces and some paints and stamps. They had a great time... I got nothing of my own done. By the time I got the kids started, the wind started blowing and I got tired of chasing things, so packed it all back in the house. I had taped things down for the kids, so they kept on playing while I put things away.
The photo on the left is a smiling 10 wk old, grandbaby Jenna. It's hard to catch the many faces a baby makes with a slow digital camera, but I got a few great ones.
The right photo is from my sister's gardens where we had our family reunion. I keep taking as many photos of flowers with the sky as I can find. We were lucky and got great weather for the reunion- cool for August, but not too cool, and the rain held off for night.
Here is another work in progress that I pulled out again. It has a photo of the old house along our road that is nearly falling down, and surrounded by scrubby bushes and weeds. I used the photo printed onto cotton to start with for this piece. I used the photo as the inspiration for "My Dream House", but turned the house into an English cottage for that one. The link takes you to the post about the process for the piece.
In this piece, I wanted to show what the house would look like surrounded by beautiful blooming gardens instead of weeds. I've often thought of this when passing by, so this is what I have so far. I'm still working on the large tree trunk to make it fit in better, and am adding some embroidered flowers to the bushes at the end of the house.
Well, here it is.... my first post from the road. I'm finally learning how to use my new laptop computer. Right now I am at Morrisville College in NYS, at Quilting By the Lake (QBL). I was honored to receive a scholarship to attend a 5 day class here. It's like being a college student again for a week. We are staying in the dorms and eating in the dining hall. Wonderful food! I'm taking a class from Elizabeth Busch- Small Works. I am learning so much and having a wonderful time. I really neded to get away, and this has been just what I needed. We began on Monday, and have not used our machines yet. We have spent our time so far painting fabric. OK, anyone who keeps up with me knows that I already do a lot of paintng, but there are so many new techniques out there. More tools in the toolbox.... New ways to think about paints and fabric.
Today, we begin cutting and composing some small pieces. The machine will come out, and I will see what will come from what I have produced along with what I have brought with me.
Here are a couple sunprints from my last painting session at home. I finally got a day that would work for printing. There have not been too many this summer with all the humidity.
Well, time for breakfast!! Did I say the food here is great? Then on to class-- more photos later of my progress.
I finally took some time for painting on fabric. The first for the year, Wow, late start for sure.
I played with squirting on yellow paint from a small bottle, instead of brushing it on in some areas. The effect in the lower piece, especially, made some neat effects. The next time I try this, I will have my materials ready better. I was digging through my pressed leaves in paper, while the paint was trying to start drying- lots of spraying with water to keep things wet.
The mud and rocks are back, too. I still have pictures in my mind of the rocky roadsides, and played with these two pieces. I painted the deeper colored one on the left, first then added some green and gold metallic. I then added a dry piece of fabric placed over the first, brushed the rose onto the top (back of piece #2) and pressed them together while brushing. I then scrunched and lay the pieces separately on the rock pile in our side yard that was to house a swimming pool. The lichens on the rocks helped to make some neat patterns.
I'll see what happens today, still humid, but sunny.
This morning when I came to the computer, I found a little questionnaire from someone on the Janome 6500 Challenges Yahoo group, about colors- what our favorites, etc. That really got me thinking some more, so I decided to jot down some more thoughts here. They may be a bit random, but what popped out.
Sometimes, I have thought of myself as somewhat of a "Color Junkie". Certain colors, or combinations of colors really fascinate me. I prefer more mottled and blended colors over flat solids. I love the depth that variations in shades, tints, and tones of colors give a piece of fabric. It doesn't even have to be fabric. I love the color of my cobalt blue wine bottles, perfume bottle and a casserole dish my mom gave me. The casserole dish is too pretty to use- great to stare at, though.
As anyone who is familiar with my work can tell, I like mainly cool, soothing colors, and red is a color I rarely use.
Having a degree in horticulture, and playing with plants and flowers has possibly affected the colors I like, though I don't ever remember liking red, I've always been a pink person. There are many flowers that are said to be red in color, but are really more of a cherry, magenta, or cerise. I do like these shades of red, as they are on the pink or blue, cool side of red (more like pink), and not the warmer, orange side. My least favorite flower is the red geranium, used so much for Memorial day planters. Of all the thousands of geraniums I have grown over the years, I really only liked the "colored" ones, or anything that wasn't red. There are great varieties in shades of pink, lavender and fuchsia, and more. While doing my Journal quilts in 2002, I decided to pound a red geranium flower on my May quilt, and found that there is a little good in the red geranium- the color released was a purplish pink.
Typical English cottage gardens, with Delphiniums in all shades of blue, roses rambling in shades of pink, foxgloves, hollyhocks, irises, and daisies, and more, are my favorites. As with "My Dream House" there are lots of purples, and blues, with pinks, white and small touches of yellow. In my gardening as well as my quilting, I don't use much red. When beginning my front yard garden, a Daylily bloomed with reddish orange flowers, and it was promptly dug up and tossed into the woods, where it has multiplied happily, bringing a bit of color where would be none, but away from my pinks and purples. A bit of or orange is creeping in with the newer varieties of Echinaceas. The flowers of these are not totally orange, but have lavender or purplish undertones to the orange color. A couple others with great foliage colors and, or, textures are allowed with golden yellow to orange flowers.
To help add more texture to my fabrics, I have been using a lot of sea salt, and have played with my fabrics while drying to achieve more interest. The salt is so unpredictable, that it is always a wonderful surprise when it's work is done, leaving deeper and lighter areas of color, or pulling one color more than another.
I have found when it comes to color, my favorites will help to calm me, or make me feel happy, while my least favorites will cause an uneasiness. When I find something- fabric, flower, or something else in a pleasing color, I can get lost in the color. I think the reason I tend to use the colors I do is because I need the calming effect I get from them during these stressful times of life. I will do a few pieces using my less favorite colors, but am happiest with "my pretty colors". Yours may be different, all in the eyes of the beholder.
Did you ever have a bunch of fabric pieces land on your table and ask to be put together in a piece? Well, that happened to me this week. While cleaning up in my studio (just tidying, actually), some chunks of fused quilt sandwiches fell together and told me to put them together. Now for the really weird thing.... the colors were red, black and gray, with a sunprint thrown in. Definitely NOT "My" colors. If you're familiar with my work, red is not a favorite color at all.
Here is how it all happened, step by step (that is after the "chunks" fell together and talked to me).
Photo "Chunks"- The Layout- These are the little quilt sandwiches, or "chunks". They really did fall together really close to the way I have them here. I was going to ignore them, and put them away, but they wouldn't let me do that. I only had the red chunks to use for making pins- Yea, some people really do like red. This shade of red seemed to look OK with the peachy tones of the sunprint.
Photo 2- On the Janome 6500 Challenge Yahoo group, we have a challenge to use the decorative stitches our machines can do in a project(s). Since I really didn't care what happened to this piece, I decided it would be a great guinea pig for the challenge. I decided to paint the edges of the chunks with a metallic brass colored fabric paint, and use different stitches for the seams instead of satin stitch. I put paint on palette paper and "dunked" the fabric in, then used a brush to be sure edges were covered, to seal them from later fraying.
Photo 3- This shows pieces, after the paint dried, with edges butted together for stitching. I found some stitches that I liked, and many that didn't do just what I wanted. I was hoping more of the paint would show, but after stitching, not much did. I did have to overstitch one of the decorative ones with a zig zag to keep things together.
Photo 4- Stitching done- I used different stitches for just about every seam. The only one I did more than once was a memorized group, using the snowflake like stitch in 2 sizes with a narrow zig zag between them. I did different length zig zag. OK, I have to admit, I didn't really like this yet, so decided I would keep playing.
I decided to do some more with the brass paint. A little peeks around the stitches, but not too much, so I dug out a couple pressed ferns from my sunprinting stash. I painted the first one with the paint, then pressed it onto the quilt, covering it with a paper towel and pressing hard, to transfer the paint.
I liked the pattern on the paper towel better than on the quilt, so I painted the second fern, while on the quilt, and when I removed it, had a nice negative "print" of the fern. I then added more prints with the ferns and stamped some flowers with a stamp I had. I haven't used stamps much before on quilts, but there is always a first time for everything.
More photos of the piece as I printed on it with the paint, ferns, and stamp.
Photo 11- A closeup of the flowers stamped on.
Photo 12- Trimmed to size- 8"x10".
OK, I have to admit..... I do like the way this piece turned out. Even though it done in colors I don't really care for. Just think, if I hadn't listened to my fabric chunks on the table, this would not have happened.
I guess you don't have to like the colors to end up with a decent piece, though I still prefer pink, blue, purple and green.
To see the list of books I have for sale, scroll down, or click here.
Wow, what a morning! The rain began late yesterday, and kept on coming
through the night. We woke up to an icy wonderland. Everything was
covered in dripping ice! I began my day with my camera and an umbrella
outdoors.
The tree on the right is a very old and knarled pine that always reminds me of an oversized Bonzai.
Iced pine needles on the left.
These Sedum flower heads are totally covered, with their drippy icicles. The flash on the camera helped to show the ice better.
The cats really love it out there, near the stove. That's Baby in the chair (not a very original name- I called her that when she was a kitten, so that her new family could give her a real name... we never found her a new home, so she became My Baby), I love the patches of color on her belly.
I began by mixing paints in various muddy colors. I was looking for colors in the stones and rock outcroppings I have been studying. This is a change for me, I usually use clear, pretty colors, not the colors of mud.
This would be one of those "don't do this at home" things. Never leave painted fabric near a wood stove unattended. With the way heat rises, the fabric did not get warm at all.
The same fabric a bit farther along the drying process. It was really starting to make some great drippy patterns from the angle of the board and the salt.
It's a good thing the floor out here is made for water drainage, I can hose off the drips that hit the floor.
In case anyone is wondering..... Yes, the toilet is still out here, and not where it belongs. We are still taking showers in a very cold bathroom with a huge gaping hole in the floor, the other bathroom has no shower or tub- way at the other end of the trailer. For that matter, it doesn't have a finished floor either. At least it has a smaller hole, and now with a space heater, is not quite as cold as an outhouse. So much for the weekend fix up job. Did I mention the remodeling contractor husband??
Now that the weather is feeling more fall-like, I have been staying
indoors, and trying to get something accomplished. I finally have had a
few days in a row where I have felt able to do more than surf the web.
I have been collecting used dryer sheets for a while, and finally decided to paint a few. This photo shows a few of them on a paint board. (I think I need to do some board cleaning- they are getting a bit of a pant build-up on them) The upper left piece is a shimmery organza painted blue. I used metallic and Super Sparkle paints on the dryer sheets, and tryed to do an assortment of colors.
Here is a group of dryer sheets that have been heat set, and pressed flat. Wonder Under release paper or parchment paper is needed on both sides while using the iron to be sure they don't melt. You can see how sheer they are. I really like how they turned out. I have been thinking of using the orange ones for fall leaves. Now more ideas can start forming in my cluttered my brain.
These quilts will be auctioned off, with the proceeds going to Alzheimer's research.
At first I had no idea what I was going to do, but then I began to think how I have been feeling lately, and some ideas began to form. I have been dealing with some bad fibro flares lately, and some days I can't remember friend's names, or find the words I want to say. It feels like my brain has chunks missing. That gave me the idea of making quilts with pieces missing to represent the memory loss from Alzheimers that so many people have to deal with. I feel lucky that my memory losses are temporary, and can't imagine knowing it would never get better.
Missing Pieces and Butterflies is made of pieces of my painted fabrics, a couple partial sunprints, and commercial fabrics. It is satin stitch seamed with some of the pieces missing, leaving holes. The Echinacea flowers are photos printed onto cotton fabric, cut out and appliqued, with a couple petals missing from one flower. The butterflies were added to show there is hope. I backed the holes of this quilt with a painted dryer sheet in blues and greens.
I will be sending these two out this week, and in a month or so, they should be put up for auction or sold some other way with the full profit going to Alzheimer's research.
This is the first quilt that I made using the leaves from above. I made this for this past Fast Friday Fabric Challenge. Each month we are given guidelines for a quilt to be made in a week. This month, we were to make a quilt using something as embellishment, to show movement. Now that fall is really here, the first thing I thought of was the Oak leaves I had, and the fall winds that blow the leaves around outdoors. I began with a piece of fabric sunprinted with oak leaves, cut apart and arranged, using a metallic gold-flecked ivory fabric as a background.
I couched a yarn with the colors in the fabric over the edges of the sunprinted fabric pieces. I used a variegated thread in fall colors for the free motion quilting around the sunprint leaves and to add the veins. There are also wobbly curved lines quilted in with clear thread. The quilt edges are bound with the yarn used around the sunprints. I then added the "silk" Oak leaves over the top, as if they were swirling in the wind. I only stitched the veins in the leaves, and let some of them drift off the edges. The photos show the quilt on a pre-stretched artist canvas. The quilt is 11"x14" in size, on a 16"x20" canvas. I am trying to decide just how to mount it. I don't know if I will leave the canvas white, or cover it with a colored fabric.
If anyone has any ideas, feel free to add a comment.
Now off to work, getting ready for my next show.
I still feel like I am trying to crawl out of a hole, but I am slowly
getting back to quilting more. I am only a month late with this quilt.
I have done this for the FFFC group. Last month's challenge was to
depict your home or dream home, or other architecture, along with
showing perspective in a quilt. The idea is to have a piece done in a
week. I really only worked on this less than a week, but it took a long
time to get in the frame of mind needed to actually do it.
Here is the basic house. I placed the pencil drawing of the house under backing paper from Wonder Under, then fused the pieces to the backing paper for the general shape of the house. I could then peel it off the backing paper as a unit for fusing onto the batting.
Here is the house fused over the sky on the batting. I then began putting in bushes, trees, and a few flowers. I was trying to give the feel of standing at the end of the long walk, looking toward the house, with flowers blocking the view of the walk in some places. I cut flowers from fabrics that had flowers printed on them, and shapes from other fabrics. On the right is my favorite kind of scissors for cutting the tiny, fussy pieces. They are Fiskars brand, with straight handles and a spring, and are very sharp right up to the point. No cramped hands, or dents in fingers from regular scissors.
The next photo shows the skeletons of the trees after I added more branches, thread painting with variegated thread. I also quilted the siding and roof detail with clear thread. You can also see the flowers that were not fused, yet, next to the quilt, along with some of the "swiss cheesed" fabrics I cut flowers out of.
Here is a detail shot, showing the front of the house. I would love to live in a cute looking house, totally surrounded by flower beds. I do have a lot of flower beds, now, but in my dreams, they are even better, with no weeds.
Now that we had our first killing frost last night, I guess it will be back to gardening with fabric until spring comes again.
