5 posts tagged “process”
OK, So much for the clean studio getting me back into the "creative zone"....
I have been sort of on "standby" for going to stay with my 95 yo grandmother when she gets out of the rehab center and back to her own home. She ended up in the hospital during my studio cleaning spree, after falling on the ice. Nothing broken, but she was treated for hypothermia, and needs help gaining more strength. I was trying to put together some pieces to take along with me to do some hand work and beading on while there.
This is the first piece I ended up starting.... Notice anything about the colors??? I don't use orange, do I??
The charm squares of the orange fabrics just happened to fall together with the manipulated coneflower photo printed on cotton. Since the rocks have been everywhere, I added some rocky pieces, then not knowing what else to do, a piece of deep brown suede-like fabric called out to be added. This is how far I got- the piece is headed to be 12" square.
I have been a member of a group quilters "team" at Etsy, keeping up with daily chatter, etc. A little while back, someone mentioned scrappy strip blocks, and one thing led to another, and we decided to set up a block exchange. We are each making a batch of simple scrap blocks from strips and are exchanging them. Many of the Etsy Quiltsy members are more traditional quilters, making quilts of all sizes for snuggling and babies to large beds, as well as art pieces.
quilting in a very long time. To start the year, I needed to clean and organize the studio- great, I have room to turn around, but still no real urge to get in there and do something.
I hadn't planned to take anything more than hand stitching projects to my grandmother's, but now I think I will take my machine and some of my nice neat bundles of strips along to work with. Maybe in the end, I will finally get back to my quilting.... I have really missed the therapy of losing myself completely in it.
It seemed like a never ending task, but I finally got the second wreath order finished with the help of Ken the last couple days of production. The second order needed to have all the wreaths decorated with velvet bows, pine cones and red berries. I spent a lot of TV time making bows, while Ken put wires on pine cones.
Here is most of the order ready for pick-up. There are 5 wreaths in each stack. The floor is covered from one side to the other- 12' wide space. 50 wreaths and 49 swags here, and 26 larger wreaths in another room.
Here are the stacks of swags- 30-32" long bunches of assorted greens with bow on top, and cones and berries. Ken made and decorated all of these- I made the bows, and cut a few boughs, but he did the rest. That kept me from having to pull an all-nighter or two. He spent a whole day and a night doing these and cutting tips for me to use in wreaths.
Now I just have a couple small wreath orders and grave blankets to make. It should only take about a day to do those, so I will be able to get back to quilts.
The last photo shows the unfinished rocky pieces on the design wall. The Rudbeckia piece is finished along with the top of the left section as the ACEO that are shown in a previous post. The left piece was cut into 3 ACEO's- the two lower pieces are what are almost done. The Echnacea on the Rocks piece is now quilted and ready for its beading, the green and purple fabrics on the sides of this are from my Elizabeth Busch class- went perfectly with the photo. I should have these finished in the next day or so.
The little pieces on the lower left of this photo are what I cut out from where the flower photos went into the larger pieces. I am not sure just what I will be doing with those little chunks- I have more flowers printed in purples and yellow to play with.
I have been playing with black, white and gray fabrics lately, and have not even taken time to show what I have done here... The fibro has not been playing nice, so my brain has been foggy, and I have spent many months just getting through one day at a time. Finally feeling a bit better, I decided to show what I have done without color, and NO, your monitor has not gone wonky-- I really have been working without color!!
I don't usually work with blacks and grays, so I had to paint up some, and even buy some. I did the sunprints of the ferns this summer, with black Dye-Na-Flow paint from Jacquard. I really like how they turned out- the ferns are definitely the focus in this fabric. When I use my colors, the color combinations and patterns also grab attention.
The first photo is one of the first tries- I had some laces that I wanted to use- here a white one on the sides, but when I had it critiqued, the comments were to keep the ferns as the focus and the lace distracted. I also played with something else here- I took photos of the sunprints and turned them negative in my photo program, the printed them onto cotton. The corners show a couple of these.
The second Photo shows the final mock-up that I decided on, just before construction. This piece was fully designed on the wall before construction began- a change from my usual way of starting and adding.
I decided against the corner negative ferns, went in the back yard, and found some nice small Maple leaves. I used these for leaf prints. I used black paint on the gray fabric, and a silver metallic mixed with pearlescent on the black fabric. The outer border fabric has a design of leaves that resemble Oaks to me.
While doing the quilting on this, I had to make thread decisions, and I am always afraid of ruining a good piece, so I had to make up an "guinea pig" piece to play with.
While working on these, I also had ideas floating around for another black and white piece.
You can see a bunch of the flowers pinned to the wall beside the piece on the wall.
Last week brought with it many "Bad Attitude" fibro flare days. I call them Bad Attitude days, because I feel horrible, but then think of others out there who must feel worse. That helps me to get up and at least try to do something. Amazingly, if I can get my brain really busy with something, I don't feel the pain or fatigue as much (extra naps also help).
It was a perfect time to begin something I had been thinking about, but not followed through with yet. Can you say PROCRASTINATION? I had an idea for a pattern to sell. Sitting propped up on the couch with pencil and notebook in hand, I began scribbling out a rough draft.
I am bad about not drinking enough fluids throughout the day. I know I feel better when I drink more water, but need it icy cold, and near me to remember to drink it. I was drinking a lot of Diet Pepsi for the caffeine, maybe it would help me feel more awake? (I know, not the best thing to drink) Buying water in the summer, I was using a lot individual bottles of water for travel. That led to my recycling water and soda bottles by washing them in the dishwasher, filling half full of water, laying them at an angle in the freezer, and Presto, ice for my water or whatever I'm drinking. My Pepsi would dilute a bit while chilling, and I got used to it this way, now if I drink it straight, it is too sweet. Now that it is winter, I stay with water, sometimes with lemon. Our well has wonderful tasting water (when it's not dry).
My problem- when I used my bottles with ice, I left puddles everywhere. I used a coaster, but when I moved from room to room, carrying it was a pain. The wheels started turning, and my fashionable bottle cozy was created . I made it to fit the bottles I had the most of- 16 oz. Diet Pepsi. (OK, I had some 24 oz. too, they stick out the top a bit) I used a bunch of my little quilt sandwich scraps, and the first one was born. This slides on the bottle and stays on it where ever I go. (Newly added.... I found a photo of the original cozy, this first photo. It has been washed many times, has some cola stains, and has spent time on my paint table- the speckles add to it's character.)
I've used my first one everywhere, took it to shows (it helped keep drinks cooler, longer in hot weather), and when traveling in the car. It received many comments, and I had some requests to make them for others. I didn't think the work involved would pay off, the price would have to be pretty high, but a pattern for people to make their own might work.
The second photo shows 2 of my new cozies, made while I was writing and taking photos, as I did each step of construction.
I made 6 cozies in this size while writing. My original is similar to the one on the left in the photo, satin stitching quilt sandwiches together. I know not everyone has these just lying around, so I made others more simply, with a single outer fabric, or fabrics fused to batting. I also found a few things that don't work, while playing (I show what to avoid doing), and have one I'm keeping so now I have 2 to use (keeping the bad one).
The pattern is almost ready for testing. It has instructions for 3 main methods of construction, beginning with the easiest. There are patterns to cover the 16 oz. bottles (the size shown), and the narrower water bottles, along with information for any other bottle size you wish to dress up with it's own cozy. Once you learn the basics, the sky is the limit as far as sizes or looks. I haven't used beading on mine, but that would really make one special, though maybe a little bumpy for holding.
The three cozies pictured in this last photo are available for purchase at my Etsy Store.
If you are someone who likes to play, and do it yourself, I will be giving away a number of these patterns in PDF format. With the free patterns, I would like you to each fill out a questionnaire that would help me find out what changes I may need, to make things more understandable, or better for someone who may not play like this a lot. Other eyes looking at it may find things that need clarification, or typos that spell-check or I didn't find. The instructions are filled with many step by step photos. I know I do better by seeing than just by reading.
If you are interested in being one of my "guinea pigs", or testers, please email me (sue at andrusgardensquilts dot com or use email link on left sidebar), with "Cozy Pattern" in the subject line, and I will get the file to you as soon as it is ready. It will be in a PDF format, so you will need a reader like Adobe Reader, to use it. I would appreciate only those who will use the pattern right away to request it, so I can get the feedback I need before making it available to the general public for purchase.
Now back to work with the finishing touches.
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.
