MOVING HAY IS LIKE SEWING

So, last night my husband taught me how to release the loader bucket from my new tractor and load the hay bale spear.  He then taught me how to pick up and move one of the big round hay bales. 

As I was trying to get the spear in just the right spot, at just the right angle and then get it all lifted into the air, it occurred to me that it was a lot like using a sewing machine.
After all, when one is sewing there is a lot of lifting of the presser foot and placing the needle back down in just the right spot. This is especially true when doing a lot of free motion quilting. There are lots of stops, turns, ups and downs. Never mind how we are also using our foot to run the machine at just the right speeds, lift and lower the needle and do whatever else our particular sewing machine pedal will do for us. 

All in all, there is a lot of hand and foot to eye coordination  going on all of the time. We work with patience and precision. Oh yes, and we also have to remember to breathe.

So as my husband was telling me how quickly I had caught on and what a great job I was doing, I just told him that it all had to do with my years of using a sewing machine. He was pretty puzzled by this until I explained what I've just pointed out here.

It looks like my three great creative loves of quilting, gardening and cooking are all coming together to support me in which ever one I am engaging in at the time. 
 
 This all makes me think that all of my life is intertwined at every step. I just have to be awake enough to notice it and make use of it.  I'll remember that while I am spreading those five big bales of hay on the garden this week.

 Loving my new tractor along with my marvelous sewing machine,
Karen

MAKING SPACE

The other day I had just finished reading a short essay, by Tosha Silver, that was in her book OUTRAGEOUS OPENNESS, Letting the Divine Take the Lead, when I received the clear message that today I would finally clean out the three draws in the Hoosier Cabinet.  The essay was titled "The Energy Vacuum" and discussed getting rid of clutter and things that might be useful but they are no longer useful to oneself. As a result, they suck up our energy and take up creative space in our lives.

Now, I had already been been going through the house and even the studio and getting rid of clutter on a pretty regular basis, for the last several years. I thought I was doing a pretty good job but I really knew better. 

I knew those drawers needed a good going through.  I received a very clear message that " today is the day to clean out those three drawers".  I groaned at the thought of going through all of the stuff that had accumulated in them over many years. While I have kept all the other drawers in the kitchen free and clear of clutter, those three continued to lurk in that corner of the kitchen, weighing me down every time I thought of them, or had to try to find something in one of them.

So, I found a cardboard box and emptied the first drawer into it. I figured that I would only put what was needed and/or wanted back into the drawer.  It all went surprisingly smoothly and by time I tackled the second drawer, I had decided on a strategy for reorganizing the drawers.  I also had a pretty good size box of stuff for Goodwill and the trash can was filling up.

The third drawer is the big one, in the photo at the beginning of this column.  I was shocked at some of what I found in there. A newspaper from 1988 was lining the bottom and there was a can of shoe polish that might have been from Steve's army days, back in 1967 to 1971. Yes, very old and molded. 

I only found two items that are still useful and they are now put in a more appropriate place.  I finished filling the trash can, wiped out the drawer and put it back in the cabinet empty. It's going to stay that way.

I did feel a huge sense of relief at getting rid of all that stuff.  I  had not realized how much those lurking drawers were affecting me until I had dealt with them. The more I got rid of, the lighter I felt. 

I also am left wondering why I let them get so filled with clutter but that's probably another subject for another time. I can now enjoy opening a drawer and finding what I need.  Most of all, it's opened up space for something new to now appear in my life.

I've been using this same approach in the studio. I realized that I haven't been really excited about creating anything new.  I started looking around at some of the unfinished projects from years back and felt weighed down by them.

I know that sometimes it's best to just give up on a project; that not all beginnings are meant to have an end, but these were things that I wanted to try finishing. Some of them I really liked and others are a creative challenge that still looks like fun.  I've  decided to open up space by finishing those projects that still appeal to me.

One of them is a collage that I started many years ago at a KHQS Getaway. 

I got as far as painting the background and the three green silk rectangles, and then set it aside.

Here I've accented the quilted lines with brown shades of watercolor pencils and added more paint to the green silk rectangles. I've also found a collection of antique buttons, pearl leaves, turquoise and a belt buckle.

 














It was looking a bit plain, so, I decided to check out the trim drawer.  

After applying the trims, I decided to add some beading.  

Things are coming along. More is being added and I'm feeling a bit of energy coming back into the studio.  A project is about to be finished up that I'm really liking while I'm having fun finding and using things up and making room for something new.  

Hopefully, I'll be posting the photos of the finished piece in a few days. 

To paraphrase Tosha Silver, "when we let go of what we don't need, what we do need can then arrive."  

I'm opening up space and inviting in more creative energy.

Creating Always,
Karen 

 

FRACTURED GRAPES- Translating a photo into a quilted piece

This photo was issued by the Quilt Artists of Kentucky as a challenge. We were to translate it into a 12" square quilted piece.  I chose to print parts of the photo on fabric and go from there.

I started by cropping out the leaves and only printing the grapes on a 8"x10" piece of paper.
Here's the photo that I printed.

I then cropped out the leaves and printed them as narrow strips on paper.

I then sliced up the blueberries and alternated them with the leaf strips. I realized very quickly that I had over sliced the blueberries. So, this gave me a preview of what slicing up the printed fabric might look like.

I ended up slicing the pieces like so:

You can see that I reversed the inner leaf pieces and made the last grape piece larger. I also reduced the size of the dark red leaf border on the left.

I sewed all of the strips together and then squared up the piece.  I knew I needed borders on the top and bottom to make it 12"square. I found a piece of snow-dyed cotton sateen ( I had dyed 40 yards of cotton and silk fabric during the big March storm of 2015, so, I just happened to have something that was perfect for the borders.) and cut the borders out of it.

I then started quilting it.  I first outlined the grapes with Madiera FS20 Metallic thread.  You can see that the quilting has added real definition to the grapes. 

Then I quilted the leaves using a free motion veining design. 

Once I had completed most of the quilting, I started painting the grapes with Inktense Watercolor pencils. I was excited about seeing what kind of difference they would make on the grapes.  I colored in each grape and then brushed it with Golden Fabric Medium- GAC 900.  The medium caused the colors to flow and to heighten in intensity.  It's also easy to add in more color while the medium is still wet and easier to see where shading or highlighting might be needed. 

After letting the grapes dry overnight, I finished the rest of the quilting and proceeded to color in the rest of the piece.  The borders were covered with Fabric medium mixed with paint pearls by Jaquard.

I finished off the grapes with a slight coating of gold metallic Tushineko Ink, that gave the grapes a lovely frosted look.

I am going to try printing and painting again. I really love working with the watercolor pencils. I've also discovered that I can use Prismacolor and other brands of watercolor pencils that give the same effect and allow me to work with a broader range of colors.  I'm also excited about adding in details with ink pens. No telling where this will all go.

Off to a night on the town with the husband and friends,
Enjoy,

Karen

DUTCH GARDENS RE-DO

A DUTCH GARDEN 2002

I designed and made this quilt in 2002. It was my first try at interpreting a photo into a quilt and doing something abstract.  The photo had been taken by a friend while she was on a tour of Holland.  Unfortunately, I don't have the photo.  It showed a river of purple Muscari flowing through the middle of the garden with red Tulips and white Anemones on one side and pink Hyacinths on the other.  A large, dark tree was at the back of the garden.

I painted the red tulip pieces onto cotton sateen and then cut them out and appliqued them by machine.

I hand dyed the pink Hyacinth fabric.  It is a silk/hemp blend that was wonderful to manipulate into ruched flowers. I tried doing some three dimensional leaves that ended up looking pretty flat. They also blended too much with the background.

In the end, I liked the quilt but it never hung even close to straight.  I somehow stretched it out in places so that it bulged and hung crooked.  

 

The bottom edge was very wavy.

  
A few weeks ago, I decided to see if I could straighten the edges by easing them into the right size using Pearle Cotton. I stitched along the binding and then gradually pulled up on the stitching until all the edges laid flat.  Well, I mostly got the edges to lay flat and straight but then I noticed there was severe bulging in the body of the quilt.

So, I decided to see what would happen if I added in large embroidery stitches that would add texture and allow me to gradually ease out the bulge.


 

Grass done with large stitches and #5 Pearle Cotton thread.

 Here I've added in "grass" where the bulging was really bad.  It's really great because I had also realized that I had not put much quilting into this piece, so now I've added in more stitching that is also very full of texture.  You might also notice that the leaves have been manipulated to look more like actual leaves. No more flat leaves.


 I loved the texture so much that I decided to add in stitching around the Tulips and Anemones, even though there was not any bulging in this area. I was very careful to not pull too tight on the stitching.

First Layer of Stitching

 

Three layers of stitching

 I really liked all the texture the stitching had added to the design, and I was getting a lot of the bulge out. The biggest part remained in the purple area where I had couched down a bunch of fuzzy yarn. 

I used black #5 Pearle Cotton to stitch large herringbone stitches into the area and pulled up as much as possible on the stitching.  Then I started adding in large crystal beads as I did the stitching.  

The bulging all disappeared and the crystal beads are all sparkly and wonderful.  

I then added in painted highlights on the tulips, anemones, hyacinths and leaves.  I used Inktense Watercolor pencils, Stewart Gill and Lumiere fabric paints.  Here are some close-ups of the painting.

I painted in veins and a more of a center. Green crystals are in the center now.

Painted leaves and Hyacinth

Then it occurred to me that leaves, toads and frogs would be lovely additions to the grassy and twiggy backgrounds.


 

Toads and clusters of pink glass bead flowers.

Glass leaves and red tulip beads in the twiggy background.

Last of all, I added in black agate leaves to the tree in the back of the garden. The tree canopy is distressed cheese cloth that has been dyed black.

Here is the finished "RE-Do".

Notice the purple frog that is jumping off of the quilt?  It really added to the fun of all the other dynamic changes that I made to update this piece. I have it hung in my yoga/office room and just love it.  It does wave when it's hanging but there are no bulges or wonky areas anymore. 

I have discussed a large variety of techniques here and I hope that one or more of them may inspire you to either do "RE-Do" or create a new piece.

Off to the studio to Create some more,

Karen

FRACTURED WATERCOLOR GARDEN: Embellishing with Inktense Watercolor pencils

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This piece builds on the "FRACTURED WHEEL" pieces that I published earlier.  In this case, I created two mirror image pieces, quilted them and then "painted in details" before slicing the pieces apart and.... 

 

Starting at Step One: 

I created the Mirror Image squares using two batik prints.  I used a Bronze metallic thread, FS20 by Madiera Threads.  Here are two photos of the quilting,  and with some embellishment started.

 

 

 

 

 

 Before I get into working with the Intense Pencils, I'm backing up to the quilting process.  The quilting on the blue/beige piece was done through freezer paper.

 

I freehand drew a design then ironed the freezer paper onto the quilt sandwich.  It was very easy to quilt through the freezer paper and I already had an idea of what the design would look like. 

 

 

 However, getting the paper peeled off was a real job!  So, for the second square, I figured if I can draw a design freehand with a pen, then I can do it with the machine, so that's what I did.  

 

I colored in the quilted areas with the Intense Pencils after I finished the quilting. After each section was colored in, I went over it with Golden Fabric Medium GAC900. That smooths out the color and and makes it brighter. It also allows for the blending of colors. In some areas I added in highlights after the medium had been laid down.  The medium also makes the colors permanent, once everything is dry.  I did find out that I had to be careful not to do too much at one time. Bleeding of the color can occur if the fabric gets too wet with the medium.  I only used the color pencils on the beige fabric.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once everything was dry, I added in white highlights using white acrylic paint.  I also used a metallic white paint to embellish the narrow blue pieces.. Unfortunately, that doesn't show up here but it does in the final piece.

 

So, after doing all the quilting and the painting, I split the pieces into strips. That's right, I took two finished pieces and cut them apart into strips! 

 

Here the strips are alternated with each other and ready to be fused to a backing. Trying to seam the pieces together would have taken away from the design and added too much bulk to a small piece.  It finished out at 16" by 20".  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 You can see the white painted highlights on the narrow blue fabric pieces.

After fusing the pieces to a background, I free motion sewed over the seam joinings and then covered them with a bronze colored yarn that was like a silk cord.  I had already embellished each seam line with the same yarn.  

 

 

I also decided to add in some bronze highlights on the blue fabric.  I used Lumiere Bronze Metallic paint by Jaquard.

This was a fun way to practice a couple of new techniques and experiment with painting on a quilted piece using both acrylic paints and the Inktense Watercolor pencils.  This method also works well with Prismacolor pencils.  I happen to like the more intense colors that I get with the watercolor pencils. 

 

I also like working  with printed fabric rather all white fabric. The addition of the fabric print really increases the depth of the design.

 

 I also love the movement that was  achieved by cutting the squares into strips and then alternating them into a design that weaves in and out with itself.

 

I love this very elegant piece of art work.  

CREATING ALWAYS IN JOY,

Karen

FRACTURED WHEELS #1 and #2

NOTE about colors: The true colors of these pieces are somewhere between the light and dark in these photos. 

These two 12" squares started out as the answer to the challenge of interpreting a photo of  an old wheel. 

Here's the photo of the old wheel. The photo was taken by a member of the Creative Camera Club of Lexington. Unfortunately, I do not know the name of the photographer. Their photo is being used in conjunction with the Quilt Artists of Kentucky on the Quiltography Project 2015-2016.  Those of us who have chosen to participate must agree to interpret a published photo in whatever style we see fit, as long as the piece is 12" square.

 

I started with two squares of fabric, one from a light colored commercial batik and one a dark color. In this case beige and blue.  I free hand cut the squares into curved pieces, then switched out the pieces to create two blocks. I pieced the blocks and then quilted them. I free motion quilted, using my home Bernina Machine, with Madiera FS20 Bronze metallic thread.

After quilting each square, I cut circles out of them and placed them into the alternating piece. I used a wide zizag stitch to anchor the circles into the holes.

Once I had the circles anchored into the holes I started adding embellishments.  Fuzzy yarn outlines each shape in the piece with the light background. Shiny ribbon outlines the shapes in the piece with the blue background. 

  I found some lamp glass beads, glass leaves and glass chips to use on the pieces. Even after I started  adding in the beading,  everything looked a bit dull still, so, I decided to see what would happen if I colored in each of the circles with water color pencils.  You can see where I started with the circle in the lower right hand corner.

In these photos you can see how I shaded in each circle and then painted a white highlight on each circle. I also painted the grass.

 

After coloring in each area, I went over everything with Golden GAC 900 fabric medium. The colors blended beautifully and were deepened in shade.

Last of all, I added in some painted highlights to the blue pieces. 

The square with the light background is my official entry into the Quiltography Challenge.  All of the work will be on display next November in downtown Lexington, along with the original photos. 

These two pieces were so much fun that I decided to see what would happen if I created two more squares, painted them, fractured and then put them back together. 

I ended up with FRACTURED WATERCOLOR GARDEN. 

More about that in another upcoming post. 

CREATING ALWAYS with JOY,

Karen

FLYING SWALLOWS BARN QUILT

I designed and made this small quilt to give as a door prize at the Woodford County Barn Quilt Road Rally. Folks have come in from all over to drive our back roads and take photos of our barn quilts. 

 

 

The piece is an interpretation of our Barn Quilt which is based on the "Flying Swallows" quilt pattern. Our barn quilt is 8' square and is quite a presence on the landscape. Over the last few years, I have talked to several people who stopped to take photos of it. One day, I went out to say hello to someone and it turned out to be a quilter that I had met many years ago at a Kentucky Heritage Quilt Society Getaway. We remembered each other immediately.

The pattern is a difficult one to draft and even more difficult to hand piece ( I wouldn't even think of trying to machine piece a twelve inch square), so, I drafted it on freezer paper, ironed the freezer paper with the drafted design onto a piece of white cotton, made a quilt sandwich ( or should that be a quiltwich?) and quilted in the basic lines of the pattern.

I then proceeded to color in the different shapes using Derwent Watercolor pencils.

  

This photo shows the shapes all colored in and the colors sealed with Golden Fabric Medium.  I am adding in more detail quilting.  

Here is the piece with the rest of the quilting. At this point, I am also ading in another layer of color using more of the water color pencils and fabric paints by Stewart Gill.

 

 

To finish up, I beaded in small clear crystals where several of the points come together. I finished the edges with a black ribbon and satin stitch edge.  I then mounted the piece onto a 12" square artist canvas on which I already painted the edges black.  

Hopefully, whoever gets to take home this little "Barn Quilt" will really enjoy it. I certainly enjoyed making it. Now that I think of it, it would be fun to make someone elses Barn Quilt for them. 

CREATING WITH JOY and PASSION,

Karen