Animal Quilt Challenge Completed - Psalm 124: 6,7

Oh Blessed be God, We've flown free of their fangs, free of their traps, free as a bird. 

Their grip is broken.  We're free as a bird in flight.

I'm so please to finish this Fast Friday Fabric Challenge.  The challenge was to make some kind of animal - including human and to use some kind of dimensional technique such as stuffed applique, cut away  etc.  When I read the challenge early Friday morning, I groaned out loud.  I mean, like, I've never done an animal quilt (if you don't count baby quilts) in all my life.  So I had no idea where to start.  All day, while I was at school, my mind was thinking on the subject matter.  Finally, in the end, I thought  I would just settle on a body part of a person.  I've always wanted to explore that subject.

Then I started looking at all my inspiration books and caught a picture of an art deco bird.    That was it!  I started sketching - putting in lines and taking out lines.  I really love art deco and this love bird had really caught my attention.  That said, my finish design was really complicated and the final quilt would be a major project.  Since the idea of the challenge is to complete the project in a week, that would not  do.  So I pared down the sketch and made it a study of a future project.  This literally is only half the design.

I decided to try to challenge myself to work with only commercial cottons.  I liked the shape of my last challenge decided to use that.  It fit the bird theme and I liked the irregular shapes.  To give the piece dimension, I quilted the base, then added the bird on top - making the bird's body puffy without being stuffed. His wings were double fused to a base fabric and cut out  - only be anchored to the piece by the tips.  They are quite stiff and you can bend them in any direction you want.

I'm happy with the piece and I'll be sure to put this kind of thing on my list of things to do.  It is 22" by 8" and took about  10 hours to complete (including the original design work).

Space Challenge Finished!

Well my first challenge for the Fast Friday Fabric group is finally finished! (Say that fast three time!)  I can't say that I'm completely happy with it, but there are some elements I really like.  I did end up using my daughter's complex cloth made from tempura paint and sea salt.  It worked up lovely - has a great textured and the color really set nicely with the iron.  I just won't throw it in the wash any time soon (grin). 

         The piece is only 18" by 8". I used a commercial print from Paula Nadlestern's designs for the little star bursts.  I embellished this with Glitter, holographic thread from Superior threads.  The shine you get out of this thread is crazy so I don't use it often.  It did move through my machine well though.  The last embellishment was fusible little gems that I bought at Walmart.  They went on well but getting them all ironed into place was a exercise in patience. 
         I finished the edges just using a free motion stitch all along the very edge.  I never did that before and I thought I would like to try it out.  The bit of green color and texture around the edge seems to be working.
I was happy with the use of color and texture in the piece.  I was not happy with the free motion quilting that I used.  I used a sulky metallic thread and it just doesn't come out evenly with my machine.  I've tried all sorts of tensions, needles etc and its never worked well.  I should have just used a nice shiny rayon and it would have been fine. Still it was nice to try the iron on gems and see how cool tempura paint works on fabric.

Space - A Joint Adventure

Well the space odyssey continues.  After waiting 3 days for my dye-na-flow fabric to dry, I concluded that it didn't look dark  nor interesting enough to use for my space challenge.  So much for experiments.  Still there was something that was of interest sitting next to this very dull looking cloth.


You see, my daughter, seeing me having fun painting fabric decided she wanted to play too.  Well her momma, being mean and stingy as ever, told her she was welcome to do it but using scraps and her own tempera paints.  She, being the creative 12-year old that she is, got after it.  And what happened. . . .a really - really great piece.  Just super!!  Wayyyyyyyy better than her momma's . . . . .sighhhhhhhhh.

Still not only is she a great artist in her own right, but she's generous.  She told me to go ahead and use her piece for my project - washable tempera paint and all.  Of course, my daughter being a chip off the ole block, also asked for credit (grin).  So here is her amazing complex cloth - her first piece.  Ain't it great?!


Hopefully the rest of my design will do it justice.

Space - The Final Frontier

I took a break from the trapezoids today to start a new adventure.  Recently, I joined an online group called the Fast Friday Fabric Challenge.  The premise of this group is that on the last Friday of the month, a challenge would be issued.  You are to work as quickly as you can (and that's relative!) to complete the challenge experimenting creatively along the way.  There is no judging nor anybody looking over your shoulder.  You don't have to do any challenge - you can take as long as you want and you don't have to follow the guildlines of the challenge if you don't want to.  All in all - a very friendly but motivating group!

I've joined them in their fourth year which is themed around nature.  This month's challenge is outer space . You also are encouraged to use some new embellishing or material that you might not usually use.  Now, I'm not ashamed to say that I'm firmly in the fiber arts camp that less is more when it comes to embellishing.  I realize that a lot of the market is pushing artists to buy all sorts of media and products to use in their art, but its honestly not for me.  I have enough trouble trying to get good design using basic composition techniques without worrying about all that bling!

That said, I thought it was a perfect chance to try out the  sampler set of Dye-Na-Flow paints, I bought last year but was too chicken to use.  I gleaned inspiration from Hubble's Image site and off I went.  Let me tell you, if you can't get inspired from those amazing pictures, then you might want to try another topic.  Without much fanfare, I just got a nice piece of left over white fabric, taped it to my dyeing tablecloth, and wet it down.  I just squeezed little drops from the bottles and used a brush to blend them all in.  After they were the way I wanted them, I sprinkled sea salt on it.  I have no idea if this is the way you are suppose to do it, but since I was exploring, I figured I could do it anyway I wanted.  So far, I'm happy with the results and it was what I had in mind.

Now I'm just waiting for it to dry to compose the rest of the piece.  Since its a rainy day in Northwestern PA, it might be a while.  Still, its not as if I don't have any hand work to keep me busy.  I did manage to get 30 pinwheels done this week. Just in case you're keeping track - that's 180 blades used! (as I tell my students - math - its everywhere!)