What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

Just yesterday I discovered a few videos in my Jane Dunnewold class that I had never watched, so of course I ignored a few chores to watch them. I learned about making prints with a ballpoint pen, rubbing a laser photocopy with CitraSolv to make a fabric transfer, and treating heavy paper with hair conditioner to impart a soft crinkled texture.

I had little luck with the ballpoint pen technique to emboss paper, though I hope to try it again now that my gel plate is cleaner. Mark Yeates has videos that show how he uses it. His results are ...

Since some of you seemed interested in this method of fabric (and paper) printing I’ll take a deeper dive. I had never heard of it before the Backgrounds and Textures class, but the technique has been around for at least a decade on YouTube, and who knows how much further back in pre-online video days.

I found that several factors can affect the thickness of the branches and ...

This past week I decided I had had it with the arrangement of my studio, so I changed it. Since I last did this I am doing more mixed media work, and am using my table more than my sewing machine.

So far the new arrangement is working much better, partly because I am now using the space between the design ...

Sometimes revisiting my scrap hoard sparks an idea for a new quilt. While shuffling through fabric I had Spoonflower print from a photo I came across large leaves that I hadn’t used in an earlier quilt. Here’s that quilt.

For my new quilt I pulled all sorts of autumnal colored scraps – cottons, silks, synthetics – and grouped them around the leaf panels I had left. I spent some time moving parts around and began construction in chunks.

I had another reason for making this quilt, a regional SAQA exhibit (Indiana, Michigan, Ohio) that’s to feature a bit ...

In the early days of the pandemic I spent a lot of mental energy on a project to make circles and ovals out of silk fabrics I had painted, dyed, and printed. I ended up separating the shapes into groups of cool and warm colors, and hand sewing them together into lattices. The warm color piece was finished in 2021, while the cool colors chilled out in my black trunk. A few months ago I was struck by an urge to clear out unfinished projects, so the cool color circles came out of storage.

I decided not to ...

A look through my quilt galleries will reveal that I have a fondness for bright colors. Occasionally I work in subtle colors, but then I usually feel muffled as I create. My brain keeps telling my feelings to dial it down. Why do I try? Because I view such restraint as part of artistic training. Sometimes bright colors are set off by subtle ones, and I need reminders that subtlety is possible.

However, my latest silk piece makes no pretense of subtlety. My fabrics collection has many pieces of bright, even vivid, silks; so if I want to use what ...

I’ve returned to regularly scheduled programming, which means I’m back to my drawer of silk fabrics. Over the years I’ve bought all sorts of silk, augmented with 1960s/70s era dresses discarded by a theater’s costume shop and men’s ties. Because the silks range from tissue thin to heavy, I’ve fused backing onto many of them so they are easier to use.

So far this year I created my fantasy village from silks.

A few years ago I developed pieces made of silk ovals sewn together, then layered with wire and cording. Most of ...

While we art quilters, or at least this one, would like to think all our work springs fresh from our creative minds, sometimes already made sources give us a head start. Like cheater cloth, fabric that mimics the look of patchwork but only needs quilting, I have used a tea towel and motifs from a bedsheet to do the heavy lifting for two of my current projects.

Because I follow Clare Youngs, a talented collagist and print maker, on Instagram, I learned she had designed a tea towel for Werkshoppe, a company that prints original artwork on products like puzzles ...

As of yesterday I have made 50 4 by 4 inch collages in my effort to complete the 100 day project. I wrote about the beginning of my effort here, and am pretty darn proud to have made it halfway.

Here are the collages I’ve made since the first 16. They’ve continued in an abstract landscape vein; and mostly contain some stamping, stenciling, or printing.

You logical types will have noticed there are actually 36 collages shown. One is for today, and the other is because I numbered two collages as 38. Since I don’t much like ...

As of the beginning of the week, my design wall was a bit crowded.

I have two quilting projects ongoing, plus work from my Textural Style class, as well as photos to inspire new projects. Starting from the top right, there’s my two single color studies from class.

The blue one is done except for an edge treatment. The red one has become a two color study and has lots of big stitch embroidery. I have a section I want to embroider, but it’s mostly done. I have to figure out an edge treatment, but it won’t ...

Finally, this year I’m doing the 100 day project. What’s that? You choose a creative project, do it every single day for 100 days, and share your process on social media. The organizers define creative widely, but I chose to make 4 by 4 inch collages from my paper scraps and stamps. Why? I already had all the materials needed, the size makes it doable, and it’s a chance for more composition practice.

Since February 22, the official start date, I have made 16 small collages. Sometimes I made two in a day as I had all ...

I have packed an art project every time we’ve spent a few winter weeks in Florida. Last year it was assorted fabric strips and my sewing machine that produced four small quilts. Years before that I took hand stitching projects that resulted in the embroidered squares of “Every Which Way” and “Torii Traces.”

To change it up on this trip I took materials for making collages. Of course I had the exciting task of sewing down all those wool felt squares, but that was mindless work. Because I didn’t want to harm the furnishings at ...

As the weather reports become dire and more and more local closings are announced in anticipation of cold, snowy conditions, I sit in front of my sewing machine and sew a warm, sunny, colorful village.

Some years ago my husband traveled to Mexico and brought back a book that included pictures of the city of Guanajuato. I loved the hillside jumble of colorful buildings and always meant to make a quilt of it.

Years passed until I was cleaning out my silk scraps at the start of this month and thought of that town. The days were growing shorter, the ...

Thanks to Drew Steinbrecher’s free online class I have a growing collection of sketch books made from children’s board books. In the past I started sketch books, but didn’t keep up with them. If you ever started a daily exercise program on January 1, found it became weekly by January 20, and maybe every three weeks by February 5, you know the process.

Drew uses his gel prints, gluing them directly on the book pages, but almost any material, paint, or drawing tool can be used as long as you gesso the pages first. Why board books ...

I have one more piece left to quilt, and it’s a doozy quilting-wise. I am enamored of circles and can get carried away when I put them on quilts, not remembering that I will have to quilt them. Of course, that’s not a problem if I take the easy path of straight line quilting.

For “Happy Accidents” I decided to feature circles in the quilting, so easy isn’t likely. It measures 29 by 45 inches,which sounds quite doable until you shove the quilt around 360 degrees a few times. And I plan to emphasize some curves ...

I’m still coughing my head off, but I am now able to follow a train of thought for more than five minutes. That means I am becoming reacquainted with my sewing machine. Since I have had no artistic breakthroughs for new work I am quilting the pieces gathering dust in the fabric closet.

Under the needle this week is “The Left Coast.” I wrote about designing it, but now I am trying to add texture with quilting. I gathered about 15 spools of thread to use and began with walking foot quilting. The past two days have been all ...

About a year ago I began a project that involved unlabeled family photos. I envisioned a three part series featuring groups of people, women, and children; all with no identifying names. After finishing one with groups of people I stopped working on the series as I hit a mental block. I just couldn’t make them into art quilts, and the colors were very muted. That was understandable as I was working with old linens. However, I wasn’t ready to take on a huge amount of embroidery to add color, and I wanted to keep the vintage theme.

My version of tweaking involves my design wall, not meth, just so you know. Since last week I have been futzing with minor revisions to “The Left Coast” and a shaggy improv piece inspired by fabric designed by Katie Pasquini Masopust. Both works have spent time on the design wall, as I drop by to squint at them, add/subtract bits of fabric, and take a photo. This process was repeated several times each day. My husband calls it “staring at the wall.”

First, thanks for all the comments on “The Left Coast.” I really wasn’t trolling for compliments ...

I would love to find discussions that address my current artistic quandary: at what point do you want to/should you defer to the opinions of others when they have a very different take on your work than your own? I refer specifically to work you feel much more positively about than others do. And you respect the opinions of these others.

Case in point, my current piece that I’ve named “The Left Coast.” It is based on my memories of Big Sur in California, though it’s meant to be evocative rather than representative. I chose to focus ...

Bloomin’ is defined as “just a casual swear word” by The Urban Dictionary, and I used a few while quilting Rhody. As I recounted in an earlier post, I have been developing an impressionistic floral piece made with fabrics I had dyed, painted, and printed.

My original plan called for an undulating circular walking foot quilting design in several thread colors. Then, I decided to create the illusion of leaves around the edges. I had already reached the limits of walking foot quilting on the circular part, so I knew FMQ was the only way I could do leaves.

It ...