My first completed project of 2011!

I had to work quite hard on this quilt to get it finished for my Dad's birthday! Sorry for not blogging on the progress of it but I wanted it to be a surprise. Plus I was way to busy to blog on it while I was trying to get the darn thing finished before surprising my dad.

The title of the quilt is Delaware: Sunlight through the trees.

I was inspired to make this quilt from spending time in the chaise lounge on my parents deck at the house in Delaware. It was while I was recovering from my freshly broken leg and was spending 90% of my time laying down. The design is my own.

My work on cleaning the sewing room continues... I may be giving e-bay a try!

The Bargello Art quilt is finally hung!

I finally got my art quilt hung up in the front room. We live in a small split level so we have a small set of stairs going down to the front door foyer and downstairs laundry/all purpose room.

We used to have a narrow bookcase going from floor to ceiling directly to the left of where the quilt is hanging. We took this down a bit ago and I have been wanting to 'do' or 're-do' something with this wall. This quilt is the first step, the lighthouse pictures on the very left are going to be taken down and either put in storage or recycled to another area of the house. I have yet to decide on what else I want to do on the wall... but I have some ideas.

While I have been working on my other projects I have been contemplating my next art quilt. I am thinking of doing another bargello to further explore the technique.

More Art quilt work

I ended up working on my Art Quilt again today. I was originally planning on letting it sit for a while so I could ponder. However, I was just feeling inspired... so I went with it. (it;s always so nice when you get that inspired feeling!)

I decided to couch on 7 different strands of fibers, some feathery, some metallic, some like fat yarns, just a nice range of interesting embellishments to add some interest. I had picked these up quite a few years ago at a quilting show because I liked them and was glad to have had them in my stash. :) They came on a card and were called Adornaments: Fun Fibers for Fabulous Effects.

I sewed them down using a 7mm wide x 4mm long zig zag stitch in clear filament on front and off white all purpose thread in bobbin.

I also decided on border and binding fabrics. You can see them in the photo's.

couching in upper right half of quilt

(Hard to see in the photo... 3 lines of fibers along the gold colored fabrics)

couching in lower left corner


close up of fibers

The border and binding fabrics.

A little Friday evening sewing

My dear hubby is sick... and even dosed up on Nyquil he is still coughing and tossing and turning. I put him to bed early and I headed into my sewing room, iPod set eith some Norah Jones, a cinamon candle going and the nice satisfying hum of my sewing machine.

I have been able to slowly work on piecing the quilt strips together. I put them together in groups of 5. I did the first group last week before the trip to NOLA. (for more on the NOLA trip see my other blog) Yesterday I got another grouping done, and today I was able to finish up the last 3 groups and put them altogether.

I am quite pleased with the result so far. There are definitely some 'oops' spots where the seams don't match up perfectly, however for my first quilt of this type I am happy with it.

Partly finished top

The completed top

The next steps are to decide if I will add any borders or just trim and bind, what type of quilting do I want to do, and whether or not to add any decorative stitching...

All good things for me to ponder, I have some very good ideas on how I am going to proceede. I just want to 'think' on it for a while until the picture comes clear.

In the meantime I have some other projects sitting on my worktable and begging for my time.

Yes!!! Made it into the sewing room!

I finally made it into the sewing room!! I must admit that I have had a serious case of the Olympic Couch Potato Syndrome (OCPS)... hehehe and it has been fun but the call of the sewing room was strong today and I am glad for it.

I , of course, had to start out with cleaning of my work/cutting table. Things somehow gravitate to that table when it is not in use. Always such a pain but oh well...

After straightening up the room I did some work on mending that was piling up and then got to the fun stuff! I got back to work on my Bargello art quilt.

After sewing all the strips together I then sewed it into a tube and evened up the ends with a rotary cutter and a ruler. This gave me what I think resembled a large windsock.

Next step was to then take my windsock tube and cut it up into varying widths. I choose to cut my in widths that range from 1 inch to 3 inches. Then I opened the seams so that they lay flat in a pleasing configuration.

tube with uneven ends

The trimmed ends

my big 'windsock'

The tube cut up into varying widths with one seam open.

These are just laying next to each other... next step is to sew them all back together.

The start of the Bargello Art quilt

Yesterday evening I had some time to work on my quilt. After having the color strips laying out for several days I narrowed it down to the color pallets that I wanted to use and an approximate size that I wanted.

My inspiration for this quilt is the beautiful colors of a summer sunset. Maybe I was just thinking it would be so nice to have a beautiful late evening summer sunset versus the normal Chicago winter evening of a fade from gray to black.

The process involved me whittling down the number of color strips to 16 (I started with 40) I played with this over a period of several days until I came up with something that I really liked. I also used a red filter to help determine color value in the fabrics.

The process up until now has been fabric and color selection as the first step. Then would be the cutting of the strips (I was able to skip this step since the fabric pack was already cut into strips).

Step 2: I played with about 20 strips, playing with color placement and final selection, this process took a couple of days. I viewed it in daylight and under artificial light and just gave it a day to sit without looking and then coming back to it.

Step 3: iron the strips and apply some spray starch to help increase the hand of the fabric.

Step 4: sew the strips together using perfect 1/4 inch seams in straight lines. I sewed them together in groups of 4, then 2 groups of 8 and then one final group. This allowed for no one piece of fabric to be overly handled.

Step 5: then to the ironing board and ironed all the seams in one direction, flipped it over and ironed from the top making sure there was no hidden pleating from the ironing.

18 colors that I played with


I took some time to play with placement of the fabrics until I found

one that I really liked.

The view through the red filter, this allows me to see the color values so I can make sure I have what I want. In this case I wanted to have a variety from light to darks.


The final 16 choices sewn together and pressed.

The next steps include checking over the seams to make sure that everything looks even and straight. The I will sew the 2 ends pieces together turning into a tube. Then I get to cut it all apart and sew it together again!

I am off to New Orleans for the next 4 days do no sewing room time for me until next week :)

Ponderings of an Art Quilt

I have been itching to make an Art Quilt and in fact that is something on my list of things to explore in 2010. I have made some in the past, just a couple, and have really enjoyed the process. I have also created several crib and lap top size quilts over the past 20 or so years. I like creating them.

I have tried a bit of traditional bed quilting and have found the process to be too 'big'. I don't have enough space to feel that I can really do it justice and I really don't feel a big calling towards it.

I come from a family of artists (traditional artists, graphic artists, stained glass artists, woodworkers, sculptresses, painters, drawers) and have always thought of myself as not being an artist. I cannot draw, I cannot paint and power tools are not my friend. However over the years I have found myself to be very creative and somewhat of an artist in my sewing room. I thought about what makes an Art Quilt and for that mater what makes something Art. I found this great example on the web:

What is a Contemporary Art
Quilt

From Lisa Call’s
http://www.squidoo.com/artquilts/

There is a lot of discussion in the
art quilt world about what exactly an "art quilt" is and what we should call
them. The simple term "quilt" is deemed unacceptable by a large portion of the
general art quilting population because of the connotations of traditional quilt
that it carries with it. So most people prefer to add some type of disclaimer to
qualify the type of quilt they make.One of the more common terms is "art quilt".
I prefer "contemporary quilt". Some people say "fiber art" or "studio quilt" or
"textile art" or "soft painting". But the question remains - exactly WHAT is a
contemporary art quilt? Generally it refers to a quilt that was intended to be
art and hang on the wall vs. placed on a bed. Although some art quilts might
also be bed quilts.

What is Art?

As contemporary art quilts are "art"
it's good to think about what art is when trying to define them. Of course
defining art is difficult but the definition I prefer I read on Alyson
Stanfield's Art Biz Blog"What is art? . . . art is the deliberate creation of
aesthetic sensations. Art is a work of a human being, not of nature. It is not
accidental. It produces something that is perceived through the senses and
results in a personal emotional experience. . . .". . . it is the conscious,
deliberate production of an event or object of beauty (or emotional import) by a
human being, employing not only the skill of the craftsman, but in addition, an
element of creativity--original, inventive, instinctive, genius. An art object
is an aesthetic artifact, deliberately created.Art actually lies in the act of
creation, not in its result."--G. Ellis Burcaw, Introduction to Museum Work,
page 66

Maybe this yearning to wear the title of 'artist' has drawn me to the art quilt... there are no rules to follow and there are a million different jumping off points. Just look at the book section in any quilt shop or fabric store.

For example: Years ago I saw this quilt exhibition while vacationing, I think my mom was with me. It was all of these beautiful 'Bargello style' quilts. This is originally a style of needlepoint/tapestry design (I used to love needlework!) and for some reason I was drawn to it. Upon exiting the exhibition there was a book for sale on creating Bargello quilts, I bought it. I have pulled this book out many, many, many times over the years. The pages are marked and the spine lovingly creased, yet I have never created a Bargello Quilt of my own. It is a great book that talks about construction and fabric selection and gives wonderful pictures of others works. It gives you no reason to not try making one. It even has an entire section on what to do if you screw it up!

Maybe I can transform it into the ultimate quilt of the '10s

(now that just looks weird!)

Add this yearning, my intimate affair with this book that I have owned for maybe 15 years now and a Christmas gift of this great little pack of fabric strips from my hubby and I am off to explore the great wide world of Art Quilting to see what I can come up with. :)

A great selection of colors from Hoffman fabrics Batiks!

AT least I have a great palate to start with.

On a side note... like any other creative person, once I started thinking of 'Art Quilts' my brain started whirring and the more I thought about it the more ideas have started spinning around and around. Now I have more ideas than I will ever have time to try and make!

I wrote down several of the more creative ideas I had and tacked it on my cork board for future inspiration.

Now my mom has come up with a great idea that we will have to try out sometime. She is a stained glass artist and she was thinking wouldn't it be cool to have 2 pieces from the same pattern hanging. 1 made up in stained glass and the other made up as an art quilt??? The possibilities are great! We could make it into a 'challenge' of sorts.

So many ideas, so little time!