Quilt no 39

This quilt was made using only those items I had on hand. The background is woven with fabric strips into rug canvas fabric which is the base used for rug hooking. After weaving the fabric, I stitched the top of the woven piece in order to show shape and movement. I embellished the piece with a variety of sizes of seed beads and a focus bead in the lower right corner. The square fabric pieces were made using raw edge applique and free form machine quilting with a blue metallic thread. Perhaps the thoughts of warm sunshine at the ocean will banish any winter blues that may be hanging around.

Quilt no 38

Jiggety Jig

It was inspired by a trip to Newfoundland. I think I will create a series of these characters in small quilts as I really enjoyed this one The Wee Man's personality grew as the hand stitching progressed. I wanted to experiment with different techniques and fabrics. Background is cotton muslin with a green batik and is hand embroidered around the window of his journey.

Quilt no 37

Duck Cotton background, gesso, acrylic paints, laser printed dressmaking pattern tissue.

Quilt no 36

Quilt no 35

Memories

This a wholecloth quilt. I wrote a poem from Lord Byron on it and put some old photo's on it with a gel medium transfer. I coloured the quilt with Shiva Paintsticks. I named the quilt "memories" because the quilt reminds me of a younger, innocent time in life. The quilt is made of cotton fabric with a hobbs 80/20 cotton batting, it is quilted with transparent yarn.






I uploaded this photo three times - it was the right way up when I did. I even tried the usual tricks of turning it around and back again, and it still won't load right way up. Blogger is having a moment, I guess. I recommend turning your head sideways, lol.

Quilt no 34

I used Japanese fabrics and raw edge appliqued the tree and then machine quilted the quilt. I added the flowers and small beads.

Quilt no 33

Memories

The fabric is from my stash, some over 40 years old. It is in three sections, straight pieces, random pieces and a crazy section using an automatic machine stitch. The buttons are old fabric ones which have been tied on. The backing and binding fabric is microwave dyed cotton.

Quilt no 32

This piece started with a leftover pieced batik strip unit - a lot of slicing and dicing later, here it is! Machine pieced & quilted.

Quilt no 31

"I wanted to use this opportunity to try some new techniques. This little quilt includes fusing and folding plus beading, buttons and rickrack. Machine quilted."

Quilt no 30

Pure

I used the "Pure" fabric range by Sweetwater for the pieced centre. It was paper pieced in a strip piecing method, then the paper torn off and the border added before I quilted it. The backing is a lovely piece of cotton fabric in coordinating colours. I haven't put a hanging sleeve on it yet, because I love how the back looks too. The recipient can let me know if they would like me to put a sleeve on before I send it. This is not an arty quilt, it is a miniature traditional quilt! The blocks are about 2 1/2 inches instead of the normal 12 inches square.

Deadline Reminder!

Don't forget, the deadline for getting your photos to me for this swap is tomorrow, Monday 31st of January. I'd like to have all photos by about 8pm my time (that's 3pm EST). I am going to post up another good handful of photos I have waiting, tonight, and then any stragglers can go up tomorrow. If you are nearly done but don't think you'll quite make it for the deadline, leave me a note - if enough people are in that boat, I might be able to squeeze a day or two more out of the deadline...

Quilt no 29

This is a wholecloth quilt, made with one of my own screenprinted fabrics and quilted by machine.

Quilt no 28

Little Elephant

This is made of curved strips of batiks joined and handstitched over printed leaves to make it look all jungly and then an embroidered silk elephant applied over the top . The elephant is the last of a box of elephants that I carried around with me during chemotherapy to stitch into, the others have all gone to live on other quilts and this little chaps been waiting around for ages,time he went back to the jungle, and yes, I will remove the tacking....sorry

Quilt no 27

My journal quilt is an exploration of the colour blue and the theme of water while creating an art quilt. I am not a quilter but more of a mixed media artist who loves fabric! My idea for this challenge/exchange was to work with shades of blue and the feeling that water brings to mind. I gathered various leftover pieces of cotton, some I had painted myself (on the banks of a river) on the left side and a portion of an old silk shirt that looked like water on the right side. I ripped and snipped pieces of fabric to fit the 8 1/2" X 11" size and stitched them together using various stitches to a piece of batting. One of my main stitches was a large wavy one that I used across the piece. To embellish the journal quilt I added a line of mini mosaics in blue and 2 pieces of sea glass, attached to the fabric with extra strong glue. I also sewed on iridescent sequins and tiny seed beads. To finish my journal quilt I sewed a piece of watery light blue fabric to the back by stitching around the edges of the quilt.

Quilt no 26

Winter Sunset

Hand painted and coloured background , applique shape, then lots of machine stitching.

Quilt no 25

I have used some hand dyed fabrics along with some little paper type flowers and a small amount of beading as well. It is machine embroidered and quilted. The bowl/vase is some Kaffe Fassett fabric which is a favourite!!

Quilt no 24

Underwater
The background for this quilt is a piece of complex cloth I created a while ago. Free motion quilting was added to create the anemones and other shapes, and a binding stitched on. Techniques on the original complex cloth include shibori, stamping, stenciling with paint sticks, and screen printing.

Quilt no 23

Mind
This quilt was originally made for the Alzheimer's Initiative, but in the end, wasn't contributed.

The fabric I choose was one with lots of things scattered on it - hats, lipstick, shoes, purses, eyeglasses. It seemed like a good choice. Sometimes I have an idea in my mind, and I either choose the wrong word, or I am reaching in my bag of words for the word, and the fabric just seemed to depict that kind of situation really well.

For the top part, I wanted to show something that was a little off. Just enough to say "something's not right" without actually knowing what's wrong. The size of the strips used to make the pieces aren't exactly the same, and the block was then trimmed at a slight angle. I think it worked, my mother said, "Is that supposed to be that way?"

The bottom part has a word on it - I used a low contrast so it wouldn't be easy to see unless you tried. It says Mind. My nephew said "Sometimes I can see it and then I lose it and have to look for it again." Exactly what I was going for!

The quilting is a wonky grid.

Quilt no 22

From Sentimental Journey by Shell from Raspberry Rabbit. I attached beads inside the hearts.

Quilt no 21

I had some small peices from a quilt I am making for my youngest daughter. I stitched and flipped, stitched and flipped, then appliqued the big flower shape and blanket stitched around the petals. The centre of the flower is sequins and beads. The back has an envelope style opening that can be slipped on to an A4 display stand.

Quilt no 20

Quilt no 19

Regular cotton fabrics and a few glass beads!

Quilt no 18

Tic Tac Toe with Kaffe

Constructed with a natural colored linen and Kaffe Fassett fabrics. The circles are covered buttons and it is machine quilted in a geometric design.

Quilt no 17

This is made from my own shibori dyed fabric and hand dyed backing fabric which has been brought from the back to make a wrap round binding. I have used Sashiko thread for the seeding stitch and embellished with buttons and beads. All hand stitched.