Soul Medium

Laura Heine's Collage Sea Turtle Art Quilt

First of all this is not my design or my quilt.  However, I jumped at the chance to take this collage quilting technique class with Lisa B. at Ann Arbor Sewing Center so I could learn how it was created.  Let me give credit to the designer, Laura Heine.  This particular design is called "Seawell".

I have been passionate about collage since forever.  However, I am fairly new at traditional quilt construction let alone art quilt construction so I thought it would be advantageous to learn how to create this the "right" way.  Later I can break all the rules when I create my own collages! (evil grin)

Isn't it fantastic! I was blown away by the number of layers and bits of fabric used.  Pieces you'd think were all one fabric were mainly collages of several different fabrics. For example: the shell of the sea turtle has several multi-colored segments that make it up.  I thought each segment was one fabric. Not at all!  There are probably 3-4 layers or more of several fabrics to create one segment on that shell!  That blew me away.  How about you?

    

Collaborative Welcome Sign

Our Fiber Guild is currently working on a collaborative Welcome sign for the entry of Salt Valley Arts.  If you've been there, you've probably noticed the ugly electrical panel covered by an equally ugly piece of plywood.  Each artist selected a letter or a few from the phrase: "Welcome to Salt Valley Arts".  To keep it quirky, we used different fonts, upper and lower case, and the artist chose color, background, etc.  Here is my sketch:

These are a few of my glue resist panels that I plan to use as tools to represent the diversity of the artists and the media they use.  We've had several volunteers create a camera, scissors, printmaking examples, crocheting, weaving, quilting, knitting, and even some small glass pieces just to name a few!

As the glue dries...

Color testing

As I continue to collect all the panels, I've been laying them out to see the direction it's heading.  I think it is going to be fun and funky!

 It has happened!  My quilt, "I Want to Give You the World has been reproduced and is hanging on the side of the old News and Antiques Building in downtown Saline, Michigan!  To say I am proud is an understatement.  Below are some pics of my process.

I have some new ideas incubating from my road trip out west. Stay tuned...

Lauren and Enghui posing with their wedding gift.

Mystery Quilt

My second daughter is getting married!  It will be almost exactly a year after her elder sister was married; Lauren and Enghui were married on May 16, 2015 and Shelby and Nate will be married on May 15, 2016.  I thought this was very thoughtful of them to keep the dates simple for my failing memory!

I waited 6 months and a surprise Art Show Reception to reveal Laurens quilt, "I want to give you the world..."  

Neither of my daughters are on Face Book, so I have shown my progress through that medium.  However, they do follow blogs, so I will also wait until after the wedding presentation to reveal Shelby and Nate's quilt.  But I will give a little hint....

I saw a beautiful "Around the World" (funny name coincidence?) quilt on Pinterest.  The colors were sooooo Shelby; very autumn themed.  But I had put so much thought and hand painted all of the fabric in Lauren's quilt, that I decided to go another route.  Then I found this book at my library.  All I can say is that I am creating a quilt that is inspired by the ideas I saw in this book.  There will be 100 very personalized blocks especially for Shelby and Nate.  Stay tuned...

Flying With Free Motion

Sometimes my best ideas come about when I'm in that lovely zone of being half asleep and half awake.  This morning I was hit with the idea of finally trying my hand at free motion quilting to embellish my lovely bird sketch from yesterday's post.

I had already purchased the darning foot needed so I found a YouTube demo video of free motion sewing for beginners.  Then I pulled out my handy dandy sewing machine manual and discovered that "Yes! My feed dogs could be lowered!"

Scraps of fabric handy, I began the process of testing my tension until I got it just about right.  After a few more rounds on the scrap fabric, I pulled out my bird and began to try my hand at free motion sewing.  It was a bit tricky at first, but as I began to feel how to smoothly move it under the needle, I relaxed.  It suddenly felt more natural.  I love the back as much as the front. This is what I came up with...

Playing With Derwent's Inktense

Yesterday, at my Dragon Ladies Fiber Group, Lisa brought her Christmas present for us to play with.  These Derwent Inktense "pencils" are amazing.  Permanent watercolor-type pencils blend beautifully on cloth or paper but when dry, they are permanent.  The colors were remarkably strong, even when water was added.  

I tried my hand with these pencils by drawing a simple bird sketch and found them to be very easy to control, blend, and define my drawing.  I think they have many excellent qualities regardless of the medium used.  I plan to heat set my sketch on muslin to truly test for permanence.