small lady quilts revisited

After teaching the class on chop and drop applique, one of my students showed me how she decorated the left side of her quilts with motifs.  It got me thinking about doing some kind of embellishment on 2 of the quilts that I had finished.

I have been pinning things on Pinterest for years, and some of the things that I save are humorous quotes.  I pulled out a couple of them, typed them up in Word and enlarged them in the font and size that I needed for these quilts.  Then I picked a background color that went with the quilts.  The Word document was then printed on HQ printables photo paper, which is prepared for printing fabric that goes through the inkjet printer.  After the ink dried, I adhered steam-a-seam to the back and fused the sayings onto the left side of my art quilts.

A friend came to visit and suggested that I add black buttonhole stitching to the outside of the sayings to permanently adhere them to the quilts.  I used stitch #1309 on the Bernina, and set the width to 1.6 and the length to 2.3.  It was just the perfect finish to these quilts.

Here's a close up of the stitching:

And the finished, revised quilts

I hope you like how I revisited these pieces with ideas from 2 other quilters!  I certainly do!

5 Ladies - part 7 and Final - "My Alter Egos"

This is the final post about the making of the 5 ladies art quilt. It was quilted both on my longarm and on my domestic sewing machine.   I thought a little bit about adding some handwork, but then decided that it was done, so I added the facing, sleeve, and label.  

It is 55" W  42-1/2" H.  I named it "My Alter Egos". 

I hope you like it!

5 ladies art quilt - part 6

This is a continuation of 5 previous posts about the making of the 5 ladies art quilt.

Once the figures were all placed on the background, I inspected for areas that needed some tweaking.  I could see that the figure on the far left had some issues with the neck and head placement.  And some of the legs disappeared against the background.  I fixed those areas and got everything pinned to the background instead of the design wall and then fused down the faces, shoes and hands.   It took a day to get everything sewn down and then I sketched in more facial features and thread sketched the hair and some more of the facial features.

I had enough background material to use for the backing and got it all layered up and ready to quilt.  Here it is part way done with the quilting.

I found it pretty easy to quilt the background by just following the dots in the fabric.

I hope you like it so far.

Exhibit at the Gray Space Gallery in the Downtown Vancouver library

The 10 Garden lady art quilts will be featured in a solo show at the Gray Space Gallery in the downtown Vancouver library for the months of September and October.  This is the last time all 10 quilts in the series will be exhibited together.  They're all for sale and up for grabs to anyone that wants to purchase them.  

I enjoyed making the series of quilts over a 2 year period.  And I'm thrilled that they are in their 2nd gallery showing.  I hope you get a chance to go and see them!  Here are 3 of them.

The Vancouver Library is located at 901 C Street, Vancouver, WA  98660.  Hours are generally 10:00 am to 6:00 pm.  The gallery is split between 2 of the upper floors.

5 ladies art quilt - part 5

This is a continuation of 4 previous posts about the making of the 5 ladies art quilt.

Once all of the pieces were pinned up on the design pattern, it was time to move them to the real background.  This is always a tricky step, because the pattern is what keeps all the pieces in the right place.  What I did was to pin the pattern just at the top and then lift and cut out one of the figures at a time.  It was easy to place the ladies in the right spot by just filling in the hole.   Below is one lady already placed and he hole cut out for he second one.

Now, you can see that the 2nd lady has been placed in her corresponding hole.

Here is the 3rd lady cut out and placed.

And the 4th one.

Then the 5th one.

When they were all placed and pinned to the design wall and background, I cut away all of the paper pattern.

I hope you still like it so far!

Rusty Lady and Lady in Blue

I made a couple more class samples both during and after the Saturday workshop day.

One, I'm calling, "Rusty Lady", and the other, "Lady in Blue".

I had so much fun teaching other members of Clark County Quilters how to do chop and drop applique.  We were having so much fun that I totally forgot to take pictures of my class and their projects.  Gosh darn it.  I did get one sent to me later and someone else snapped a picture of me teaching the class.

Here is my student's piece.

And here the two that I made, all quilted and ready to show.

I hope you like them and let me know how I should display them.  Sew them together?  Add some floral interest?

5 Ladies - part 4

This is a continuation of 3 previous posts about the making of the 5 ladies art quilt.

I moved next onto the face and hands.  Have you noticed yet that I kept avoiding them ?  Yes, I'm still full of anxiety about doing them the right way.  It is a very slow process with lots of tiny pieces.  But, I decided that I just needed to dive in and do it!

I pulled out fabrics and then treated them with dilute Mod Podge.  After they sat overnight to dry, I was able to start cutting out the tiny pieces and moving forward.  I forgot to do the lip and shoes, so I did that a few days later. A couple of the lips weren't treated and I remembered that those tiny pieces fray pretty badly without the treatment.  Also, when you look at the picture with just the fabric, their faces still look a little odd.  They start to look a lot better when the thread work starts happening.  Here's the art quilt with all of the ladies done and pinned up against the pattern.

I hope you like it so far!