She Quilts It
Mixed media art quilt techniques and ramblings.
Monday, October 21, 2024
Garden Lady Series to be shown at Second Story Gallery in Camas, WA in February, 2025
Monday, October 14, 2024
Garden Lady #8 - Fall Princess - Part 8 - FINAL
This is a continuation of 7 previous posts about the making of Garden Lady #8. After I pinned the leaves on the top, I hand sewed them down the middle with beading thread. It was mentally hard to cover up things that had already been done, especially the dress. So, I resisted pinning leaves on top of he dress. But, I wanted it to look like she was wading through a pile of leaves and they had to go on top. I also added stitching, both hand and machine to the bouquet.
The final embellishment was on the fascinator. I added a couple of chukar feathers from our collection, ribbons, and hot fix crystals.
I added a regular binding. And then blinged it up with more hot fix crystals.
It's all done!
I hope you like it - my Fall Princess.
(Note: My husband raised chukars for a couple of years and the feathers were collected from their cage. They are a small game bird).
Monday, October 7, 2024
Garden Lady # 8 - Fall Princess - Part Seven
This is a continuation of 6 previous posts about the making of Garden Lady #8. I quilted the background in circles in two different sizes, 1-1/4" and 1", by using a machine template from Quilters Apothecary.
The dress and sash were quilted in meandering and circular shapes, and the face and arms were quilted on my domestic machine in matching threads. I don't know about you, but sometimes when I'm in the depth of quilting, I feel like it takes forever! Of course, it is only days, perhaps closer to a week. I guess I'm spoiled by all of my cool machines that make it easy for me to complete my art quilts at home. I did have to put some leaves on the quilts before quilting because they needed to be behind the pumpkins. And, of course, I forgot to take another picture when the quilting was done. Dang it!
I put the quilt on the floor of my sewing room and scattered the leaves from about 5' above, letting them drop wherever they wanted to. Here is the picture after they were scattered:
And here I am on my hand and knees, pinning them in place. (Well, I'm taking the picture while I'm on my hands and knees!)
I hope you like it so far.
Monday, September 30, 2024
Garden Lady #8 - Fall Princess - Part Six
This is a continuation of 5 previous posts about the making of Garden Lady #8.
The next thing that I made was the fascinator for the top of her head. I decided to name this quilt "Fall Princess", and thought about trying to make a tiara. But I was already committed to making a fascinator and went with the idea of putting leaves and gems and twirly things on it. I looked at a bunch of pictures (mostly of English royalty going to royal events) and was amazed at how large and ornate some of them are! Well, in the end, I sketched up my idea.
Here is the base of the fascinator. I decided to decorate it after the piece gets quilted.
My friends suggested feathers and flowers and here are some ideas pinned in place.
I made a bouquet of fall flowers that were based on pictures of flowers from my own garden. The picture of flowers was traced onto freezer paper, then transferred to Steam-A-Seam and pressed to the back of different fabrics.
These were cut out and embellished with Inktense pencils. The original flowers made were all a bit too small, so I traced around a couple of the flowers and enlarged them at the same time. Here are the small flowers:
Here is the bouquet pinned to the background with the large and small flowers. It looked a lot better.
The next step was to make the stems. I picked out a few different green fabrics, cut them on the bias to a shy 3/4" and turned in both edges. I placed them underneath the flowers and through the hand.
My quilting friends took a look and offered the opinion that the bouquet needed leaves and a few drooping flowers. It looked so much better after that change! I like to get advice from my friends and feel like my art pieces are enhanced with their eyes and ideas. I hope you ask your friends for advice too.
Monday, September 23, 2024
Garden Lady #8 - part Five
This is a continuation of 4 previous posts about the making of Garden Lady #8. I started making all of the leaves with a ton of different fabric and thread. I like the look of transparent leaves, shiny leaves, mottled leaves, and tons of fall color. This was so much fun, I almost forgot to take pictures. My experience with making leaves is that two layers of fabric sandwiched between dissolving products works the best. When they are all done being sewn and rinsed, they retain a little bit of stiffness that allows me to manipulate the leaves when I'm adding them to the quilt. I knew that I needed to design the fascinator on her head too, so you'll see some "gems" that I could put on top of the hat the same way.
Years ago, I picked up a bunch of fall leaves and pressed them into my sketch book. I used these leaves for the patterns for the leaves of this quilt. They're drawn onto freezer paper with a permanent marker because the darker line helps to trace the lines later in the process.
Monday, September 16, 2024
Garden Lady #8 - Part Four
This is a continuation of 3 previous posts about the making of Garden Lady #8.
I added white backing fabric to the arms, hands, and face so that the background didn't show through. Since all of these were made with Steam-A-Seam on the back, I just ironed them to the white fabric.
Monday, September 9, 2024
Garden lady #8 - Part Three
This is a continuation of 2 previous posts about the making of Garden Lady #8. The next thing that I worked on were the clippers. I decided to use a silver lame for the blades and a green fabric for the handles. These needed to have turned edges, since the lame (even though it has interfacing) will fray quite a lot when it gets appliqued to the background. Here is what the clippers looked like in the hand.
The next thing that I worked on was the dress. When I pulled out the boxes with my fancy fabrics, tulle, yarn, pieces of fabric and thread, and antique trims, I gasped just a little bit. I have TOO MUCH STUFF! It is a collection of things that I've had and have been adding to for years. I'd like to say that these boxes and bins are all of it. But......
When I make these garden ladies, I use the master pattern to make templates out of freezer paper. I'm sure I've shown this to you before, but here goes one more time. I cut a base fabric in the general color that I want and about 2" larger all the way around. I then cut medium sized blobs of fabric to get the shading that I'm looking for (light on one side, for example). The next step is my chop and drop method of adding fabric, trims, yarn, lace, Angelina fibers, thread, wool roving, and whatever else grabs my attention. When there is enough stuff to mostly cover the original background fabric, I cover it all with a layer of tulle. I use a couple of methods to stitch it all in place - sometimes I sew long wiggly series of stitches, and sometimes I do a meandering stitch. Sometimes, I use a stabilizer as a foundation, and in this case I didn't use a stabilizer at all. In the picture below, you can see all of the blobs of fabric and stuff that was chopped and dropped.
It gets pressed, then the pattern goes back on top and I top stitch on the seam lines. The paper comes off and then I trim the edges that will be turned to a generous 1/2" and leave at least an inch on the seams where there will be overlapping. Then the pieces get pinned onto the master pattern.
Here is the dress all done and pinned to the background, along with the arms and face.
I hope you still like the progress on this piece.