Commission wall hanging - Part One

My brother and sister-in-law bought a house in Scottsdale, Arizona last year that has a ton of wall space.  They commissioned me to make a wall hanging for them and I started working through the process of designing a fiber art piece that:

(1) fits in the space

(2) fits in with their artistic aesthetic

(3) goes with their color scheme

(4) is something that I can accomplish with my skill set

They sent a few pictures that might work for them and gave me a general color scheme.  Then, I took a trip to see them in February that would enable me to narrow down the choices and start designing the piece.  Here's where we ended up after that trip:

We went shopping for fabric in the colors that they wanted in the piece:

And I pulled more from my stash;

I drew the design to scale on freezer paper.

Then started cutting it into sections that could be pieced.  I traced each piece in the section onto freezer paper and used them for the patterns.

In order to see how the colors were coming together, I pinned the freezer paper pattern on the back side.  When the section was all cut and placed, I ironed the freezer paper back onto the right side.

I decided to use fabric glue to hold the pieces together until they could be sewn.  Later in the night, when I couldn't sleep, I realized that with all the curved edges, it would be a colossal mess trying to sew it together and keep it flat.  So, I got out the Ricky Tims water soluble stabilizer and I drew each piece a second time.  That meant that in addition to the pattern, there were 2 more steps before I could start cutting pieces again.  

I also decided to put more information on the pattern and placed an "o" for the side that was turned over to the back, and an "u" for the side that would be under.  Each piece also got a number so that I would know in what order to start putting the pieces together.  

Then, I was able to start working with the fabric again.  First was to glue the stabilizer to the back of the fabric, trim it, and pin them both and put it in place on the main pattern.  When a large section was completed, I turned one of the edges on each piece and glued it together with it's neighbor. The hash marks on the freezer paper helped to align up the pieces.  Here is a view of a section from the right side and from the back side.

Here are a couple of sections with all of the right stabilizers and placement done.  I used an invisible thread to zig zag the edges together.

I hope its heading in the right direction.  And I hope you like it so far!

Wall art mounted on a canvas

I purchased a small canvas a while ago with the intent of making a small art piece to mount onto it.  I got the idea from Cindy Grisdela who paints her canvas black before mounting the small quilt. Here is her full tutorial: mounting-art-quilts-on-canvas-tutorial/  Well, I painted that little canvas and then it sat and actually collected dust on my table.  It was time to get that project done!

I pulled out some fabric scraps and sewed 4 improv arc pieces.  These were sewn together with coping strips in the same fabrics.  It was quilted with metallic pink thread and faced with black fabric.  I  used gel medium to adhere the quilt to the canvas and let it sit overnight underneath heavy books.

And here is the finished wall art.  It's 10" x 10" and I love it!

I hope you like it too!

Bell bottom jeans

After sewing 3 quilts for charity and doing the quilting and binding on another one, I got the itch to make bell bottom jeans from a technique that I saw on The Quilt Show.  In that show, the quilter demonstrated taking an old pair of skinny legged jeans and inserting a quilted piece to make them bell bottomed.  

I had just the old pair in my drawer.  I put on the jeans and placed a pin just below my knee so that I would know how tall to make my insert.  It turned out to be 16" on my pair.  Then, I measured the circumference of the hem on the existing jeans and decided to add 10" to that measurement to give me the amount of "bell" that I was comfortable with.  In the first picture, you can see where I opened up the seam on the outer side of the leg and picked open the seam at the bottom.  You probably don't have to pick out the bottom hem on some jeans, but since these were skinny jeans they hit me at the ankle and I wanted them to be longer.

Using freezer paper, I sketched up a trial pattern, adding a seam allowance 

Of course, I had to use green for the insert.  Someone at the last quilt guild meeting handed me a stack of green fabrics that had been sewn into rectangles.  It was super quick and easy to sew a couple of them together and use them for the base of the inserts.   I quilted the inserts with lightweight Thermore batting and then added stems and flowers using hand embroidery.  (This was my granddaughter's idea to bling them up a bit).

After I did the hand embroidery, I trimmed the inserts then stitched them with a lining and turned them inside out.  I top stitched 1/8" from the edge and stitched the bottom edges together.  

The inserts were placed underneath the openings in the jeans and top stitched close to the edge.  This is the tricky part of this project because even with the free arm of the machine, you have to carefully pull and place the leg to be able to sew the seam. 

I finished off the pants with a binding at the bottom edge. I cut the binding 3" wide and after sewing it onto the front, I turned the edges to the wrong side and stitched in the ditch from the front, just barely catching the binding on the wrong side.  

I'm pretty happy with they way the bell bottom jeans look now, and I hope you like them too!

Charity quilt #2 and #3 for 2026 - brown and blue

I wanted to keep using brown fabric, but in this quilt, I worked in blue shades.  It was pretty easy to make the square in a square quilt, but I remember that I liked the chevron look of the half square triangles.  I pulled out a stack of fabrics, cut 9" squares and sewed them together to make half-square triangles.  I gave away all of the smaller scraps to a quilting friend who also makes quilts for charity.

Here is the completed top.  It's 56" x 64".

I made a second one that was 56" x 56" from blue and light gray material (which, I forgot to take a picture of!).

I hope someone will like them!

Quilts for charity - brown shades

I usually like to sew quilts for charity in the month of December, but it got away from me while I was working on an art quilt.  So, in January, I hit the fabric stash that had steadily been growing and made some charity quilts. 

A side note about the explosion of my fabric stash:  A friend of mine called me to let me know that she had come into possession of an enormous amount of fabric from an art quilter that was giving away her stash.  Well, I jumped into my car and dashed over to her house.   I came home with a ton of fabric, and a lot of it was hand dyed.  Such a rare treat!  Then, a couple of months later, another friend called to let me know that she had come into possession of an enormous amount of fabric from a quilter who had died.  So, off I went again and came home with another ton of fabric.  Now, my stash runneth over!  I can barely squeeze it all into the shelves where I store my fabric.  

Another side note:  A lot of the fabric that I came home with was green.  I now have 2 really high stacks of green fabric, even though I've been using it a lot.

I decided to challenge myself and NOT include any green in the first charity quilt.  I remembered a quilt that I made with square-in-a-square blocks and decided that this was the technique I would use for this quilt.  I chose shades of brown, tan, and dark yellow.

I also decided to cut 5" squares and 1-1/2" strips from the fabrics.  Then, I just started sewing them together and throwing them up on the design wall.   Here is the finished quilt that is 65" x 65".

I hope it goes to a good home!

Lady in a Forest Dress - Part 7 - Final - 'FOREST GAZER"

This is a continuation of 6 previous posts about the making of the Lady in a Forest Dress.

I decided to do the quilting on my domestic sewing machine instead of my sit-down longarm so that I could quickly change threads and needles. Since the piece was already so thick from all of the applique pieces, I used a thin Thermore batting.  A size 90/14 needle was used for most of the quilting, which alternated between several kinds and colors of thread, and a size 70/11 needle was used for the face using a lightweight silk thread.   

After the piece was quilted and faced, I hand stitched the bark bodice back in place.  It's 26" W and 32" H.

I named it "Forest Gazer" and I hope you like it.

Lady in a Forest Dress - Part 6

This is a continuation of 5 previous posts about the making of the Lady in a Forest Dress.  I continued to work on the background and add detail to the foreground.  This process is a bit of give and take as I try out some sections and pin the dress back in place; then remove the dress and keep working intuitively by adding more pieces.  When I had the general look that I wanted, I removed everything from the design wall and started working on the ironing board.

I laid down a piece of dissolving foundation, then cut "shrub" blobs of fabric, intertwining them as I went.  I added in some bark pieces, some branch pieces, and a little bit of the moss. When the foundation was covered, I placed a layer of Solvy on the top and stitched the layers together loosely.  Here is a picture of the top and the bottom of that sandwich.

The whole piece was soaked in water and allowed to dry overnight.  I actually made 2 pieces; one for the left and one for the right.  Here is what the larger one looked like after it had dried.

I played around with the placement of the "shrubs" and then stitched the pieces down, making sure there was some underneath the dress sections.  

Then, I appliqued the lady and her dress onto the background.  

The picture above shows some of the background quilting.

Stay tuned for the final at piece!