Construction begins

     The last color tweak of the colorwash and the last black and white before I took it down, column by column and clipped them for 19 across. There are 21 rows.

      And 7 of them are sewn together so far. The web works.

Inching towards perfecting

     The batik colorwash I have been tweaking and tweaking I hope is coming to the time where I can take it down and sew it. I rummaged through all my batik scraps trying to find some dark reds to make the corner more defined and smoothed. Sometimes, it is like a Rubik's cube- move one piece and others scream out to get moved. I moved some of the light colors also. This is the red corner that kept bothering me.

     After cutting some more squares and rearranging, I had this.

    And this is what the black and white looks like.

     I almost can't even see this clearly anymore. I will wait another day to make a decision. Can't wait to web it.

Colors, colors everwhere

    Pretty darn fortunate to be taking a colorwash class with Wanda online. I love these types of quilts. I made a floral one a year ago or so, but it sold at a quilt show. The only quilt I ever sold, wish I had it back. I am using batiks I have collected and collected. I have them on cafeteria trays I bought on Amazon. They are sitting on the ironing board at the design wall.  Lots of tweaking yet, but at least pieces are up.

Colors in photo are not true- they are not so dark.

Sewing on

     One of the pieces I used in the art quilt presentation was this ongoing leaves quilt. I pin basted it and am doing big stitch with No. 8 Perle Cotton for the quilting. I find this type of hand quilting fun. It is portable, and I can take it when I have to wait somewhere.

Presentation accomplished

     For the last couple of months, I have been prepping for a presentation to my guild on art quilts. I collected a lot of information, gathered up my examples and tried to make it coher. I wrote handouts, made samples, and did an auditioning demo. It took a half hour to set up and take down and lasted about 1 1/2 hrs. I felt a huge load lift after it was done. I don't think people realize how much work and effort go into a meaty presentation. I had spent time organizing categories on index cards, gathering stuff, editing and then writing the handout. I wrote a bullet point script for myself and made use of our camera and projector as well as images from my laptop.  I wish more of the guild would have come, but those who did seemed real interested. My point was that if you are a quilter, you can make art quilts because you have all the technical skills and just need to tap conscious inspiration and use a  design process to work it all the way through the end. Then sew.
     For the design demo, I moved a lot of fabric around my inspiration piece, the discharged leaf wreath and we talked about all the fabrics, sizes, and decisions. The only photo I have is all the fabrics pinned up on the wall for discussion.

Trying to right the ship

     If you have followed my four patch floral black diamond quilt, you will know I was disappointed with it. I grit my teeth, cut some black strips, and sewed them on. I used a method presented by my co-chair at our latest program on Seminole piecing. She cuts the strip wider than she wants, sews on the first side, presses it with enough to hang onto and then sews the next side with a wider seam which is then trimmed after pressing. This way, the strip is always manageable and does not stretch and wobble. Worked perfectly when I sewed the outside floral border on. The black strip finished at 3/4". I auditioned a whole bunch of fabrics for the outside border, thoroughly messing up my stash, and chose the first one I pulled out. 
     The quilt is now 72.5" x 87" unbound. I don't dislike it as much as I did, but it is not what I had imagined. I can live with it now. Why did I not buy more of that blue floral? I had to skimp with only 2 yards. I can't get the colors better than this.

My audition fabrics all around the black strip

The mounting makes all the difference

     I was not happy with the small water lily quilt because of the way I mounted the quilt on a same size painted canvas. The show it went in had a size limit, so I listened. Turns out they had way more room and it looked ridiculous on the wall. It sat around here languishing. Now I have a presentation coming up on the art quilts. I bought a much bigger canvas and found the perfect fabric at Hobby Lobby which my friend Elizabeth treated me to. I staple gunned it to the canvas stretcher and will sew on the quilt at the corners using a button to anchor it at the back. Now I absolutely love it! The canvas is 18 x 18.

Mounted on the canvas board below which is slightly smaller. The canvas floated the quilt away from the wall and the sides could be seen, but did not really work.

The painted canvas, will reuse for smaller art quilt.

18 x 18 canvas covered with fabric, art quilt sewn on at corners. Quilt is 13 x 13.

Presentation sample

     My friend Elizabeth and I are program directors for our guild. We have a 3 year term, up next December.  One meeting a month is the program meeting. Hard to get teachers or demos in the evening. So, we have been planning and organizing most of them- Jan. to May. We work off a list compiled from a survey done of the members before we started. Every program has been a detailed offering of the subject. Last month, Elizabeth did Seminole piecing and made samples all summer. In two weeks, I have art quilts. It is sort of joke, since doing programming and comfort quilts has all but squelched my art quilt projects. 
     I needed at least one current in progress sample. As I cleaned off the counter, I found 4 leaves that Elizabeth had taught how to use up the modge podged fabrics from the landscape program. I pulled out some of my made fabric pieces and thought they could use combining. Of course, the made fabric blues did not work with the leaves, so I made new made fabric ones. I added a little of the leaf colors into the made blue fabric. Now, it is sewn together (next post shows with borders) and I started big stitch quilting with perle cotton.

Purposely sketchy lines with black thread outlines