Category Archives: FAD (Fiber Art Dames)

Daily's, Diva Meetings, FAD (Fiber Art Dames), Quilt Exploration Group (QuEGs), Three Trees

Enjoying the Spring June 5, 2014

June 5, 2014 admin

Hello,

I have been enjoying being out of doors and doing lots of yard work this week. Being gone always means lots of catch up for me and that seems to be how I have spent most of my time. That and meeting with my friends that is. The first Tuesday of the month was this week so I had the usual QuEG’s and Diva meetings plus the FAB group has moved to the first of the mouth too. It is good to see all my friends and it is very stimulating.

Barb started off the QuEGs meeting with her three “sliced block” tops. She sure seemed to be having fun with them. Then we moved on to Linda who is taking an on- line class where she is doing prep work for a quilt about her Irish Grandfather. The notebook is a work of art all by it’s self I think. She is collecting lots of ideas to work from for the project.

Then we looked at Liz’s strip blocks. It is a memory quilt using her friends father’s shirts. The outside strips of each block are from the shirts. The florial prints in the centers represent the friend.

Then we looked at Sue Ellen’s work. This new fish quilt of hers really is a joyful one I think. This photo does not show it- but the green has a wonderful reflective quality that really adds to the feel of water in this piece.

Next we looked at Sally’s wonderful work. She has finally finished piecing her “One Block Wonder” top. I love how she used the fabric in such a way that the quilt goes from light to dark in a diagonal sweep across the top. She continues to work hard on her Machine Embrodery too. All the lemons are drawn in thread as is the green sprig and the pie crust. Her work always blows me away.

After the meeting I drove south and picked up Susan who is now back in Central New York and we rove to the Diva meeting together. Where I got my second jolt of creative stimulation. Sharon who is going to graduate school had lots to share. Photos, prints and quilts as she prepares for the many art shows she partisipates in during the summer. She is one busy gal.

Donna is taking a class in Spirit Cards and this a shot of one of them. I am sorry that there is so much glaire here. I like too how all the groups I belong to are so accepting of a wide varitey of different materials as well as styles.

Anne peresented this finished piece at the meeting too. I think the machine work really adds a lot of secondary interest to the surface. I admire how she uses her fabrics.

Susan spent six weeks in Mexico and she built this day journal of that event. She challenged herself to try lots of different techniques on six inch pellon squares with each square representing an event for each day of the trip. I think it is a wonderful way to stay on track and to be creative at the same time. This close up shows foil she found in Mexico behind the painted and cut out pellon sheet.

The FAB group meant this week as well. I taught them how to make silk paper. This shot shows Victoria working at that. Nancy made clouds with the silk roving that she intends to use on her new bed room quilt as a part of the sky.

Victoria and I are in a color class later this summer. She is preparing for that by doing a bit of progressive dying for that project. I think this color run is great. It will be fun to use them in class later.

Patti is the owner of a new pin loom and she has been weaving away. She loaded it up and started a new project during our meeting. I can hardly wait to see the finished piece.

I like all the color that she is using here. With all the visiting going on, I did not do much work on my own stuff. I am OK with that one needs to fill the well every now and then.

Progress

Three Trees and a Singer 21" x21" $80.00 — Three Trees and a Singer
21″ x21″
$80.00

Report: Three Trees and a Singer The title of this quilt has changed from just Three Trees to the new one because I added a black bird. It is very small in this image, but it is there on the far left tree about half way up. I added the bird last because I thought the work needed a little reason to look with a bit more care.

The bird is in this closeup. The trees are all based on pictures I took in the winter of trees in my backyard. The trees are all full of leaves now I am glad to say. The photo to the left here shows all three techniques that I used to create the trees. The brown is a wool I started with and the black is yarn that I stitched down on top of the wool. Then after I had stitched together i sewed it to the background. Then I loaded the bobbin with thick tread and from the back I free motion drew the limbs onto the surface of the quilt. I enjoyed creating this quilt.

Daily News ( Formerly Daily’s) These are the last of my Daily’s. I say that because I feel I have learned what I needed to from this project. I am calling the work Daily News because I worked on the pieces every evening during the time the news was on TV. Now I have to figure how what to do with the pieces I have created. I have 240 four and half inch squares. They are not finished so this can’t be the end. I do not want them to simply end up in a box and I do not want to simply sew them together as I have enjoyed placing them next to one another in various arrangements. I am thinking of several possible solutions and I will spent this week making my final decision about that during this time. That and planning the next possible mini challenge.

I hope the week ahead is full of good creative time for all.

Hugs

Carol

Daily's, FAD (Fiber Art Dames), Foundation XV New Direction, Foundations Series, Foundations XVII Granite, Foundations XVII Obsidian, Maya's Tee Shirt Quilt

May Day, May 1 2014

May 1, 2014 admin

Hello,

Happy May Day to you. For me May Day brings up memories of making paper tube baskets that we filled with wild flowers and perhaps a bit of candy. Then we hung them on the door knobs of neihbors homes. That was when I lived in a small town in Iowa and I am not sure if that practice still goes on today.

I went to a FAB meeting last week. Patti is being very propductive and had a wonderful rust colored ribbon knitted project she was working on as well as having completed this wonderful shaw on her loom.

We also looked at and talked about Victoria’s silver leaf quilt that was pinned to her studio wall. She is setting quite a challenge for herself with this project I think. But it will be wonderful when she is done I am sure.

Then I went to Angela’s where she and Linda were playing with soy wax for a second time. Linda spent the whole time doing the waxing step, but Angela did apply dye while I was there. She had dyed several things earlier that day and then added more soy wax and black dye over the blue to what she is doing here. I can hardly wait until next week to see the results of their work at the QuEGs meeting. There will be another soy wax day I am sure so perhaps I will get in on that one.

Progress Report: Foundations XV- New Directions This quilt is the first of the irregular shaped quilts that I have finished. I think I mentioned last week

Foundations XV New Directions 27"X 44" $360.00 — Foundations XV New Directions
27″X 44″
$360.00

that there were problems with getting it to remain flat. The paint I add to the back to stabilise that some what. But I feel the there is still is a bit of a problem. I plan to take it to the art quilt meetings next week and get some help with that. I really enjoyed all all the color and the the many textures that ended up in this quilt. I find myself looking and looking again at it on my wall. I used a varigated thread on this work too and that adds an additional interest to the surface of the piece.

Foundations XVI Granite 19" X 29" $195.00 — Foundations XVI Granite
19″ X 29″
$195.00

Foundations XVI- Granite I also finished off this work this week too. It was too far along to adapt to the off square format, but I usually think of granite in a square shape any way. Even tumbe stones are a slab most of the time. I do not think I have ever seen Granite when in was not”dressed” in some way or another. There are lots of colors in granite and I tried to show that with this project. I used mostly silks, velvets and satians along with the a few cottons in this project. Again I used lots of varigated threads here as well. I also used some of the silk paper with this piece.

Foundations XVII- Obsidian

I am only showing a close up of Obsidian as it is so close to being completed that the full thing will be available next week. I was working on so many pieces in the Foundations series at one time that I got mixed up about the number system. This really is the 17 in the series and not Granite as it says in the Categories. I will have to wait until I have another lesion from the computer specialist before I can correct that mistake.

Maya’s Tee Shirt Quilt I am to what I consider the fun part of this quilt now. I did stitch in the ditch between all the tee shirt sections. Now I am doing free motion around the images. This one is in the center of the quilt and I will work out from there until they are all completed. I only did the free motion work on two more before I ran out of time yesterday.

Necklace III I am still playing in this format. I love making the flower format. This one also has unique metal connections on the ends( the black units) They are old belt connections from Grandmother Ruth’s sewing box. I think they add a bit of glamer to the work.

New Work In and effort to push myself beyond the necklaces I created a new work that needs a lot of hand embellishing on it. I went to my texture box and found the silver fabric already backed with wonder under and added it to the surface of some of the watermarked satin I had pulled up to make flowers. Then I found the ground cloth with lumier paint on it and added that to the surface as well. I just kept adding until I felt that I could only finish it with hand work….. but I have not started that yet my attempt to fool myself did not work. At least not yet.

New Iris Work

This also came out of the idea box and I started it because I was in the studio at the end of the day and the pin wall was empty. The Iris fabric was already cut so it was just a matter of pinning up what I had already done.

Daily’s More of similar works as last week. I plan to work ahead this week as I am preparing for a week trip to Paris o n May 14th. I do not think I want to take this project with me, so that is my solution.

Keep Creating

Carol

Daily's, Electric, FAD (Fiber Art Dames), Out the Window, Stencels, Trees

Spring Warmth April 10, 2014

April 11, 2014 admin

Hello,

Spring is really here! I went for my walk today with out a coat. I even ate my lunch on the patio today. It was around seventy and the sun was shinning. It made me feel glorious.

I had a busy week end as I took at three day workshop with Carol Soderlund( www.carolsoderlund.com) called Waxing Eloquent. It was about how to use soy wax and build up layers of dye on fabric to create great depth. We had a grand time and the three days flew by. In this first shot the teacher is holding my experimental piece. I had tried this before several years ago and I am more excited about it on this second attempt. I sewed the prepared fabric with to two layers of batting and normal thread on the top and a wash away( water soluble ) thread in the bobbin. Then I painted the soy wax on the “mountains” of the project and painted the dye in the valley’s. ( the work is at that stage in this first photo.) We all brought along a big supply of tools to apply the soy wax to the fabric. I enjoyed the old calulator plastic and the empty spool a lot. After the wax was dry we applied the dye to the fabric . This shot is of Linda who was setting across the table from me. We worked all afternoon at adding wax and color to the pieces we had started. This shot is of my pin wall in the middle of the afternoon. By the end of that first day the floor of the room looked like a magic carpet shop where the pieces “batched” all night long. We then added more soy wax to the surface. Things were really getting lucious at this point. This piece is by a new friend, Peg. The big circles in the wax were created with a sponge that had a hole cut in the middle. To fully use the dye, Carol had us layer the fabric in two and three stacks. I folded over several of my pieces and so I had softer second pieces and there was much less dye to mop up when the pieces were picked up off the plastic sheets.

There is a little problem with the water soluable thread- the dye also causes the thread to disolve. So before I put on the second layer of wax I had to cover the valley area of the surface to keep the white.

There are several ways to remove the soy wax from the fabrics. One is to iron the fabric between two pieces of newspaper and this should always be done first. This process was done with my work and then it was placed in a boiling kettle of water. All the milky color is the soy wax in the pot rising to the top. The water is then carefully poured out of the pot and the fabric is ready for a hot was in the machine. It is OK to pore the water soy mixture down the drain because the soy wax is a natural product and will bio degrade. I was surprised by the color change. This photo shows some fabric( at the top that did not have the color washed out and the thread is still attached) and the bottom is the final color of the washed and ironed fabric. The green color came from the blue dye added over the yellow dye of the day before. It will still be a fun piece to do hand stitching work on top of.

This shot shows several of the fabrics that I washed out at home on Monday.

Then on Wed I went off to visit my friend Ethel and we did more soy wax work. She has a wonderful electric Jaunting tool and I used it on just about all the pieces I worked on yesterday. I wrote several bits of poetry as well as drew with the tool. Great fun! They are still batching and will be on the blog next week. Ethel is working on a wonderful piece on her pin wall. It is about 50″ wide and 60″ long at this point. I love the intense colors she is playing with here.

Then the FAB group meant at my house this morning. Patti is doing this wonderful portrait of her mom. She is still in the building stage without any of the pieces stitched down, but I am impressed. She told us she is using the front and back of some of her fabric to get the tones and shades to match her photo.

Then we did a little work with the silk screen so the gals could get the hang of using acrylic that was thinned with GAC 900. ( a Golden product especially made for use with fabric.) It was also a chance to play with a deconstruced screen as I had used Elmer’ s school jell on the screen to create a pattern. These are Nancy’s prints. I will continue to print with the screen until the image is mostly gone and I can show the others the effect at our next meeting.

Electric 19.5 " X 31.5" $215.00 — Electric
19.5 ” X 31.5″
$215.00

Progress Report: Electric I finished this quilt last evening. All the stopping, changing direction and starting sewing quilting patters made this project take a lot longer to quilt then I expected. I used the images I had created with the silkscreen print as my inspiration. I started quilting around them first to get a feel for the shapes. After I had done this it was a bit easier to create similar shapes on my own in the other areas of the quilt. The fact that my machine as a needle down position for the stop helped with this process. But there still is a lot of quilt were the printed images is not avaiable for a guide.

Out the Window This is my solution to

Out the Window 16.5" X 21.5" $125.00 — Out the Window
16.5″ X 21.5″
$125.00

the quilt that I cut in half two weeks ago. Last week I had decided to add the tree and I tried it in several locations before I decided on this final resting place. After I had stitched the wool tree to the quilt I loaded my bobbin with black embrodery thread, and drew in smaller branches from the back. The whole picture makes me think of looking out my friends window in Brookline where the next building was so close there was hardly any space between the two. But a young tree had grown up there anyway. The nine patch from the origional quilt looks like a near by window too, so it adds to that feel.

Foundations XV- New Directions I have been struggeling with this work for a while. When I took it to the Diva meeting last week Alice asked ” Why are you keeping these Foundations pieces square?” After considering that idea I have decided to try to alter the shape. Hense the new name on the end. Here is the process I am now trying to see if I can grow from an existing rectangle format.

First I add some additional Buckram in the shape I think I want to add. (I put the brown fabric behind so to allow the Buckram to show up.) Then I build up the fabrics on top being sure some crosses over the original surface and i sew it down as I normally do. I like the fact that this method allows me to change my mind a lot as I work. I already know I want to change the left hand side and the top edge. I will know better what the piece needs as I look at the progress.

Grove I did not do a lot of work on this project this week. There has been too many other things demanding my time. But one more unit was completed. It is also at the back of the stack of work pinned to the pin wall so I run out of time before I unearth it many a day. I only have one more tree to create here before I need to move onto the next step

New Work

I have pinned the fabric to the buckram for this new work. I have the detail to show that when I begin the stitching down of the piece I start near the center and do not totally finish even that area until later. That allows the work to change as I progress through the work. I had cut the buckram before I decided to try the new shape, so I will at least start out with is as it is and let the piece grow with the work.

Daily’s I seem to be doing more stitch work with the Daily’s as time goes along. It is still enjoyable and something that I look forward to every evening.

Keep Creating

Carol

Daily's, Diva Meetings, FAD (Fiber Art Dames), Green Grow the Grasses, Grove, Hand work, Quilt Exploration Group (QuEGs), Scrap Happy Quilts, Smoke

Spring! April 3, 2014

April 3, 2014 admin

Hello-

Spring is finally showing it’s self her in central New York. Three days in a row of blue sky and sun shine! Tue and I spotted this garden full of spring flowers and it made me smile every time I thought of it all day long. Hurry for the new season! This week has been so very full of stimulation I, hardly know were to start. At the FAB meeting Patti showed us two scarves she had knitted to send off to be given to runners at the end of the Boston Marathon this year. They both were so very soft that I am sure they will be welcome gifts. Victoria had been to a little workshop that Noel is giving. They are playing off the ideas of the necklaces that Mackenzie- Childs sells. The catalogue in the background was the inspiration, and Victoria really put her own spin on it I think. The when I went to the Diva meeting last evening I found that Noel was the gal who is leading this play. She is giving up her rented studio and cleaning as well as trying to create a new workshop for herself. Everyone in both groups loves the idea, myself included so she has agreed to open her space and try a variation with several more of us. I am looking forward to that play day.

The QuEG’s meeting was in morning on Tuesday and there was lots of inspiration there too. We got to meet in Sue Ellen’s studio, always an inspiration place all by its self. She ” wowed” us with six new works! Like all of us she has lots of fabric and these two pieces were created from her first dyeing experience over 15 years ago. She says she did them to try out different quilting patters on similar tops. I think she proved her point.

Then there is the wonderful on going work by Sally. She does such amazing stuff with her embrodery machine. The birds just blew me away all by them selves. Then all the unique nine patch blocks on top were just wonderful too. In addition to that she had a pack of about a dozen 6″ cards that used smaller images. Each card was different and where she used varigated gray black and white thread for this card, many of the cards used different threads for different sections. She pushed the idea further water color pencils to add more color to these small wonders. She gets sure gets miles of usage out of her machine.

Liz is playing with retro fabrics and antique blocks that are six inches on a side. The fabrics and patters sure play together well and are a delight to look at. The small size means it is not overwhelming- but it will sure take a lot of blocks to finish the piece.

Barb is working on this colorful work for her grandson. The dark blue is denim- just the wright thing for a young boy. She is just starting to quilt in the areas around the zig-zag lines- the white is chalk that will disappear when that job is done.

Then there was the Diva meeting on Tuesday evening to add further delight to the eye.

Anne is pushing forward trying unique quilting patters with the works she showed last month. I really like how the horizotal varigated thread seems to disappear in places on this work. Class projects are great places to play with new ideas and explore.

Alice had yet another new wall book to share with us. This one is called We Love the Water. The bid bird is one she hand painted on black fabric. The loon and flying Canada Goose are both from commercial fabrics. I find the way she mixes thous two ideas amazing. Most of the time putting these two things together just does not quite meet the mark- but she does it flawlessly.

Noel is working with thin strips now. All the brown units that are cut on the biases sure add to the challenge here. I like the limited values that she uses here.

She also had a second larger top in this same vain with kits in some of the diamond shapes.

Cheri finished the wonderful work she shared with two mouths ago. She has added a lot of hand work to her canvas painted quilt Fiddle Heads. I really like this work!

The last of the three Scarp Happy quilts was picked up on Friday. It went to the local Public Television Station for their spring auction. I also gave them a small wall quilt. I have done this for years as I so believe in public broadcasting.

Progress Report: Green Grow the Grasses This pale spring quilt is now complete.

Green Grow the Grasses 23" X 32" $260.00 — Green Grow the Grasses
23″ X 32″
$260.00

It too makes me smile as I recall the joy of creating the stamped areas as well as all the free motion flower and leaf forms I put on the surface of this one.

I really feel the sewing machine has become a drawing tool for me. That has only come with years of doing the process, but I want to encourage everyone to keep doing it until it is a natural act for you too.

Smoke

This work was also completed this week. More than once I thought that I was done, and I would hang the work on the pin wall at the end of the day. Then when I would look at it with fresh eyes in the morning I would see easly what else was needed- more hand work for the most part. I had never quilted through silk before I tried this project and learned a lot doing so. I really like how the needle glides through the surface of the project.

I cut up an silk scarf that I had created years ago and was not what I would call a success. All the dark and gray areas are a part of that project. I like the result here.

Grove I am still working on the insertion process. I only have one more tree to add the branches to and then I will start the stumps and setting. I may shuffle the parts I have created too. But I make those visual decisions by looking at the subject.

New Work This is the top half of the work I was considering cutting apart last week. It was not working as it was so I cut it. The black tree is just pinned in place. I did try several other placements before I settled on this one. Again the visual decisions was made visually. I have quilted in the ditch the background sections of this work and plan to free motion in the tree with additional limbs as needed.

Daily‘s I am working away on the these little fellows. I discovered one of the black circle and units from last month in the bottom of the tin where I keep the prepared squares. So I finished it too.

Keep Creating

Carol

Cre-8

Category Archives: FAD (Fiber Art Dames)

Enjoying the Spring June 5, 2014

May Day, May 1 2014

Spring Warmth April 10, 2014

Spring! April 3, 2014

Creative Fiber Collage Artist Carol Boyer