Little Felted Landscape...Finished

The fence was moved and a few flowers added to the foreground.
Thanks for your suggestions!

I wish I had given myself a little extra room at the bottom, because when I stretched the piece around a piece of Fast 2 Fuse Heavy Weight Interfacing, I had to cut off that little bit of green that showed where the trees were growing out of the ground.
Now the trees come straight up from the bottom of the picture which is slightly dorky looking...but next time I'll be aware of that.

One interesting discovery I made was that I could use the oil pastels directly on the felted wool fiber....then refelt it. This gave me a little shading along the edges of the hills that I liked.

I'm not sure what I'll take on next....maybe *gasp* some housework!

Little Felted Landscape...Continued

Adding the detail is always an interesting challenge when working at this tiny scale (the piece is about 10" X 10")...how to get everything to "read" right, when objects can't be rendered in their exact size?

But I guess that's why they call it "Folk Art"!

I'm not quite sure about that fence....I like the perspective it gives, but it seems kind of spindly compared to the thick leaves on the trees.
I might have to tear it out...which is much easier in stitches than for real!

Little Felted Landscape

Thank you so much for your lovely comments about my Spring CQ!

Always after finishing a long term project, I need to play around a little with different techniques, just for the fun of it and to get myself thinking in new ways.

My Babylock Embellisher and all the pretty rovings I've collected have been ignored for way too long, so I decided to do a little landscape of the view out my sewing room window.

I started with a square of black poly felt. I have the sky fabric there because I can't stand having texture in the skies of any textile project.
Texture brings the surface "forward", and skies are supposed to be in the deep background. I never like seeing them quilted (except for well executed trapunto clouds), or in this case, fuzzy. So I just fused that sky right on there.

Those overlapping planes of hills out the window actually reflect the twisty-turny course of the Washougal River below. I thought I would try and catch that....

Well, try....
Those soft pastel pencils are there to help me add a wee bit more definition to the sky.

Nothing like adding an element in the foreground to make the background look better! I used sock weight yarn and felted it in place.

This is where I am as of this morning....
Lots of detached chain stitching is in my immediate future.....

Felted Scarf Set for Esther

My son Max and his girlfriend Esther have already been and gone for their Christmas visit. Amazingly, they made it here to the Portland area and back to Seattle in the midst of this intense winter storm that's been ongoing. Those Greyhound bus drivers are fantastic.

I don't have many in-progress shots, but this is the present I made for Esther on the machine embellisher.

I purchased a lightweight polar fleece scarf, glove, and hat set.
First I felted little polka dots on it out of hand-dyed bamboo fiber. Then I went back and surrounded them all with this variegated rayon ribbon.
Felting on thin polar fleece is an absolute dream......

This was such a blast to do!

And she sure looks cute modeling them.

Now it is snowing hard again, so Chad, Robert, and I are hunkered down for a quiet and low key Christmas Eve and Day.........and here's some entertainment from our Jewish friends to help us celebrate Hanukkah as well....enjoy!
http://www.newlinerecords.com/hanukkah/video.html

Wishing you all peace and joy, now and in the coming year.....

CQ Landscape...A Warm-Up, Part 2

I added another "layer" of work on this little experiment, some stitching over the felted on leaves. I used the Kreinik Soi Noppe that I love so much. They don't make it anymore... ;-( or I would give a link on where to buy some.

Also, thanks to Leonie's most welcome critique in an email, I've covered up some of the visually distracting dark patches "behind" the branch with more leaves. There is some more filling in to do, too, as I go along. And lots more detail on the branches.
Working with the Babylock embellisher is such an immediate process! I love how fast it is.

Here's a detail shot. I've added the barest seam treatments along the patch edges on the left there. So far that element seems unintegrated with the rest of the piece, so I'll be addressing that issue next...

Also...I want to make sure you all know that Pam Kellogg is again posting on her blog! She is changing the emphasis a little bit...there is still absolutely gorgeous stitching going on, but her approach is now more personal and inspirational. Have a look! Welcome back, Pam...we missed you!

CQ Landscape...A Warm-Up

For the past year I have been mulling over how make a crazy landscape quilt.....I'm finally starting to get a handle on it so have been playing with a practice piece to get things rolling.
Newer readers might like to check out these pages of my website. They show a good sample of my landscape "phase" as a sane quilter.

I know that I definitely want to combine printed photos on fabric with more traditional CQ type fancy fabrics, soI dug into a small pile of "reject" prints that went into the mix below. This little piece is about the fall trees...and the wind that gets the leaves blowing across the sky....

This measures 16" X 24".
"Om Tat Sat" is Sanskrit and can be translated as "Supreme Absolute Truth". I always feel God in the sky. There is a wonderful saying, "I drink Thy power from the mighty cup of the wind..."
It's been really windy around here, too!

Those brown limbs are a fabulous chenille yarn that has been felted in place with the Babylock Embellisher. Thanks, Leonie, for that great yarn!

Then I used the embellisher to "felt applique" the leaves down...except for the shiny ones. Those are holographic lame that have been fused in place.
I've embroidered some finer detail on some of the branches, and am trying out some simple stitches along the seams in the bottom right section.
I just want to see how to combine these different elements.

Oh, and just for fun, here is basically the same quilt from 1997...

It is 16" X 19".
I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same...

Altered Sweatshirt...Day 2

This project is taking me along for a ride!


To make some applique leaves, I felted some silk fibers on water-soluble stabilizer.

I laid out the leaves....

And then I sewed them down...on the right side so far.
All these squiggles and beads started showing up, though. For some reason this is hard to photograph, but if you click on the picture you should be able to see them better.

It just seems to me that the more squiggles and beads arrive at this point, the better. So all of a sudden this little $5 sweatshirt project is going to take up a lot more of my time than I thought it would. But I can't hold back now....

Altered Sweatshirt

In the new issue of CQMagOnline, which should be going live at the end of the week, my friend Binki Thalman has an article about how to prepare a standard crew neck sweatshirt for embellishing...as a cardigan!
I am in between projects so thought this would be a good time to give this a try...and also to play with my machine embellisher.

So here we have a size L Hanes womens' sweatshirt, which cost $5 at WalMart. A few of my potential feltable goodies are along side it.

A few hours later and I am at this point. The whispy wool and silk roving is felted into place, and will serve as the background for today's further experimenting....a perfect pastime for a rainy morning...

Spring CQ...Golden Chain Tree

It's also called Laburnum.
Ours bloomed about three weeks ago...such a magical tree! I had to include it...plus, I needed some hangy yellow flowers...

I am using that thick unspun Soie Noppe from Kreinik in a cast on stitch. (The link takes you to Sharon B's excellent Stitch Dictionary.)

For the leaves, I got out the Babylock Embellisher.

This time I felted wool and silk roving on to hand dyed dupioni silk. It made for a nice, soft, floppyish fabric.

For the veins in the leaves, I felted on some novelty yarn that Freda Butler just sent to me. It blended right in there. Freda, you doll!

I went outside and picked a few leaves off my Laburnum to act as a model for my leaves.

I attached them with a beaded buttonhole stitch. Wish I could remember the wonderful blog where I saw this idea....

And there they hang.
Next up, roses...for real. I don't know why they intimidate me but they do!

*.......and special love to our friends in the Midwest who are having such a rough time with the weather....*

Spring CQ...Dame's Rocket...Embellisher Experiment #10

With all the rain we continue to get, there is not much for it but to work on the textile garden inside...the outdoor garden is too muddy... ;-(

My little stem of Dame's Rocket went on quite quickly, and it was fun to do....
Here are the steps I took:

You don't think I have forgotten about my Embellisher, do you?
I decided to try out the water soluble stabilizer that Catherine gave me when she visited last month, so I could create my own "fabric" for the petals. This is silk and soy silk going under the felting needles on top of the stabilizer.

All felted down, this piece is ready for its bath. I hope those little holes go away.

It took about 5 minutes for the stabilizer to dissolve.

Hmm....interesting.
But could I wait for it to dry? Heck no, I ironed it.

This is stiff and flat, not too thick. The holes are mostly gone, and this doesn't have the fuzzy surface that so much embellishment-type work has. I did not want fuzzy; Dame's Rocket petals are smooth.

The edges of the petals are nice and sharp and will not shred when I tack these onto the quilt.

And here we are! Couched stems and burnt-edge leaves will be a recurring theme, no doubt...
I like it when the stems follow the seam lines in crazy patching, as they do here.

There are two varieties of Helianthemum out in the garden, occasionally opening their petals when the rain stops, as here a few days ago....

I plan on doing a stylized version of these next....

Spring CQ...Embellishment Underway...Leaves

I thought I could be done with this by July?
Not even.
But that is fine...the slow and steady work suits my nature....it must be so!

I have decided to treat all four of my green arcs concurrently...so they will each have a version of the same seams. I started out with just a few simple seam treatment bases, just to get warmed up. But I knew I wanted to applique some leaves right away, so that is what I've done, two different sets for each corner.

The first set was done with fused velvet leaves that were further attached with embroidery "veins". You can just make some of them out in this picture...but what I really want to show here is my temporary hanging strip that I have machine basted onto the top corners of the quilt. I so often hang works-in-progress like this up on my design wall...this will protect the fabric in the quilt so I don't keep pinning through it.
I should have thought of this about ten years ago.....

For my second set of leaves I decided to felt up some fabric to cut the leaves out of, and then attach them just with beads. I've got to keep that Embellisher employed, after all.

For my base I am using some felt that was manufactured out of recycled grocery bags...I bought this felt in Houston last fall, weird stuff but perfect as a base for this applicaiton.
The fibers are soy silk, and the Fiber Flecks you see here are a new product from Kreinik. They just give a hint of glitter.

The finished leaf "fabric"....

There they are in the upper left part of this arc...You can see the whole velvet row of leaves, too. They are just the beginnings of building up the surface texture of this "garden"....This is early, early days yet.....

Down the line I will be able to add more of the other typical goodies like beads....and BUTTONS! My friend KT just sent me my birthday present, and it literally took my breath away. She had been in New York City and stopped by at Tender Buttons, on East 62nd Street...

I can see those MOP butterflies just flitting across my quilt, and the pressed glass buttons as centers of flowers....

Aren't those faces just so sweet and serene?
KT loves animals--and Africa--so there are elephant heads, a giraffe, an adorable little piggie and some sea creatures, too...and an assortment of dragonflies.
I'd rather open a little box from Tender Buttons than from Tiffany's, that's for sure!

KT, you are such a pal....

Embellisher Experiment #9: Crazy Quilt Scraps

The little clippings from all of last week's piecing had been swept off the table and into the waste basket when I thought...some of these could still be used, with my embellisher!
So many times when I visit other bloggers and see the spontaneous and quick projects they do I think to myself, "Allie, you should play more..." (I'm pretty project/goal oriented in my stitching.)
So yesterday I gave myself one day to create a little piece using some scraps, just for the fun of it.
It was interesting using the same fabrics in such an entirely different way.

This is 8" X 10".
The orange leaves are actually out of some filmy knitting ribbon that my friend Freda Butler sent to me. Thanks, Freda!
The ivy leaves and flowers are from an old batch of fake flowers I've had on hand for years. I felted them into place with a little soy roving (the fibers acting like a kind of glue.)
There's more I could do with this, but I want to get started on embellishing my Spring Crazy Quilt.
Thanks for the ideas that have come in regarding what to put in the center of the quilt. I love getting them!
Kathi Everett wrote suggesting I use dimensional silk flowers in an arrangement in the center, and I really like that idea...but I can start in on the seam treatments before I decide.

Embellisher Experiment #8, Finished

I went out on a limb with the frame for this piece.
I am very slow to pick up on the myriad of new materials textile bloggers are using (Stephanie Novatski is a great example of a fearless and experimental artist in this regard)...but I bit the bullet and decided to try out some angelina in the frame's inner border.
I'm going to stretch this over foam core, so it is technically not finished, but my work on it is done....I think.

The angelina is warm and glittery, and overall I like it. It just doesn't quite seem finished, somehow. Maybe it needs a little more stitching on it.
I will let it rest for now, as I am out of foam core anyway...

I have so appreciated your kind comments as this piece progressed. Thank you so much!

Embellisher Experiment #8, continued: More Detail

The idea all along with the felted landscapes was to add the detail with handwork on top of the felted background. This is what has gone since yesterday....

Oh yes, those are dandelions!
This still has a ways to go.....

An Embellisher Teacher comes to Call

Catherine Smith teaches the embellisher class at Portland's premier sewing center, Montavilla. She found me via the blog here and we have been corresponding for awhile...and yesterday she came to visit for the day, bearing knowledge and inspiration! She brought lots of different materials for felting for me to examine, including different kinds of silk and wool roving, angelina fibers, tools I hadn't heard of, books and magazines that were new to me...just a born teacher, she is. We ate cookies and talked, ohhed and ahhed for about 6 hours. It was such a treat.

She wouldn't let me take her picture which was a shame because she is very pretty! But I could photograph the angelina flowers on her shirt...these were made with a sheet of angelina and her embroidery machine.

And while we are on the subject of angelina--which I had never used before, and which by the way you can purchase at this great website, DesignsByDawn--here is a butterfly Catherine made, also with her embroidery machine and angelina.

More butterflies made with angelina and her embroidery machine...these she gave to me! Aren't they obvious candidates for a crazy quilt?

She made this bowl with her embroidery machine and angelina...I think it is absolutely stunning. She used metallic thread in both the top and the bobbin. (Different machines handle the various makes of metallic threads differently, and Catherine knows them all. When I go to her house she is going to help me really nail metallic sewing with my humble Brother machine.)

Catherine brought a whole palette of angelina fibers, both the fusible and non fusible kind, and let me choose my palette and create my own sheet to use in future projects. So here is my first angelina!

OK, on to the felting.
Catherine brought several of her projects to show me how different felting techniques and materials can be used.

This piece uses many of them. Some of the silk is just barely "tacked" on the surface with the embellisher, while the base behind it is felted to make a smooth surface. The fuzzy yarns were hand couched, to preserve their fuzziness, but yarns can be felted into place as well. The purple base is commercial felt, and she uses a cotton batting as a foundation. Beads were added last.

If you have already beaded your piece but there is more felting you want to add, Catherine showed me a great new tool by Clover that is just the thing:

Click on this picture so you can really see it. This little gizmo has three felting needles and you can very articulately felt in fiber right alongside your beading (or whatever). This is a must buy, I think.

This is a felting base, also made by Clover. You put your hand felting onto it and punch into the bristles...instead of into your hand or lap. This little item is spendy, about $20, so I think I will find an alternative solution. Styrofoam, for example...

Indeed, felting has so taken off that the business world has recognized a receptive market for new products...such as this blank woolen totebag that is already felted and ready to decorate. She bought it at Fabric Depot in Portland for about $15.00. It was made in Nepal.

This is a sample that Catherine left with me that really intrigued me. Some of the fibers are totally blended into the background with the embellisher, and then they get progressively looser, to the point where they need to be couched on by hand. This concept has so many possbilities, especially for nature type scenes.

Finally, Catherine brought the latest copy of Jenny Haskins' Creative Expressions magazine, which I had never seen before. You can purchase it here. This sweater was created by the Japanese fabric artist Nobuko Ema, and the magazine has detailed instructions for how to create the gorgeous embellishment on it. The look is simply to die for, in my humble opinion.
Thank you, Catherine, for a lovely day!

******************
Switching gears entirely, here is a link my brother just sent to me, from the Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art. (I am not making this up.) As my brother said, "It's not just the intersection of science and art, it's the intersection of science and fabric art! You are part of an amazing, demented, brilliant community, my dear!"
Isn't it so?