Potholder #2

I had to try those Tsukineko Inks!
And I must say, I like them a whole lot better than the paintsticks for this application. The colors are clearer, go on like a breeze, don't gunk up the threads, and are more blendable.
Have a look and see what you think.....

This time I decided to trace Pam's image, as I didn't want all those blanket-stitch looking lines on there. They took too long to sew, and weren't necessary for the design, so I got out my trusty 25 year old lightbox.

I used an erasable quilter's pencil to mark with.

This was much faster to sew, and the line is not so heavy without the black printed ink behind the stitching. This cotton is interfaced, by the way.

I am just getting started applying the inks mixed with the aloe. What a slick trick; I give this technique four stars!!!!! The ink did not lose saturation, and did not run a bit. It was easy to get quite articulate with those fantastix coloring tools, too.

Finished, heat set, rinsed, ironed.

I went through my cotton stash to find green and black prints. Amazing that I came up with five of them!
I tried to do a better job on lining up the binding, too.

The decorative stitches on my bare-bones little Brother Pacesetter PC 2800 machine are very nice, but......

I won this new machine as my prize for being a finalist in the $100,000 Quilting Challenge, and I have yet to take it out of its box. I keep thinking I am going to sell it on Craig's List so I can buy a ton of oya from my friend Rengin in Istanbul. That way I will have a stash for life and could sell some on Etsy too.
When I brought out the manual just to see what kind of decorative stitches were on the machine, I was overwhelmed by the choices, diagrams, buttons, etc.
Does anyone else get turned off by digital choices and steep learning curves like me? Sad, isn't it?
I am still thinking about that oya.......

A Potholder for Mary

Reading the blogs of my fellow textile practitioners has always been stimulating to me, but these days especially there are lots of ideas and approaches that I just want to try out so much! I'm loving Debra Spincic's use of machine embroidery in the center of her crazy quilt blocks. Cat over at Baumcat has been inspiring and charming me with her small scale crazy quilted style pieces. Rian Ammerman is whipping up some hotpad trivets for hostess presents this coming holiday season....and Pam Kellogg gave us a vintage rose embroidery pattern by Alice Brooks over at KittyandMeDesigns.

All of these elements came together in a wee spasm this afternoon, when I just wanted to make something. Nothing fancy, certainly not A.R.T....just something fun, fast, and maybe useful.
My sister could use a new potholder, so that's what I decided to make. What she really needs is a new coffeemaker....she has the coffeemaker from hell. But for today I started with a potholder. You need one to make coffee at her house, as the carafe for her machine has no handle, and is from a different machine so it doesn't fit properly.

This is pretty pathetic, Seester. (I know, my kitchen is worse.) You must tilt the carafe in there just right to get the coffee to trickle down into it, and then you need a potholder to carefully tilt and pull out the hot, full carafe.

So, a potholder for Mary's coffeemaker!
Rather than print up Pam's pattern and then trace it onto cloth, I decided just to print it directly ON to the cloth.

I just stitched over the black ink with a straight machine stitch and black thread. This part was boring, I'll admit. But it has that "hand-guided" look!


I was all ready to use that neat trick I learned in Houston, where you thicken the Tsukineko inks with aloe...except the only aloe in my house was colored green. So I got out the paintsticks instead, along with Shelly Stokes book on how to use them, and a tole painting book I got on the cheap when our local Ben Franklin went out of business (boo hoo).

You need stencil type brushes to apply the paintstick pigment, so I sacrificed some old funky brushes by giving them a stubby haircut. Voila, stencil brushes just the right size.

I used parchment paper for my palette, just like Shelly said to do. I scrubbed my brushes into the paint on the palette, then applied it to the cloth. The paint went on fine, but it gunked up the stitching. I went over the black threads later with a brush dipped in paint thinner, and that cleaned the thread off fairly well.

Fast forward here! I heat set the paint (not being able to wait 24 hours for it to dry). Then pieced my rose into a little CQ block (8" X 8")...then actually used my machine to embroider the seams. It's been years since I've done that. What instant gratification!
Here are the components of my potholder. I used two layers of the Insul-Bright batting. I don't want my sister to burn herself!

Well shoot, I was way too lazy to make a proper binding for this little project. I just fused an ultra-suede binding to the front and the back of the edges and zigzagged them down. The unevenness kind of wrecks the nice effect but oh well! If it was too perfect looking she wouldn't use it anyway....

I did go and buy some clear aloe so next time I will try that trick with the inks on the other embroidery pattern...

We Are Family

Thanks, you all, for your fun comments on the grievous mess in my sewing room! It's nice to know I am not the only one....

I've been offline and gone for the last 4 days, attending a reunion with my three siblings and our spouses, kids, and so far, one grandchild. My sister did an AMAZING job housing us and feeding us. We all had laugh hangovers every morning...I fell asleep (being one of the earlier ones to turn in at night) listening to the sounds of waves of mirth rising up the stairs from the living room.

We siblings are the ones seated...our mom has been gone for over thirty years, and our dad moved on from our family when we were young children, so we four have stuck together tightly through all these decades.
God has showered me with blessings!!! And may your family receive those same blessings of friendship, unconditional love, and flat out hilarity, too....

Now, to go catch up on my blogging pals!.....

"The Mess Where Pretty Little Things Are Made"

...This is the title of a post that Alma Stoller (whose blog I read with relish) just put up on her blog, showing pictures of her workspace. Then she dared her readers to show theirs.

OK, Alma, yours was just chaotic enough that I feel brave enough here to reveal my own!
When I am going full bore on a project, I let keeping things organized slide...I'm just too busy using stuff to put it away! I need everything out where I can see it! I only clear the decks when it gets to the point where I can't find something as soon as I put it down in here....

Do I really want to do this? It is actually quite embarrassing!....

I was so proud of myself when I got all my threads organized in these little plastic boxes from the Dollar Store. All that silk floss dumped out is my Vickie Clayton stash from last Christmas. On the window sill are my Dodger Barbie, Jake and Elwood Blues, my grandmother's matador dolls from Spain, and the other girls in my collection. Beneath the table are bins of silk and velvet fabrics, occasionally all folded.

The crazy quilt "small pieces" stash, organized by color. Art supplies and fabric printing stuff piled on top. Yes, I do know where exactly everything is...

Machine threads, books, craft supplies; sky, Sonji, and repro fabrics, wools and odd yardage on top. More cottons in bins below the books.

OK , the bead storage definitely needs help. (Really, I feel so exposed here! What a little exhibitionist I am!) I can hardly fit all the drawers in at once anymore. Wide silk ribbon and funky craft ribbon live here too. See how nicely my rolls of paper fit crammed against the wall?

Here is the central work table (I'm not showing you the sewing machine table or the desk table or the second table under the windows with all my new stuff from Houston on it) where I am actually sitting and typing to you all now. The design wall is blank at the moment, as the H quilt takes possession of it while I am not working on it. You can see more boxes of fabric beneath it. Max made that handsome wooden step stool in 9th grade shop class and I use it every day.

This room is a wreck!!!!
OK, who else is game to give an unvarnished look into their Creative Mess?

Tomorrow I must leave this fecund aerie, however, for a long week-end/fantastic family reunion/early Thanksgiving/celebration of my niece's 30th birthday in San Diego at my sister's house. Back at you all next Tuesday!

"H" Quilt, Fans and Beading

First I want to thank everyone for their very kind comments about and support for "Crazy for Flowers"....I appreciate you all!

Even though I got filled to the brim with inspiration, new ideas, and new supplies too while at Quilt Market in Houston, I am back to completing the "H" quilt...starting to come down the homestretch here, and I am constitutionally incapable of exploring other textile work until this is done.

So I've been adding more little fan embroideries to the large central body of the quilt, and have begun beading inside the patches as well. It is a version of quilting in a way, providing texture to all those "blank" spaces. Some of the beads are going on on top of teeny tiny black sequins, just for variety.

These dang wiggly bugle beads gave me fits, and I will probably cut them off and redo them.

This fan will probably have some more spokes added to it down the line. I do love those amber beads!

This quilt is getting way over the top, but H would like that.

Here's a larger overall shot that shows how those seed beads are starting to fill in as overall texture.

...and more seed beads. I am varying the spacing and size of them too a little bit, just for contrast.

When all the beading and fans are done, the next step is going to be a new one for me: I'm going to do some waste-canvas lettering in the black corner patches....I bought some evil 18 count canvas for the fine print, too!

Quilt Market Report 5: Some Favorite Quilts

I wasn't razzle dazzled by the quilts this time around, although there were plenty of truly superlative pieces. But nothing that seemed brand new jumped out at me and blew my mind....I think all the revolutionary ideas of the mid 1990's in the quilt world are still playing themselves out. Or maybe the judges just had somewhat boring tastes.
But the Houston show does have a "Nature" category, and as an old landscape quiltmaker, I was drawn to them the most. Again, I only managed to get the name and title for one of the quilts...the rest presented here are images with no names or titles. Sorry!

I loved the treatment of the pine needles in this one. My friend Tracey Brookshier, who was with me as I looked over the show, said she recognized this location in Hawaii.

This was heavily quilted, I think to make it really flat and read more photographically.
Anytime a quilter can successfully depict a source of light and shadow, she is ahead of the game. It is so unexpected to see that in cloth, after all. The border was unfortunate, however.
(In my opinion, that is...I get extremely opinionated at quilt shows, but usually keep my critiques to myself.)

What a great snow scene! And that ice cold blue stream works well, too. But why oh why did was the sky left so puffy? That brings it right to the foreground and it should be wayyyy in the background! Wonder Under would have been good for that sky....flat, flat, flat.

Very nice treatment of the water here, isn't it? That is SO hard to do.
The quilted sky somehow works here, I think, because the quilting lines are close and consistent, and follow the contours of the clouds.

I loved the ribbon work in the tree here.

The quiltmaker must have really had fun creating this dreamworld. I especially like the upper section of leaves and glimmering nightsky.
Ha! I just noticed the Ent-like figure in the tree opposite the fairy. They are having a discussion about something.....

If this quilt didn't win a prize I will be shocked. The description said it took the quiltmaker 17,000 hours over a four year period. My mathhead friend Tracey figured that out to be 12 hours a day, 7 days a week....so maybe it wasn't quite that much time...but wow is it spectacular!

Here is a detail of it. Utter perfection.

OK, so were there any crazy quilts? Aside from the one that was part of the Amish exhibit (and which was given center stage as you walked into the show), and Debra Spincic's brilliant winner for "Best Handworkmanship" in the Hoffman Challenge, Little Flower Urchins, I could spot only one in competition, in the Mixed Techniques category. (At least at Quilt Festival they have a place for crazy quilts. None of the American Quilter Society shows do, nor do the Mancuso shows.)

Here is the description of it....

And here is the quilt....

...and a detail.
Now technically, this is almost not a crazy quilt in my book, because the quilting is such an integral part of its design. It is like a sane quilt with crazy quilt inserts, and even those were quilted.
But it is an example of a hybrid between crazy and sane quilts, and that interests me. This one doesn't necessarily combine the genres in the way that is most effective (again, only my opinion; it was all cotton and therefore a bit dull), but it was very well executed and an interesting concept.
We definitely need more large sized crazy quilts entered in the shows!

I am recovered now from my trip to Market...I've slept great here at home, and my many discoveries are starting to sink in....
Any time any of you can wangle a way to go to Market I encourage you to do so. It was fascinating to see the quilt industry from the inside out...and I am left with great memories of truly lovely people, too.