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“Two” Many Ideas and More

Saturday, January 14th, 2012

The first post of the new year…. now that we are nearly 2 weeks into it….  I have actually finished a few little quilts in addition to my latest set of art cards for the “Arts in the Cards” group.  Each month a new theme is chosen as a guide for the cards we send out to each other. I have only been a member of the group a year or so, but this  month is the second anniversary of the creation of the group, so the theme was Two.

My Inspiration

The above photo shows one of the inspirations for my cards. Actually, I had originally thought that I would do a tiny quilt with a pair of Tulips blooming on it… Two Tulips, but while experimenting with a new die cutting machine, I happened to notice that some of the vine and leaf die cut pieces looked like they could be twos, and another idea began to form. I then thought about “two peas in a pod”…. another idea (see little “peas” upper right in the photo above)…. THEN came the Google results…. I found that the traditional gift for a second anniversary is cotton (ok, cotton Tulips would work), then I found that there was a flower for that anniversary- Cosmos…. I love Cosmos and more ideas were flowing.  I should have stopped at that, but I pulled up a dictionary which had the definition and tons of extra information, too…  I did some playing with the definition and other words from the dictionary in a word cloud program. The program put the words in different sizes and colors in random order and I did a print out (also showing in the photo- upper left).

Printed Insides

By the time I got  done with playing on the computer, I  realized I had too many ideas to put into one little art card, so I decided that I’d add another two… Two cards.  The photo above shows the text I ended up with along with more that I added, printed over photos of Two white Cosmos flowers. I decided that the two cards would be connected in a hinge fashion with one long piece of the printed card stock. The photo above shows 3 of the inside pieces printed and in the process of being cut to size.

Creased Insides

Once the insides were cut from the card stock, the center creases were made. I also ended up fusing some little “scraps” of the vines that also looked like 2′s in the inside.

Peas

When I first thought of doing “two peas in a pod”, I needed to figure out how to make the peas…. I squeezed out drops of a metallic pea green paint on parchment paper and allowed them to dry over night.

Tulips Start

Above shows one of the little Tulip sides that I decided to make as tiny “quilts” using a thin interfacing as a “batting” so that I could do the stitching.

Two Vines Fused

In the photo above, the die cut vines with leaves 2′s and single leaves fused and “smushed” to make little pea pods.  The background fabric for these is a white with silver glitter that was then fused to a thin fusible interfacing. The one upper right is the first I played with, placing the flowers and butterflies… I decided it would be much easier to stitch the vines first, then add the flowers and butterflies after that.

Beginning Stitching

I used a green variegated thread to stitch around the edges of the vines and leaves, and added little curly tendrils to the pea pod.

Ready to fuse to inside

After the green stitching was  done, I switched to clear thread around the tulips, butterflies and flowers. The little quilts were now ready to fuse onto the inside that would connect the two little “quilts”.

Cooled Under Pressure

This photo above, shows the stitched “2″ sides after they have been fused to the other side of the inside printed card stock. Once both little quilts were fused to the outside of the inside, the pieces were folded and cooled under a weight to keep them flat. When fabric is fused to card stock, things tend to want to curl, so the weight flattens things while they are hot, then when cool they will stay fairly flat.

Outsides of the Double-Sided Cards

This photo shows most of the cards after they had cooled. To finish the edges, I dabbed them with a stamp pad with purple ink. You can see Two of the cards standing up like little sign boards. I did find I had a problem with the ink. After I put it on, it seemed to want to rub off, so I ended up brushing on some gel medium to seal it.

Cosmos and Peas Finished

Here is one of the Cosmos, 2, Butterflies and Peas sides… you can see a bit of the inside printed card stock. If you look really close, you can even see the two little peas made from the paint tucked into a fold in the pod.

Two Tulips

This photo shows the Tulip side of one of the cards…

Two Many Twos Finished Group

This photo shows a group of the finished cards, with some showing the Tulip side, and some showing the Two Peas and more side, along with one open to show the inside of a finished card. “Two May Two’s” were then packaged in archival art card sleeves and sent to their new owners.  I really never thought I would end up with so many ideas for what one would think was a simple theme….  If you would like to see what other members created for this round as well as others (if you want to do a bit more scrolling) see the Arts in the Cards Blog where each of us have posted our creations.

Big Shot Machine with First Cut

This is the new tool I have been playing with that led to many of my ideas. It was one of the vine cuts shown in the photo above with the machine. The die shown is the first one I got with the machine. I also got a couple others, but this was the one that I have played with the most. I wanted to see just how many different designs I could make using  just one die. The die cutting machine is designed for scrapbooking and paper arts to cut paper and other similar art materials. I had seen a video online showing one being used for cutting fabric, and that got the wheels turning. I do a lot of fusible applique and have been doing more with tiny pieces and even with my straight handled scissors, cutting is hard on my hands and takes a lot of time.

2 Motifs

This photo above shows two full motifs that were cut with the die. I cut two pieces of Wonder Under backed fabric right sides together using the whole design on the die. Most of the designs I have come up with have just used parts of the motif with fabric folded in different ways.

Die Play on Dyed Fabric

This is a photo of one of the first pieces I played with. I took a 6″ square of white fabric, folded into quarters on the diagonal, run through the machine just using part of the die design. I pulled the vine pieces out of the square and fused them on the outside of it, giving me what you see here.

 

Vine Heart 5″x7.5″ SOLD

This little piece above is one of the little experiments I began with and finished. This is 5″x7.5″ in size, and I arranged the vines to make the heart shape and swirl below. I began quilting with green thread on the vines and added little tendrils, then I added more quilting with the clear thread to fill things in. This ended up going to a new home after I showed it at my local quilt guild’s show and tell…. My first sale of the year!

I now have some more dies to play and see what new things I can come up with. So far this little tool has been helping me to get the old creative juices flowing again. If you are interested, I have been adding photos to a Die Cutting Album  on my Facebook profile page.  I have two more little pieces finished using die cut fabric and have photos there. I plan to get any new pieces listed in my ArtFire Art Quilt Shop also.  If all goes well, I hope to add new posts more often this year.

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Posted in Art Cards, Art Quilts, New Projects, Play | 1 Comment »

Playing in the Studio Again!

Tuesday, October 11th, 2011

Well, I’m slowly getting back to posting here more regularly. Since the last post I ended up doing Waaayyyy more organizing in the studio than I had planned to, made my cards for the Arts in the Cards exchange, got behind with my weekly journals and caught back up again. In the middle of everything else I even got a little bit started toward cleaning up one of the biggest “eyesores” in the landscape around here.

Neat Shelves!

This photo above shows my shelves after I emptied every one of the “cubbies”, sorted and organized my fabrics. I have mostly my painted and dyed fabrics on the shelves now and will be selling off and storing what I keep of most of the commercial fabrics on the shelves in the office. Since my pot of pencils, pens, etc. seems to always be in the way on my table, I left a couple of the spaces free of fabric to keep things off the table.

 

Computer Parts

Once I got the cutting table cleared of debris again, I was able to get some of my projects done. The AIC exchange theme this round was Hardware…. Perfect, there is a lot of that around this place. My first thought was to see if I could find some little bits left from various computers that are stored in boxes… I soon found that nothing was small enough for an art card (and I wasn’t really into taking things apart… I leave that to my guys), I decided that I would use a photo of some of the parts as the background. I took a bunch of photos, and decided on a pretty simple layout.

Hardware Printed and Stitched Canvas

A photo of a circuit board of some kind? and one of part of some sort of hub-like purple thing (yea, I’m not geeky enough to know what is what) worked great together giving the feeling of sky and grass. You know me…. flowers always seem to pop up in my art.  I printed the photo onto cotton fabric, then fused that to some canvas I had to give some stability. I knew I was going to have flowers, and after playing with my card (the 7th one that included a printing boo boo) I had an idea of where I wanted stems and leaves that I stitched with silver metallic thread.

Painting Washers

On a trip with Ken to Lowes last week, I did wander down the hardware isle and check out all the little fun goodies they had. I only bought a package of little copper coated nails. While looking for the computer parts, I had to walk past Ken’s woodworking and hardware stuff. I found some of the cute little lock washers that look like gears on their insides. He had lots of each size, so I “borrowed” one each of 3 sizes for each of the 7 cards I needed to make. I also picked out some small “regular” looking lock washers (again… I’m no hardware expert..:). Since my little nails were copper coated, i pulled out my Lumiere paint and turned the plain washers into copper colored ones. Working with those tiny little pieces, I got as much paint on my fingers as the washers.

Hardware Card Wet Glue

I made two stems for each card out of copper and silver colored wire, and stitched them onto the bases (I only hit the wire once even with  my terrible eyes). After laying out the washers and nails, I realized things looked too sparse, so I pulled out some tiny grommets for paper crafting that I had collected years ago, and decided since computer parts were used for the background, I cut up an old software CD to make a couple more “flowers” for each card. The photo above shows one card while the glue was still wet. The grommets were attached using a hammer and grommet tool, and everything else was glued on with gel medium. You’d think I would have learned after painting the washers that working so tiny, I should have found a pair of tweezers to help me out. Instead, I ended up getting as much glue on my fingers and under my nails as got on what was being attached to the cards.  Once dry overnight, I printed up backs for the cards using more computer part photos, printed on a Radiant Gloss photo paper. The backs came out nice and shimmery, but the photo paper bubbled a bit with the heat of the iron when I fused it to the backs… Ahhhh another lesson learned.

Hardware Cards Set of 6

Above is the photo of the finished cards ready for mailing. There are 7 in this trade, so the 6 “good” ones get sent out, and the “guinea pig” one is mine to keep… Not exactly like these… it has all the trial and error boo boos on it :)

Week 5 Journal WIP

While doing my sorting and organizing in the studio, I found a bunch of unfinished projects dating back many years. As with the previous week’s journal quilt, I am using the smaller unfinished pieces for my weekly journal quilts. This was from my days of selling at art and craft shows, when I would work in batches. I would make up the bases of the pieces and then add the applique and quilting. This already had a few pieces fused on for fall leaves, so I finished it up with a tree.

Coloring Fabric

My tree needed more bright leaves, so I decided to color up some just for this one. The fabric is a leftover Wonder Under backed scrap from my placemat making days (that’s why the wierd shape). This piece is a white leaf print on slightly ivory fabric. I began by scribbling with my Inktense Blocks in orange, yellow, red, and a touch of mossy green.

Coloring Fabric Adding Water

I am still amazed at what happens when water is added over the Inktense blocks or pencil.

Coloring Fabric 1

The colors were too light and I wanted a bit of shimmer, so I pulled out the metallic paints. This was a gold color and looked too brown to start, so I scribbled with the Inktense blocks on the parchment near my thinned gold paint.

Mixing Paint

Look what happened when I pulled the Inktense pigment into the metallic paint… much nicer color.

Coloring Fabric 2

I liked the fabric a bit better after adding the mixed paint, but it still needed more, so I later added some more shades of metallic paints that I had on hand.

Week 5 Tree and Grass

While the paint dried, I turned back to the quilt itself. I cut out and fused on the tree trunk and branches. Then I added the stitched grass using one of my variegated threads in shades of green. I just did a sweeping patch of the grass to give the piece some movement.

Tree Texture and Outer Quilting Done

With the grass done, I needed to figure out what to do next. I added texture to the tree trunk with yarn couched on and added more branches by free motion stitching using a zig-zag stitch. This gave me heavier lines than straight FMQ would and it was fun to see how it turned out! I knew that because of the dense stitching in the grass and tree, I needed to keep the rest of the stitching and quilting dense, too. I used a pale variegated blue thread for the sky-like background, then I used a nearly matching thread in the green border and did a lot of tiny leaves vining around in the border. I also added more grass-like stitching along the bottom that would blend into the border. I fused a few fabric bits for fallen leaves and stitched the grass over most of them.

Week 5 Falling Leaves

Once all the background quilting was done, I added the rest of the leaf fabric bits (some from a bright orange section of one of my dyed fabrics), and then stitched over them with a variegated thread in shades of orange through deep rust. I did this stitching to mimic the angled shapes I cut for the leaves.  After steaming it out, “Falling Leaves” is just about 8″x10″. This is the firs one I think is “sale worthy” (others may have differing opinions :) so I decided to list “Falling Leaves” for sale in my Art Quilt Shop on ArtFire. The link will take you to the listing if interested, where there are more detail shots.

Once I had my week 5 journal quilt done, week 6 was due, so I pulled out another WIP and finished that piece, too.

Week 6 WIP

This was a piece I started back in 2006 on the trip to Houston’s Quilt Festival as something to keep me  busy for at least part of 3 days in a car. I had fused the sunprints to the batting with the white accent fabric, then I hand couched the bulky yarn over the seams. I never got any farther with this until now.

Week 6 Detail

Since I have been wanting to play with my threads and stitching during this journal project, I decided to try something a bit different from what I normally would have done. I began with my “usual” vine quilting in the white areas using a pastel variegated thread that has all the colors of the sunprints. The stitching was pretty pale in color so I added more over the top with a purple metallic thread. Some of the yarn is stitched with a rosy purple metallic embroidery thread, so I thought I would add some metallic to the  vines.

Week 6 Sunprints

I didn’t do much new with the quilting in the sunprints themselves… I still like that the clear thread adds just enough texture to accent the prints without overpowering them like other threads I have tried do. To finish this off, I bound the edges with the same bulky black yarn with the colors in it that was used on the seams.  A lot accomplished in the studio in the past weeks! Finally!

Back of Workshop Mess

And to let you know that I have not totally been ignoring the gardens, here are a few photos. This one shows one of the worst “eyesores” in view of my studio’s North window. You can barely see the singlewide trailer that is a bit narrower than the one we live in that Ken is finally using as his woodworking shop. It is also where I make the wreaths in November and December. It is barely seen through the overgrown, falling down and obnoxious Sumac trees. The ones on the right of the photo fell down many years ago and are still lying there… I have had to mow around them and it’s not fun. In one way I hate to totally clear everything from here because the birds really love this mess. I plan to plant many of my baby trees in this area to have a neater and prettier bird sanctuary area. I have one huge pile of dead stuff ready to burn, and more is on today’s schedule to be  hacked and burned, too.

Salvia "Monsters"

I am also still learning my new camera… Here is a closeup of a couple florets of the Salvia Black and Blue… Probably the only Salvia I really like (most of them have red flowers). This photo came out pretty neat, with the florets looking like open mouths of some sort of monsters. The color even is pretty true without playing in photoshop!

Puff Balls and Moss on Stump

Thanks to Vladdi and Roxie chasing through the woods, I found this moss and puffballs on an old rotting stump. Vladdi and I were looking for Roxie who he left behind… She finally came slowly through the woods by the time we got too far.

Woods View

The last photo for this post… A shot of the trees in the woods. Lots of young trees, mostly Green Ash and Black Walnuts…. But a few more Sugar Maples are getting some size on them… They don’t seem to like the Walnuts… We usually get tons of seedlings, but very few live more than a couple years. There aren’t many Walnuts in the North end of the woods, and we are finally seeing some Fall color in that direction!  Walnuts and Ash aren’t great for color… A little yellow for a short time.  The Sugar Maples are the best! (in my opinion).

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Posted in Art Cards, inspirations, Landscapes and Skies, Weekly Journal Quilts | 5 Comments »

A New Beginning?

Tuesday, September 13th, 2011

My last post was 3 weeks ago, and the perennials in the gardens are beginning to look a bit shabby… It didn’t help that we had nearly a week with no sun and 4 straight days with rain… One of them with 6.5″ in less than 24 hours….

Soggy Hibiscus

The above photo shows the Pink Hibiscus after one day of rain on Sept. 6…

Back Yard Rivers before digging

September 7th- The Mound Garden river was flowing again…. This time, I had a ditch dug in the dog yard to divert some water to the woods… It took a lot of water (near the back fence), but there was more water going through the Mound Garden than in any previous storms of the year….

River outside Studio

This photo shows the river as it passed in front of my studio window… The water running by the propane tank headed straight for my studio wall and ran right around it, then flooded much of the dog yard… Poor pups! They didn’t know whether they wanted to go out to do their business or not… Some water had puddled under my sewing machine and the towel I keep along the wall was soaked, so some re-routing of the river was required.

Back Yard rivers after digging

During a slower rain shower, I was able to dig the ditch in front of my studio deeper and also dug the ditch to the woods deeper to give the water a place to go. As you can see in this photo above, there is a lot of water in the ditch in the dog yard, and very little in the garden… That helped for a while, but a later heavy downpour caused breaks and overflows in the ditches, so I had to choose another break in the rain to do more digging…

Van in driveway

We usually park the mini van in the lower parking area, but we had gotten groceries the last time it was driven, so it was parked and left in this part of the driveway… The water was getting really high, and when I went to move it before my second digging session, the wheels were already partly buried in the gravel that had washed from the upper part of the driveway.

Flooded Dog Yard again

This was one of those helpless feeling moments…. The latest heavy downpour had overflowed the banks of the ditches and broken part of one of my new levees (left side of pic, inside the dog yard).  When I got out there later to do damage control, I found that grass, leaves and other debris as well as LOTS of driveway gravel had plugged the wire of the fence and caused water to stand everywhere and return even worse to the mound garden.

Dog Yard after Flood

Sept. 8th, after the bulk of the rain had fallen, this is what the dog yard looked like… The two piles of mud and gravel along the back fence is what I dug out away from the fence, trying to get the water to go under instead of through it. I had 3 areas where water was flowing under the fence, and the middle one clogged again…. The gravel came from far up the driveway….

Culvert by Upper Parking Area

This photo shows some of the deep gullies formed in the driveway… I am really glad I added the big rocks by the pipe before the storm… This culvert has been washed out too many times this year.  There was still a big ditch from the previous storm, so I filled in much of it with rocks…. Some stayed! It’s amazing how much damage water just from 1/4 mile above us could do…. all that water ended up heading to the Susquehanna after collecting more along it’s path…. We were very lucky living this high up. The river flooding was near or above record levels with many homes and businesses being affected.

Wet Mini Rose

Here is a lonely bloom on the mini Rose bush….

Harry is still trying to grow!

“Poor Harry” seemed to like all the water…. He seemed to put out some pretty good new shoots!  The poor thing has been munched on much of the summer… it seems every time he has put out new growth, it has been eaten off. This time I gave him a douse of dear repellent before he became deer snack again.

And speaking of “Poor Harry” (a Harry Lauder’s Walking stick bush), he was the inspiration for my latest batch of art cards for my trade group.

Harry in the Petunias

The full view of Harry shows the dead branches that he was left with after being mauled by deer. I liked the shape of these branches, so I left them even though they are dead. A bit of “sculpture” in the garden. I took this photo and removed the background in photoshop to  use for the art cards.

Balance ATC's Printed

The theme for this trade was “Balance”… My gardens have been about the only thing to give ma any balance to my life lately, and Harry makes a pretty balanced “sculpture” in the garden, so he was to be the star. I began by fusing random scraps of fusible backed fabrics to parchment paper until I had  just a bit larger than a sheet of paper. I wanted to print Harry’s picture on this fused background, so I painted over the fabrics with titanium white to soften the colors, and a bit of gel gloss to seal and snaggy edges.  I then set up the document to print and it  worked! No Jams!  The above photo shows the printed fabric  base.

Balance Pair started

This photo shows two of the cards after they were cut to size and Inktense pencil was added for the Petunias in the garden. I had only dampened the pencil for Harry’s leaves, and not the flowers yet.

"Poor Harry" Balance Cards

Above are four of the finished cards… See how much more vibrant the colors from the Inktense pencils are after I painted over them with very dilute gel medium. I added some more deep shading on Harry with the pencils and thicker gel gloss to give him a little shine like he has in real life.  I finished these cards the day before the heaviest rain hit, and they got in the mail just in time… I’m not sure how many days we were without mail after that….

Studio Window Garden

Since I have been pretty creatively blocked lately, I have been trying different things to get things moving again…. A member of the Quiltart list was about to turn 49 a few weeks ago and decided she would make a little journal quilt each week during her 50th year. She invited others to join her, and since I just turned 50 last month, I decided it might be something to get me back into creating.  For the first piece, I used the photo of the view of the garden I see from my studio window when sitting at my machine.

Week 1 Sept. 4

The “due date” for the first piece was Sept. 4th…. Thankfully the rules for the group are pretty flexible, and I only had part of the piece fused together by then, but for me that was better than I had done in a long time. Yesterday, I finally finished it…. It took a while to do the quilting with all the thread color changes I did, but Free Motion Quilting seems to be like riding a bike… I was a little rusty at first, but moved along pretty quickly. The photo above shows the finished piece!

Before I started quilting week one’s quilt, I worked on the second piece.

Week 2 Beginning with Photo

Since week two included the storm, I just had to use a part of one of the photos of the water flowing through my Mound Garden.  Above is the photo I used with the beginning of the quilt before quilting.

Week 2 Sept. 12

Here is the finished piece for week two. I played with different shades of beige and brown threads for the muddy water and gravel in the quilting. The main fabric in the middle of the piece is a bit of a small piece of a batik I had that gave the feel of much of the upper part of the garden. The lower part of the garden is a piece of my pale hand dyed fabric with Inktense pencil used to add the green for the leaves of the plants. I used little touches of titanium white paint for the Phlox and Echinacea flowers, and quilting with a variegated bright pinks thread makes the Vinca flowers.

While these two little pieces aren’t a lot, I really hope they will be the beginning of my creative mojo returning…. Maybe I’ll even finish a quilt that I started nearly 1 1/2 years ago.  I’ll take any creative bursts I can get!!

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Two More Little Quilts….

Monday, September 13th, 2010

I finally finished another Fast Friday Fabric Challenge! This time I ended up with two pieces instead of one…. even if it was by mistake :)

Black and Gold Blooms

This  is the quilt I meant to make… “Black and Gold Blooms” is 8.5″ wide by 12.5″ high, and is available for purchase in my Art Quilt Studio on Artfire, (just click  on the name of the piece to go directly to the listing). I wanted to use one of the sunprints I did during my latest sunprinting sessions. (This post shows some of the fabrics I printed, and this post shows more of the process of creating the sunprints.)

This month’s Challenge was to incorporate metal into our quilt in some way. I have had a roll of the gold metallic ribbon for quite a while, and decided to use it for a bow “holding” the bouquet of flowers in the sunprint. I had also collected a set of metal letter charms that I thought would work nicely, too. I used a sheer fabric in gold with metallic accents for the section beside the sunprint.

Black and Gold Blooms Detail 1

Here is a detail shot showing the butterfly made from Angelina fibers with details stitched with gold metallic and black threads. The centers of the Nicotiana flowers are parts of snap jewelry clasps that I had collected at some point in the past.

Black and Gold Blooms Detail 2

This detail shows the bow made from the metallic ribbon, and hand stitched into place.  The hearts and vine design was free motion quilted into the lower black panel, and the veins of the leaves and flower details are also stitched with the same gold metallic thread. The letters BLOOM are hand stitched onto the gold side section.

As I mentioned, I made two pieces instead of just one…. The mistake I made….. I grabbed the wrong sunprint to use. I had two prints cut to nearly the same size, and had the one I wanted to use pinned on my design wall with the other pieces ready to use. For some reason, I grabbed the other piece I had cut that was just lying on the ironing board.

Black and Gold Dream

This is the piece that got made by “mistake”….“Black and Gold Dream” is 7.25″wide by 12″ high, and is also available for purchase in my Studio on Artfire.

I really wanted to use the heavier ribbon with the less delicate sunprint. For some reason, I didn’t realize I had the wrong one in the piece until I was quilting with the gold thread and something didn’t feel right…. I happened to look at the design wall, and there was the sunprint with the Nicotiana flowers that I wanted to use…. I almost just finished this piece and let things be, but the other sunprint was telling me it wanted to be used, so I did them both. The sunprint in this piece is of lacy Queen Ann’s Lace foliage and Pansy flowers. I found a thinner, more delicate gold ribbon to use for the bow on this, and used the word DREAM along the side.

Black and Gold Dream Detail

This detail photo shows a couple of the flowers and the gold butterfly beads flitting above the flowers. I used small confetti butterflies in the sunprint, and thought the two teeny-tiny, and one small butterfly beads fit well.

Both pieces are similar, with the same fabrics used for the side and lower panels, but they each have their own personalities.  Sometimes “mistakes” end up turning out pretty well!

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TWO Quilts Finished!

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

OK, I am excited, and they are both small, but just finishing anything this year is an accomplishment!

Stormy Sky Finished

I finally got time to finish the quilting on this one… Made for last month’s Fast Friday Fabric Challenge.  I had all but the sky quilted, but was unsure how to continue, so I uploaded it to the FFFC Blog anyway for some ideas. We then left for GA, and I finally got back to it. I used clear thread, and did have to do a bit of touching up of the needle marks in the sky. It finished at 10″x10″ with the black suede yarn binding.

Stormy Sky quilting holes

When I finished stitching, the holes from the needle really showed up a lot…. Not good! (the above photo shows them fairly well, it also shows more shine than the piece really has) So I pulled out my thinned gel gloss medium, water soluble wax pastels, and a stiff small brush….. I tried to match the color of the medium to the area of the sky I was working on, and it worked nicely. I did have to add a new back over it to cover the mess I created there with the color running through the holes, but I like the effect much better now.  The only thing that jumps out at me now is the “A” in the sky… not sure what I was doing when I zigged instead of keeping things rounded…

Stormy Sky Finished Detail

Here is a closer look… I also am not sure how I ended up with the tree top leaning so much, but I could say “the wind was blowing”, even though it wasn’t at the time I took the inspiration photo. Maybe it only bothers me….

Orange Echinacea on the Rocks Finished

This is the second piece I finished…. It has been in the works for much longer. This is 12″x12″ in size with the fuzzy yarn binding. I had the lower right rocky section beaded, then stopped. As shown in the preceding post, I finally got it back out while on our GA trip. I am really glad I put in my “travel bead studio” last minute…. I almost went away with no hand project at all to work on…. That’s how bad things have been quilt wise….

Orange Echinacea on the Rocks detail

Here is a detail shot showing some of the tiny shells, bug beads, and gemstone chips I added. I also added beads to the flower center for more texture. “Orange Echinacea on the Rocks” is available in my Andrus Gardens Quilts Studio on Artfire.

Now I even have a few more pins beaded since my last post!

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Posted in Art Quilts, Available for Purchase, FFFC Challenge Quilts | 3 Comments »

Georgia Visit and Beading Again!

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010

Time has been whizzing by as usual… This month, we took a trip to South Georgia to visit our youngest son, and got to have all 3 guys together at once which is rare these days.

Auto Parts Store Sign

There are many signs to help us along our journeys, but this and related ones aren’t the ones you want to have to look for…. Our trip from PA to GA began early AM Aug. 12, with plans to meet friends for supper that evening in Greenville, SC…. Well, that didn’t happen….. 2 hours from home we lost 2 1/2 hours while we had front brake hoses replaced. The front of the mini van began shaking and we thought we had a bad tire… The brakes were new, but not the hoses.  Then…. 2 hours on down the highway, the chugging and sputtering began…. not good in traffic on a busy highway in HOT weather.

Car Fix 2

The photo above shows Ken and Zack checking a part… this was I think the second auto parts store we stopped at (after the brake incident) to have a computer hooked up that didn’t really tell us what was wrong… We have learned that Advanced Auto and Auto Zone stores can do the computer checks. Thankfully there are lots of them along the route. It seemed that the heat and the AC running caused the most trouble. Once it got dark, we had no more trouble that day. We did miss supper with our friends and managed to stop on the way home instead. The  motel room late night was welcome.

Atlanta Traffic

The van didn’t do much better the second day, but we ended up going into downtown Atlanta GA to meet relatives for lunch. Lots of traffic getting out of there, and more chugging later, we got to our destination just above Valdosta, GA at our son’s house. (Needless to say, I didn’t do any driving with Zack along for an extra driver… I don’t do cities)

Nick's Driveway In

Nick’s driveway is a little narrower than ours at home, and it goes through a bit of a swamp. The road he lives on makes our gravel one look like a highway… red clay with a bit of sand on top that washes into the ditches with heavy rain, causing slimy ruts. I’ll keep our PA rocks and gravel, thank you.

Nick's Front Trees

The trees in Nick’s yard are really pretty with the Spanish moss hanging from them. It was very hot and steamy there, and with rain most days, I only got out for pictures in the yard one day. I had to let the camera lens warm up from being in the cool house- it fogged over just like my glasses did  in the “outdoor sauna”.

Crape Myrtle

There is one pretty Crape Myrtle tree in the side yard. The flowers were a bit shattered from heavy rains… the grass under it was sprinkled with pink florets.

Wild Taro

The Taro is something I can only grow in my greenhouse, and it is growing wild along the driveway and even larger ones by the front door. It seems to love the heat and humidity of this summer there.

Old Georgia House 1

Here is an old house we passed by a few times. Most of the houses in the South are smaller than here up North, and many of the older ones have porches on both the fronts and backs. A lot of the sheds and barns were constructed similarly.

Georgia Shed 1

This shed was in the back yard of the house… we saw a lot like this… lots different and smaller than the old barns and sheds around here.

Cotton Flower

Cotton fields were in bloom, so I had to get some photos. Above is a newly opened flower. I saw mostly pink from the road, but the flowers begin white and turn pink as they age.

Cotton Flower Faded

The faded flowers were the pink I was seeing from the road.

Cotton Boll

Hidden down in the foliage were even some cotton bolls beginning to open.

Travel Beading Studio

While riding in the car and while staying in GA, I got back to some beading… The above photo shows my old laptop case filled with a good selection of beads and supplies needed to add beads to art quilts or pins. I got a bunch of pins beaded… even the first Christmas trees of the year.

Orange Echinacea on the Rocks

The Orange Echinacea piece has been half beaded for a long time…. I finally finished it!! I added the beads to the upper left rocky section and accented the flower center, too. This is one of those pieces that wanted to be made…. the pieces landed next to each other on the cutting table, and I put it together even though it is not in colors I normally use.

Beaded Pins

These are some of the pins I got beaded, ready for the backs to be added. The photo is not great due to lighting conditions in the car while riding…  I got a few more done during the remaining ride home. It felt great to do something productive for a change.

Now that I am home again, I will be getting better photos and finish the binding of the art quilt so I can list them in my Artfire Studios.

One Final Photo…..  The main reason we went to GA and had the 3 boys together for a couple of days….

Nick and Megan

We gained a new daughter-in-law! They had a really nice small, simple ceremony with just close family and a couple friends… We will be going back in the Spring for the “big wedding” that will include all friends and family… Nick is now on his way to Afghanistan for a 4-6 month deployment. We look forward to meeting more of Megan’s family and friends after he returns home.

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Quilt Retreat 2010!

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

In between the first snow of February and the big snow storm at the end of the month, I escaped with nearly 40 other quilters for the Endless Mountains Quilt Guild Retreat at Watson Homestead in Campbell, NY. The retreat center we go to is a great location for the retreat. We had large rooms to set up our machines and more to sew and hang out with each other, all our meals were prepared for us, and our dorm rooms were in the same building. Four days and 3 nights of fun, and I actually felt like the creative juices were beginning to flow again!

Mud on the Wall

Here, I just stuck photos and chunks of fabrics on the design wall to give me an idea of what I wanted to do for my new Water Road inspired piece. This was before I took it off the wall to pack for the retreat.

Retreat Main Room

This is the room we we spent most of our time in during the retreat. Lots of different projects were being worked on. The following photos show the progress of the piece I began at home.

Mud on the Wall 2

Mud on the Wall 3

Mud on the Wall Not so Muddy

The last photo shows the piece after I got home and have it almost ready for fusing to batting for stitching. Finally some progress on a piece inspired by mud and rocks.

Wisteria Vines being Stitched

What I worked on when taking a break from the Water Road piece. This is one of the stone walls I began while at my grandmother’s last fall. The vines are made of various yarns and torn strips of fabrics. They are then stitched on with a free motion zig-zag and variegated threads.

Wisteria Vine Stitching 2

A closeup showing the vines in more detail.

Wisteria Almost Done

Flowers and leaves fused on then stitched.
By the time the retreat was over, I had the binding done on this as well as another tiny one done, too. Finally some progress!!

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Playing With Mud and Rocks Again

Friday, January 29th, 2010

Actually I am playing with paint on fabric to resemble mud, rocks, moss, ferns and flowers for a new art quilt I am working on. I have had the idea for this piece in the back of my head for a long time…. You know the kind…. an idea that keeps peeking out to say it wants to be done, but every time you try to put idea to fabric, things don’t work right, and the idea gets crammed back into the recesses of the mind until it decides to pop out again…. Finally this idea has actually gotten on the design wall, and is progressing.

Art Quilt "Mountain Laurel and Ferns" by Sue Andrus, Andrus Gardens

"Mountain Laurel and Ferns"

“Mountain Laurel and Ferns” was one of the few pieces I created in 2009. The new piece in the works is inspired by the same  area along the road I live on that inspired this one. I am fascinated by how tenacious the plants and trees that grow there are. It is a pretty hostile environment, with lots of rocks, a steep slope, shade and lots of dust coating things during the hot summer. The Mountain Laurel plants seem to be just hanging on by a thread, but they are actually deeply rooted old, abused specimens.

Mountain Laurel Flowers

Mountain Laurel Flowers along Water Road

In the photo above, the stems that show are pretty skinny, making it look like these plants were not very old. Upon digging around the bases a bit, I discovered that the stems were growing out from low, wide stumps. These are much older plants than it looks from a quick glance. The road they are growing along used to be one lane through the woods, up the side of the mountain. A number of years ago, it was widened so two vehicles can now pass safely. Most of the trees and vegetation close to the road was cut down on the high side of the road, while gravel was built up on the low side. These Mountain Laurel plants were victims of the massive cutting, but they grew back from the bases. They also continue to take more abuse when the road crews come along with their brush trimmers each summer. That would explain why the plants are so low, appearing to crawl along the ground.

The new piece on the wall will feature more of the rocks and dirt than the greens of “Mountain Laurel and Ferns”.  I had to break out the paints to modify a couple pieces of fabric to add to what I had in my stash.  I am also using some photos printed onto cotton, and there may also be a craggy, mossy tree trunk.

Fern Fabric

Fern Batik Fabric

The fabric above is the one I wanted to modify. This is not a fabric I like much, too much rusty orange. I decided to turn it into something to resemble the rocks and dirt around the Mountain Laurel plants.

Painted Fern Fabric Green

Painted Fern Fabric Green

Fern Fabric after Painting Gray

Fern Fabric after Painting Gray and Green

Above are the two pieces of the fabric that I ended up with. I toned down the contrast of the ferns and the rusty orange. I will be posting the process used to get to this point on my Classroom Blog.

These new fabrics will be used here and there in my newest creation. I am not sure how much will be used, but it now has more of a muddy, mossy look than it had.

If all goes well, there will be new posts soon showing progress of my new work. I will be away over the weekend, so I hope the ideas that have been flowing don’t stop.

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First New Art Quilt of 2010

Saturday, January 23rd, 2010

I finally got the creative juices flowing a bit yesterday, and finished the first FFFC (Fast Friday Fabric Challenge)  quilt I have attempted in a very long time. New challenges are posted on the 4th Friday of each month, with the idea of finishing a small art quilt by the following Saturday. I originally thought that this piece would be done before the next challenge was posted, but while double checking the rules for Challenge 40, I found that the next challenge had already been posted- yesterday was the  4th Friday of January- where has the month gone?

Cocoa Mix Box

For Challenge #40, we were to pay attention to product packaging  and how the colors used affect your perception and buying decisions of the products, and then use the colors from a selected package in a quilt. The piece was to be a still life, and be mostly plants or flowers. I drink hot chocolate every morning, and used one of the boxes for my color palette. I immediately thought of my favorite cobalt blue glass bottles, and wanted to include a couple in my composition.

Blue Bottles on Cotton

Photos of Blue Bottles Printed on Cotton Fabric

I am not great re-creating glass in fabric, so I decided to take photos of the glass and a spool of thread, and printed them onto fusible backed cotton fabric.

Cobalt Blue Glass Bottles

Group of Cobalt Blue Glass Bottles and Eye Wash Cup

Here is one of  the photos I used to arrange on the page to print onto the fabric. I placed them on, and backed them white card stock to take the photo. I love the gold design on the perfume bottle- my favorite.

Layout one.

Ist Layout Idea

This was the first version of the layout. I hadn’t remembered that plants or flowers were to be a big part of the composition. The original thought was to use the thread spools and some chunks of chocolate around the bottles… Not too hard to change direction a bit…. the short bottle could be a vase,  and I had thought of adding a white flower on the table anyway.

Quilt layout 2

Second Layout Without Thread

OK, to keep with mostly plant theme, chocolate and thread spools are out, bottles and eye wash cup still in. I found some great silk leaves in the perfect shade of coppery brown found on the cocoa box to back the white silk flowers. I added a stem into the open top bottle, ready for flowers. The chocolate colored fabric I had picked out was used for the stems and small leaves needed.

Art Quilt in Progress

More Progress

Here is what it looks like after flowers have been added, and stitching has been done. Most of the flower petals were stitched only down there centers, leaving them 3-dimensional.

Art Quilt Blue Bottles and Flowers

Blue Bottles and Flowers

Here is the “finished” piece…. The more I look at it, I think I need to figure out a way to make the white lace show up better. The bottles look a bit dull to me, and I may add a bit of gloss medium over them….. The flower centers could use some beads.  I guess I will have to hang it on the design wall for a while to see what happens.

Update- 1-27-10-  Well, after looking at it for a few days, I decided to add some beads in the flowers. Below is the most recent photo.

Art Quilt Blue Bottles and Flowers by Sue Andrus, Andrus Gardens

Newest Version of Blue Bottles with Beads Added

Art Quilt Blue Bottles and Flowers by Sue Andrus, Detail, Andrus Gardens

Detail shot of Blue Bottles and Flowers

This last photo shows more detail.  I even added a little gold butterfly resting at the base of the lower right flower.

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After The Fair…. and New Beginnings

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

I didn't get a chance to get to go to the Troy Fair last week to see in person how my things did. I did read in the newspaper about my first place ribbon for "Water Road House". It was judged, and placed first in mixed media! I also had a few surprises with my other entries. I was pleased to receive a number of blue ribbons along with a few red and one 3rd place. The biggest surprise was the quilt that received a Best in Show!!

Rose Door
Rose Door

I had expected that if any one of my quilts had a chance for the Best in Show, it would be my "Stained Glass and Ferns", mostly because it is my largest piece, and all the fabric used is my own painted and sunprints. It received a blue ribbon for first in it's class, and "Rose Door" at 14×17", took Best of Show!! I had to see the ribbon to believe it… Pretty Neat!! I am hoping that next year, there will be some categories my quilts will fit better… they are supposed to be making changes that will make entering easier, without guessing if my pieces will work here or there…..

On to the NEW work on the wall… That is if I can find space to work in… My studio keeps getting cluttered with things from other rooms, and a design wall that keeps hiding my ironing board when I least expect it.

Studio Clutter
Studio Clutter

I already don't have much room to move around in here, but while our bathroom is under construction, someone is always needing to get under the trailer…. The access door closest to the bathroom is the one behind my design wall, and the new foam wall I have been using gets moved in front of my ironing board, and someone (either Ken or son, Aaron) has to squeeze behind the plywood design wall and crawl through the very short door. When our grandson decides to follow his daddy under, there is more mud tracked onto my floor than usual… The good thing is that the bathroom is s l o w l y getting done! It now has very pale lavender walls, floor down, fixtures in and almost all hooked up! There may be hope!?! In the above photo, you can see the pieces I have been staring at for a while… I think I have a new idea to try with them…. Later…

Mountain Laurel and Ferns possible
Mountain Laurel and Ferns possible

  Here is one of the pieces that I started while at QSDS. I am playing with adding more Mountain Laurel flowers, and will be printing up some other woodland flowers and more ferns to add to this. I am sure it will go through a number of changes before it is completed.

Now to find that ironing board again, and get some fabric ready for the printer….

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