Today in Kenogami: October 2013

Thursday, October 31, 2013

Take a Stitch Tuesday

Stitches 45 to 51

Three samples for TAST with Sharon b. at Pin Tangle. http://pintangle.com/tast-faq/

Stitches 45 to 51

Stitch 49 – Knotted Feather Stitch

I really like doing this variation of the feather stitch.

Knotted Feather Stitch

Stitch 50 Inverted Feather Stitch

This one, however, gave me a hard time as you can see from the border. I also used it for the windows and the fence. By the time I got there it was getting slightly better.

Inverted Feather Stitch

Stitch 51 Raised Herringbone Band

I like the looks of this one but have trouble keeping the satin stitch the same width.

Raised Herringbone Band

I will link up to TAST at Pin Tangle

Check out the comments to see all the beautiful work going on there.

Happy Stitching,

Terry

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

And The Beat Goes On

Documented Mixed Media #5

And The Beat Goes On - 12" x 16" canvas

This past Saturday, I attended a Collage Workshop with well-known Timmins artist Catherine Cribbs.

We used recycled canvases, papers and prints from the teacher's stash as well as any of our own decorative papers and supplies.

These included Cathy's stamped papers and several type of prints, some of my own paper fabric, cheesecloth, scrapbook paper and previously painted paper and dyed paper towels, sparkles, ink, fabric and threads.

For inspiration, Cathy had us pick phrases and quotes from an envelope. My was “And the beat goes on”.

My take was to go with repetition and hoped for some rhythm.

The morning was spent making large sheets of papers from tissue paper and a variety of papers and other items. They were not dry enough to use then but can be cut up for future collages.....or very possibly fibre art!

papers onto tissue

layered tissue paper

detail

This was an informative and very fun workshop.

I will certainly be making more of these.

Linking up to Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Friday.

Terry

Friday, October 18, 2013

Renewal

Quilt Documentation # 149

Renewal

Renewal was recently juried into Englehart Area Artists 5^th Annual Juried Art Exhibit, a mixed media show which is on until Oct 27th.

See my other entry Southwest Spirit here.

Unlike Southwest Spirit, this piece went together easily, just the way I envisioned it.

I sun dyed the background during our NOFA week-end retreat in June.

Sun dyeing

Even though the sun did not co-operate much all week-end, we finally did get a few hours of sunshine and some results, mostly from the blades of grass and the salt.

The picture was taken when the fabric was still quite damp, it dried a lot lighter.

Grasses and salt, leaves were removed before taking photo (oops missed one!)

When I saw the rays, I immediately thought of a forest with the sun shining through.

This is what the "sun rays" looked like before quilting

rays from grass blades

and once the whole upper area was quilted.

quilted

I added some tulle to darken the "ground" area and quilted with a more spiky stitch to represent grass.

I also added more "sun rays" using organza.

Organza sun rays

two types of sun rays

I cut tree shapes from Lutradur, painted them with acrylics and stitched them on using invisible thread.

All that was left to do was add some shadows under the trees and it was ready for blocking.

detail of shadows

I wrapped it on an artist canvas.

Wrapped edge

Renewal- front

back of frame and label

Renewal measures 18" x 24".

Linking up to Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Friday and The Needle and Thread Network WIP Wednesday.

Happy quilting,

Terry

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Southwest Spirit

Quilt Documentation #148

Southwest Spirit

This past week my two pieces “Southwest Spirit” and “ Renewal” were juried into The Englehart Area Artists Juried Show. There were 38 chosen from over 80 entires.

This show was open to several art categories: Oil, Acrylic, Watercolour, Pastel, Print Making, Mixed Media, Sculpture, Photography and Fibre Arts.

I had planned to do something 3-D with Southwest Spirit but could not get it to work the way I wanted. But I will try again another time.

Making this piece was a bit frustrating, and I documented most of it, so bear with me.

This started out as a paper towel that I used as a wipe rag while dyeing some fabrics.

I glued it to muslin with diluted glue to make paper fabric.

paper towel glued to muslin

When dry, I added batting and backing and free motion quilted it with variegated thread. I also added beads, some cover up the holes in the paper towel.

I quilted a black background with variegated thread and discarded it as too busy and settled on a black background quilted with black thread.

The little quilt was fused and hand couched to it with red crochet cotton.

I took the other half of the paper towel and glued it to a black cotton instead of muslin because I wanted to make a raw edge binding and did not want any white showing. Little did I know that it would darken the colours so much. See the difference in the before and after photos.

Before:

Before gluing to black fabric

After:

After gluing to black fabric

You can see in the "After" photo below, where a binding was stitched almost all the way around and I changed my mind again.

I thought the dark paper fabric would work, so I cut the background quilt down to a more square shape and zigzagged the 1” strips on for the binding. I think it looks a lot like leather .

This quilt had a southwest flavour to me, hence the name and the Kokopelli on the hanging sleeve on the back.

Southwest Spirit back, sleeve and label

This quilt measures 22" x 19 1/2".

I'm so glad it's finished.

I will blog about "Renewal" in my next post.

Linking up to Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Friday and The Needle and Thread Network WIP.

Happy Quilting,

Terry