Fin!

It's done. I put the last stitches in it a few minutes ago. Whew!

Just for fun, I've posted 'before quilting' and 'after quilting photos. I've always loved how a quilt's surface is transformed by the quilting process. I think it's one of the things about this craft that got it's hooks so deep into me.


I have the box, I have the address, now I just need to send it away...

The quilt will be at MQX, for those who might be interested, or may be there. I'll be at MQX this year as well, with Jodi in the Willow Leaf Studio booth. Come by and say hello!

Time to start something new!

:)
Lisa

What a day!

So, we went to the hockey game...when we arrived, the team was already in the dressing room, eating pizza, a bunch of the parents were getting OUT of their hockey gear - I have to admit, I wondered at this, as I thought the pizza break was supposed to be AFTER the first game (not our son's). I didn't get a chance to ask anyone about things as the group was saying goodbye to a much loved little person who's family is moving away; we drummed up a pen and our son signed his sweater. Suddenly, Youngest Son was at my side, with my skates and stick in his hand - "Mom, you gotta get ready!". So I did. Sometimes I do as I'm told.

We played Oldest's team. All of us goofy (and some VERY capable) parents. At one point the line I was on was on the bench, and some of the parents were talking about the time change. THE TIME CHANGE? No wonder they were eating pizza when we arrived! We were an hour late! I later asked my DH about it, and he had no idea either. I'm really glad we didn't miss our boy's game. It was fun...and I learned that I'm completely useless with a hockey stick. No tremendous surprise, truth be told. I'm more of a 'fine motor' than a 'gross motor' girl, anyway.

Our boys are still pirates. Today they made flags for their ships. Oldest made his using paint on fabric (It's cool, Mom, it soaks right through - I only have to do one side!). Youngest made his using marker on his fabric - love the colour saturation on it. Both are very proud. Youngest insisted on making a YARR! face for his photo. Who am I to argue with a pirate?

In amongst all this, I did make quite a bit of headway with Bacchanalia.

The binding I made yesterday was from strips cut 3 3/8" wide. It will finish to 1", after all is said and done. Knowing I was running out of Celadon ink, I made the binding, then dyed it. This worked out rather well, as the fabric joins are less noticeable. The first thing to do here was to press one long edge under 1/4". I also cut my lead edge on a 45 degree angle and pressed it under 1/4". I use spray starch for this, as it makes everything behave so much better when it's time to run it under the machine.

After spending the night pinned out on the floor to dry (after heavy dampening and steaming), the quilt was as flat as it's ever going to be. This morning I go busy squaring it. I put a pin in at each corner, then ran a piece of ribbon around the perimeter. Using a large (15") square ruler, I checked to see if the corners were square. Naturally, they weren't. I remeasured from pin to pin to make sure top/bottom and side/side were the same length, then measured from corner to corner to make sure that each diagonal was the same length. It took a bit of move this pin, move that pin, check and recheck, but it all eventually looked about right.

Then, using a water soluble (Crayola) marker, I drew the cutting line, following the stretched piece of ribbon and using the rulers to make sure the lines were straight. I moved the whole works over to the big cutting mat, took a deep breath, and cut the edges off following that line, squaring the quilt.
( I think this is the point at which the boys came in to show me their pirate flags. Insert proud smiles here)

I use a mish-mash of different techniques for this next bit. Some bits are thanks to Judy Martin, some are thanks to Sharon Shamber.

I used my Featherweight to put the binding on. As it doesn't have a seam allowance guide wide enough, I put a stack of post-it notes on the machine bed at 1" from the needle. Leaving about 8" of the binding free I started stitching it on along the bottom edge. The the raw edge of the binding is matched to the raw edges of the quilt. *NOTE* This is NOT a double french-fold binding, but a single fold one. It's not great for quilts that will get a lot of wear (i.e. bed quilts), but fine for wall hangings. Once I got about 4" from the corner i stopped stitching and folded the binding two ways. One: over the end of the quilt. Two: Up as though to mitre. The earlier application of starch pulls it's weight here as the fabric is really easily creased. I creased those two folds into the binding, then opened them up again. In the photo at left you can see the two creases, unfolded (one of them is over the bottom of the quilt edge, one is on a 45 degree angle ending at the corner). This is the greatest little trick as all I had to do was stitch down to that first 45" crease and stop. This is the perfect spot to stop, giving a perfect 45 degree corner.

I refolded the binding into it's mitre, then started right next to my 'stop' point, stitching merrily along the next edge.

This quilt, being a show quilt, I did close the binding (usually I just 'sleeve' it).

After getting all the way around the quilt, I stopped about 15" from where I started stitching. You can see in the first photo at right how the binding is brought down to meet the established, pre-pressed edge. The second photo shows creasing the new piece right at the meeting point (yay starch!).

The two pressed 45 degree folds are going to be the stitching line. Once the creases were in well, I unfolded the binding, stitched the two pieces together matching those creases, trimmed the new edge to 1/4", and pressed the seam open.

Voila! Continuous binding. At that point all there was left to do was to finish stitching it to the quilt.

Once the binding was on, I lay the whole works out to make sure it was still flat. All that corner and binding manipulation can stretch the edges! (I should mention that I'm trying to keep this quilt as flat as possible at all times. Through all the finishing steps.)

My ironing board (like most) has an adjustable height. I set it to the same height as my table, plugged in the iron and pulled the ironing board over so that it was an extension of the table surface.
I turned over the quilt and pressed open the binding, Hand turning the corners. You can see in the photo at left that I could see right away if anything was amiss, and could have fixed it at that stage.

Once the front binding was pressed, I turned it over again and pressed the remaining fold to the back. The pre-pressed 1/4" edge is now turned under, giving me a nice clean edge to hand stitch down.

That's where she stands at this point, folks! Nothin' left now but some quality time with a thimble.

Happy Stitching,

Lisa

Stitching done!

I thought I'd give everyone a few photos of yesterday's work. The stitching part (to my knowledge) is done. I've had my DH down here to scrutinize it with me to see if there was anything I missed in the background, but he didn't see any spots - which is good. He has a great eye and usually sees things right away.

I'll be putting the binding together today. I surprised myself by finding the 'how to' for Amish binding. Sometimes I'm more organized than I think!

The silliest things occur to a person when they've had their nose to a quilt like this for hours on end...one of which was that the deadline for entering a vest in this show is on the 14th - Hey, I could do that (Yeah, right...keep dreamin', Lisa, it's not like there won't be other shows)!

In all honesty I'm looking forward to doing some customer quilts, none of them have this density of stitching! There are a few here to do before we go away for spring break. Something I'm also really looking forward to !

Shadows II

Slowly more shadows are going in. Here's a shot to show the area that has been done next to that which hasn't been done yet.

I'm looking forward to using some colours, I must say! Starting to think about binding, too. A long time ago I had a method written down (Amish?) for doing 1" binding. It would probably suit this quilt quite nicely to have that deeply bound edge, as opposed to the usual 1/4" finish. I'm also thinking about dye painting the fabric for binding, so that it matches really well. We'll see. There may be something around here that will suit it just fine in my stash - you never know.

Happy stitching,
Lisa

Shadows

Today I'm pushing some shadows into the background using a darker thread (Silco cotton 11).

L

Background of Baccanalia, take one

Tonight I finished the first all over with the background thread. Here it is removed from the machine so that I can turn it right way up. I'll put in more of the crosshatched shadows with the same colour, then do some selective background stitching with a thread colour that's slightly darker, hopefully to emphasize the 'trellis' feeling.

The wrinkly effect in the leaves and stem are partly because they haven't been quilted yet, partly because they have been rolled into the rollers since yesterday. I'm going to spritz the whole thing with water now in hopes of removing the last remnants of blue marker that were used in marking the trellis. Please cross your fingers with me that everything I want to stay is heat set!

By the way, I've had inquiries off-blog asking what kind of batting I'm using. It's just regular ol' Hobbes Bleached Cotton batting, the same as what I use in many light coloured customer quilts. I may wish that I'd put a layer of Hobbes Wool in it too for some false trapunto, by the time I'm done, but so far I like the subtle texture it's got.


I'm exhausted. 'Night.

Lisa

coming along

Things are continuing well, I think. Here's a little more of my progress as things go up a little higher on the vine. There's starting to appear to be more depth to the piece, and I plan on NOT tinting the background later if it can be at all avoided. I really want the background to be done completely with thread.

I have to be careful, though - I find myself clenching my teeth! Deep breath, Lisa, things are going fine. I keep checking the back to see that my tension (thread, that is) hasn't gone wrong while I was stitching.

Well, onward and upward!

Lisa
(P.S. - sometime last night marked my 3000th visitor since Dec 11, when I put a counter on the blog. Thank you all so much for looking in on things here, and for taking the time to comment! -L)

Bacchanalia begins

I got started on the first layer of thread in the latticework of the quilt today. It's tedious, but addicting! I can't seem to pull myself away...thought I'd post my progress while dinner is cooking, then I can get right back to it later.

For those of you familiar with this style of machine, you'll notice that I've mounted it upside down. The reasons for this are :

1) that I want to make sure this is perfectly square, so I am working the background first from the area I anticipate the least stitching to the most. (I've put masking tape on my leaders to make sure that this lines up perfectly each time I advance the quilt).

2) The background was a humdinger to draw. I want to make sure it's right as I go, so I'm working from the areas it is most obvious and well established out into those where it's a little more nebulous.

As I said earlier, this is my first pass with thread. I'm using a Silco Multi, #SCM24, for my top thread and a neutral Aurofil for the bobbin. Once the whole background is in place, I'll come in with a couple of darker threads to punch in some subtle shadowing.

Just for reference sake - the little crosshatches and parallel lines are no more than 1/8" apart.

Itchin' to get stitchin',

Lisa

Inking done!

I've got the ink part of the cherub quilt done. Today I put the blue shadows in the vines, did the purples and reds, and pushed all the really dark navy shadows into the figures.

I love these inks! They have a wonderful transparent quality that makes the figures really glow. The colours are true, too, not muddy.

Now I have to mark for the background latticework, then I can get to stitching!

I've included a couple of photos here for comparison:
These are pictures of the last cherub in the line... one with the dark blue shadows, and one without. It's amazing how the dark contrast just 'pops' the figure into 3dimensions. You may not be able to see it very well on the thumbnails, but if you click on the photos you will get a 600 pixel wide photo to look at. I hope the colours show well on your monitor. On mine they are very close to the original.


Also included for your enjoyment is one of my favorite parts of this quilt as it is developing - the lower right corner. There's a little rabbit making a quick getaway, along with my favorite piece of vine and leaf. It might be because it's so much bigger, but the blending worked here the best of any single area on the piece, has the best shadow/light quality.

I have to decide on a title overnight...I'm thinking "Bacchanalia"? It seems to suit the carefree mischievousness of the Cherubs.

My entry has to be postmarked tomorrow - so I'd better decide tonight!

Happy stitching (or whatever it is that you do)

:)
Lisa

Next...

Here is the next wash. Those pesky little cherubs are starting to take shape. Many more washes to go, and I must finish soon if I want to send a photo for quilt show deadline. Not tonight, though. I'm pooped.

Tomorrow seems like the last day to do everything. Why do we insist on making the last day of the shortest month the deadline for so many things? Is it that we think we should finally be recovered from Christmas and New Years, so should be able to have things done by now? I don't know. It seems like a large load for such a small month. It could use a few extra days.

If someone out there ever invents the 30 hour day, I'd be interested. Maybe we could use the extra hours for sleeping...

yawn...

L

Cherubs, continued

Today I managed to get the full quilt traced onto fabric, then started the inking process. I have another piece of fabric waiting in the wings in case disaster strikes! This is a bit of a nail biting process, as each thing added to the fabric is permanent...I know the dyes are water soluble until heat set, but it's really hard to lift just a tiny area if something goes wrong...or to just heat set what's going right, then throw the whole works in the washer to see if the bad stuff comes out.

So far I've done the initial two washes (banana and apricot) placing in the highlights and the beginning of the shadows. I have to admit I quite like doing those first two washes, they are when line drawing moves into the background and more 3dimensional work begins to emerge.

The last wash of the night was the most heart stopping so far, though, as it was GREEN. Just touching the paintstick to the fabric feels like asking for trouble! Every mark shows. The amazing thing about these little paintsticks (Fantastix, my preference is the brush tip) is that they don't drip! The stand for the dyes is really stable, too, so I don't worry about knocking over the little bottles.

Once I got going, though, it was a ton of fun. As it turns out you can give this a really authentic watercolour feel by dry brushing the dye in (on top of the previous washes), wetting it with a stiff brush - I kind of 'scrubbed' the water in - then placing a paper towel and iron on top of it to both lift some of the dye and stop it from bleeding as it blends...all while heat setting it. It's a bit of a 'found' method, as there's no real way to know how it's going to look until removing the iron and paper towel, but colour can be built up in reasonably controllable layers this way.

Ah! Many colour layers yet to go, and I MUST get some sleep yet as tomorrow is the day I work over at the Elementary School doing the Roots of Empathy classes.

It's hard to walk away from, but I must. Next are the purples, the browns and blues...NOW we're going to see some dimension.

Sweet dreams,

Lisa

Back in the saddle

I'm doing much better now - thanks for all the sweet well-wishes, both here on the blog and privately. It made a big difference!

After crawling out of bed on Saturday I managed to have a really productive weekend - good thing, too, because I was getting behind on several things. That's the thing about being self-employed: there just isn't any pinch hitter to call in when things get tough.

Here are a couple of pictures of one of the quilts that I finished this weekend for a customer. She (like me) is a fan of double batting. This quilt was done with Hobbes Cotton batting as foundation, then Hobbes Wool on top. It is quilted with one of my own designs, Trellis Vine. I think it really complements this top, and adds a lovely diagonal movement to the texture.

As you see it is really quite big! I've taken to hanging quilts sideways on my stand - they seem to fit better that way, to sit less on the floor.

(***later edit*** I have no idea where this photo went!***)

Last night I spent some quality time finalizing my Cherub quilt drawing. I'm finally at the stage where I can break out the inks and start painting this up (the fabric is in the dryer as we speak...the iron is getting hot). I may yet change a couple of the details, but not many at this stage. I know there is a lot of open, 'negative' space in the lower left of this final drawing, but I wanted to 'hang' the grapevine on a structure and needed an area that would establish that structure so that it would make sense behind the cherubs and vine. That area will be quilted in a trellis pattern, done sole-ly with thread. I'm hoping that will give a bit more depth to the whole piece.

I'll probably move that little rabbit (I love the rabbit) down to the lower right corner, more, and remove or change any of the leaves that are upside down. In the original stonework there were upside-down leaves, but I can't seem to get comfortable with them...my grapevines in the back yard just don't grow like that. You may also notice that I've redrawn all the leaves to make them a little simpler, and much more 'grape-y'. The whole works has undergone quite a big change, and is starting to feel like it's going to work.

O - the dryer just shut off... Time to start tracing!

Hope you are well wherever you are,

Lisa

Back to the drawing board...quite literally

I took a swing a stitching up a section of the border I posted yesterday, and it's officially a no-go. Several problems presented themselves, and there's no recourse but to design a new border. I've been looking more at renaissance border treatment, and think that I'll probably end up going with something more organic again, but hung on a geometric framework. Perhaps grape and acanthus leaves in arabesques? Too bad. I liked how that one looked in the mock-up.
This morning I'll be putting a lovely big customer quilt on the machine. All scrappy fans.
Happy stitching,

Lisa

The next stage for the Cherubs

I finally decided to enlarge the cherubs. The only way to do it in the end was to trace the original drawing, cut it up into scanner-bed friendly pieces, enlarge it, and put it back together. The new piece is 50% bigger - it looks much better.
Now I'm working out my borders.

This is taking a lot of "hmmmmm" time. The original plan was to place the cherub panel in an architectural context, with a pillar form above or below it...but I can't seem to get that to work. I'm going to go with this border, I think. It's from the same period (Renaissance), but not necessarily the same country. Sadly, my book source for the cherubs does not list it's actual origin, just it's ballpark age. I've been hunting around in all my art history resources, but to no avail.

Anyhoo, I think the wrapped border works well with it, adds a very geometric element to the whole piece. I've traced a small section of border onto my tester fabric, and in about 5 minutes will start inking it in. If I can decide what colours to work with, that is. What's with this indecision today?

Hope your path is always clear,

Lisa

Cherubs - testing, testing part two

Here is the next installment...

I know, I couldn't leave well enough alone and had to fill in the background with ink. I'm not sure whether that was good or bad...as always, you're welcome to weigh in with your opinions in the comments.

Happy Friday,

Lisa

It's official, I'm obsessed!

Yup, it's official. I can't stop goofing around with this stuff! I had to try out the snake motif on the machine. It's sort of the 'canary in the mine', and I wanted to see if the techniques that I've been hoping to do have any potential to make sense visually.
The first photo here shows a little bit of my machine handle in the way - it gives a sense of scale...this is really not a very big painting I'm working on. Also, it shows that the piece was built at a 90 degree angle to the finished viewing angle.

The first photo is of beginning the actual snake. I started with a WonderFil Rayon variegated - it's lost in the photo here, but it has beautiful lustre. The colours in the thread are all blue/green/turquoise, much like the snake. I have to admit I was a little disappointed in the colours of the snake at first - I thought they'd be more luminous somehow. Then reality hit - I'm working on COTTON here, not silk.
This whole first stage was really nerve wracking and more than once I was sure that I'd ruined everything.

Once the snakes themselves were done, I got going on the black right away (also a WonderFil, this one Silco black, cotton, but with the lustre I was hoping for from the dyes). Things started looking more defined - BUT every wobble in my lines showed! There's no subtle way to do black, I guess.

The last photo is of the finished piece. At least I thought it was finished until my 7 year old said, "Mom, you should have done their tongues red!" Yup. Smart kid. Here all this time I was seeing those oral protuberances as fangs. They really are tongues. Now I'm debating getting the dye out again, to see about colouring them up.

Hmm. Maybe I should sleep on it.

Happy stitching,

Lisa

Cherubs - testing, testing

Here's how it's going. I'm still doing testers of this whole experience with the Tsukineko inks, and thought rather than arbitrarily decide if I need to make the cherubs larger, I'd try painting one up at the size they are currently to see if it will work.
The first photo is of the initial yellow and apricot colour washes.

The whole thing is almost non-existent at this stage, but I thought I should record them for posterity (and later when I think...how the heck did this go together?).
The second photo is the sepia wash... I like how things start to take shape here. I did a lot of really dry work at this stage, mostly with the brush point Fantastix.
There were a couple of spots with a bit of uncontrolled dye travel, but not too bad!
The next photos are of three consecutive washes...somehow I lost one of the photos in all the transfers. After the sepia I did a light orchid wash to try to set my figure into a bit of background. This was followed with a darker wisteria coloured wash to push in some nice dark areas and give the figure some contrast.

The second last photo is once the dark (almost an ultramarine blue) was touched in - this is when things started feeling really good to me! I love that warm/cool tension. I played around with different background colours off at the edge of the fabric, thinking I'd fill the whole works in and have a large stitching area to work in for the next step, but everything seemed far too strong in colour - or too garish.

I was pleasantly surprised that the white that was included in the set that I got was really nice and light, yet opaque enough to be used for highlights. The final picture is of the piece as it sits right now on my ironing board. The highlights are subtle, but they do help a little.


As with yesterday, I saved larger photos so that anyone wanting a close up can click on the picture to enlarge it. You may not want to if you have a slow connection, though!

One of the hardest things is trying not to 'overwork' the image...that's partly why I didn't end up putting any background in. The goal is for a natural image, not one that is opaque and over painted. When the dyestix are in my hand it can be really hard to know when to stop!

The white 'dye' was nice enough that I went back into the snake painting from yesterday and painted over some of the really big colour bleed areas. I'm looking forward to the stitching stage on both of these, now, as the hand of the fabric has not been affected by the dye process, and it'll be neat to see how they stitch up.

Happy stitching,
Lisa

First time out with the Tsukineko inks

This is a hard one for me to post, as it's all in progress - and I'm not so good at leaving my unfinished things hanging out there for all to see.

Anyhoo - I did a small tester painting with the inks tonight on muslin, just to see how it would go. It was a little trickier than I expected...my first mistake was watching the How-to video. The lady on that talked about working with the fabric wet... and what a mess. That was not the type of work that I wanted to do tonight!

As you can see in the picture at right I had some real problems with the colour bleeding out of the areas that I wanted it in. Luckily, the inks are heat set-able, so I ironed the heck out of it to dry the fabric and get things back under control. Once I started working nearly completely dry brush on dry fabric there was much more control. The whole piece is only about 6" X 12" in size, so there isn't a whole lot of room for dye traveling.

What I learned? Work as though it's a watercolour, layering up from the lightest to the darkest colour. Let the light colours travel, control the darks.

Keep an unloaded paintbrush and water on hand for blending. If the colours have not been heat set yet, you can reasonably control the travel and blend with a clean, stiff, damp brush.

The piece at left is what I have now. I worked the darks in while the fabric was so hot it was almost burning my fingers, but it gave me some really nice, crisp lines.

The next step for this piece is the stitching. I'll treat the thread much like I would a marker at this stage, and tighten up all the details now, in the quilting process. Wish me luck, I'll be holding my breath the whole time.

Just for fun, here's a picture of the schematic drawing for the cherubs.

The original print of these honeys is only 1 X 2". I've redrawn them to 12" X 24". I can't decide if this is still too small, and how I'll make it bigger if that's what has to happen. I'll sleep on it I think, make that decision in the morning. If you want to see any of tonight's pictures bigger, click on them and you should get to look at a larger version.

Oh, and I feel like I should apologize to my Mom for the snakes - SORRY MOM!



Happy stitching,

Lisa