Our weekend project

This weekend was our Oldest Son's first ever hockey tournament. It was an absolute blast to watch him play with all his friends! We had teams here from Castlegar, Revelstoke and Salmon Arm. He was really proud of how he played, and so were all of us.

One of his passions lately has been ventriloquism. He's been trying to figure out how he can afford a 'vent' puppet - the ones he's been looking at have been upwards of $300! Knowing that he won't be able to afford anything like that soon, we set out to make a puppet he has named Martin.

He was as involved in the process as he could be - some of it was a little complicated! He discovered that he really likes using the iron.

We started out with a doll body pattern enlarged it by 50%, and modified the neck and head to have the puppet parts it needed. Our son can put his hand in at the middle of Martin's back push up into his head to work his mouth hand-puppet style. We realized pretty early on that Martin was going to be pretty BIG!

After making a baby quilt last week he has become pretty handy with the sewing machine. Here he is stitching between Martin's fingers. Martin's arms aren't actually attached yet, contrary to how it looks in the picture.

Here's a final shot of Oldest boy and Martin with features drawn in, but no hair yet - we made him a toque (how Canadian is that) so that he can go to school.

Martin has had dinner with us tonight, and helped Oldest with his spelling and reading homework. He also observed a bath (electing not to join in).

Martin is big enough to fit into some of our Youngest son's recently too-small-clothes. We didn't have to build him a wardrobe, but we are going to have to do something about that lack of hair. My DH suggested that Oldest give Martin some of his, but Oldest said,"no way, I'm not ready to cut it yet!"

Back to quilting tomorrow, once all the boys are back at school.

Happy stitching!

Lisa

Inclined to Bind

Like many people I've been talking to lately I've finally caught fire for finishing! Here is the stack of binding I have pending. The first couple of hours this morning have been spent applying binding to all the big and small quilts I have around here that needed it, now the hand stitching begins!

At our quilt meeting last week I brought another stack (all little ones) that needed just the hand stitching done. We got to talking about how hard it is to finish, why we don't just take those last steps, and the reasons why various projects get put aside. It was really interesting, as absolutely everyone had something lurking somewhere in a closet or under the bed that needed finishing. One of the ladies there said,"Obviously, Lisa doesn't like doing binding." I thought about it, and realized that she's right. I don't like this last step. Not so much the binding, but the hand stitching for the sleeve. One thing all the quilts in today's photo (and the ones I took to group last week) have in common is a hanging sleeve. I've got to be really, really disciplined to sit and stitch that sleeve. I can brew several pots of tea and fold lots and lots of laundry while procrastinating that short (often not more than 20 or 30") stretch of seam.
So. Without really intending to, I've made a bit of a promise to myself to finish a lot of what has been started here.
(and yes, you can see some Christmas fabrics peeking out in the pile above. - Hey, my gifts are going to be ready for NEXT year, right?!?)

Happy Saturday,

Lisa

I just noticed

I was over at DigiQuilter just now and saw that Jodi's released two more of my designs in digital format... Arabia and Cumulus.

You can see them here.

Happy Stitching,

Lisa

Customer Quilt

This is the quilt that I took off the machine last night - for those who love scraps, this is an extravaganza! She used all kinds of pieces from her stash and scrap pile, bringing it all together with purple fan centres and a warm white background. Using the repetitive block placement just accentuates the fun variety of the scraps in each block. Trust me, there's lots for a fabric lover to look at here!

I hope to get it back to her today.

Working on this quilt got me to thinking...I have a big stack of fan blades already cut out from my scraps. It's a project that I set aside as I was having trouble seeing the unity of design in it - it just didn't seem to be 'coming together'. After working on this scrappy beauty I've pulled out all those fan blades (280!!), enough to make 56 blocks. They aren't as diverse as I remembered, with the blades being mostly in the cool end of the colour register with a couple of warm reds and purples thrown in for fun. Thanks to this scrappy beauty, I'll be moving forward on one of my own UFOs.

For those who are following the cherub quilt: I've redesigned the borders (again) and hope to get the drawings completed this weekend. That quilt has a deadline for show entry that I don't really want to miss. I've not entered a quilt for competition in 5 years (of my own, that is. Many customer quilts have competed around the province).
Stay tuned!

Lisa

Hummingbirds - quilted at last!

This has been a long time coming. For those who've been following this blog for a while...it's finally quilted!


This was a tough one to do - I was putting it off, imagining different quilting treatments, thinking of this, of that, when all I had to do was put it on the machine and start quilting.


Once I got going, everything seemed to fall into place. I had the right colours of thread (o happy day) and the machine is running beautifully. Since upgrading to the new APQS foot I've found that there I've got so much more control while using templates...which comes in handy for stitch-in-the-ditch.


Most of this quilt was done freehand. I only used templates for a few little picky parts (around the Hummers). My current favorite templates are the Sew Clear MiniCurve and the Sew Clear MiniTri! They're what I've been using with the art quilts as well.

Originally, there were to be Angelina Fibres on this one, in the flowers, but they just didn't look right with the rest of the piece. I may still add a couple of beads, here and there, but I think that'll be it for embellishments.

Please pardon how dark the photos of the bottom of the quilt are...I don't know how to get the light to be even enough to make that part of the quilt show it's actual colours. The top part of the quilt is actually as light as it looks in the picture, The fabrics have a subtle gradation that gives a bit of an optical illusion in photos.


So, now the binding... what colour?

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

A thought I had today

Sometimes the hard part is not following your muse, it's finding her in the first place.

L

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

This is me, still being VERY good

I have not opened the inks yet. But! Last night while DH and I were watching HEROES I did some sketches that will be the outline for my first ink experiment.

It's hard to see here, but it's some characters lifted from a frieze - Renaissance? - of little cherubs with wine and glass respectively.

I'm already layering up the colour in my head. Maybe tomorrow...

Lisa

This is me, being VERY good

My Tsukineko inks came today. Yes. Finally. I'm so excited to try these out, that I'm about busting! Please note - the seal is still on each and every bottle!

I'm being very, very disciplined. I do peek at them, from time to time, and have even petted the packaging, picking them up and looking in the box at all the applicators that came with them...but I have not opened them. I will finish the quilt on the machine before I get my hands in there. I will. I promise.

Whew!

Better get back to the machine!

:)
Lisa

Heartstrings

I belong to a group called the HeartStrings Quilt Project. We're a pretty far flung group, mostly North American based, but with an Australian contingent as well. The whole point is to make string quilts and donate them to local charities. At first we were looking at all donating to a central charity, but as the numbers of quilters grew, we knew we had to work more locally. There are currently 247 members some of whom are piecers, some quilters, many are both. We communicate through our Yahoo!Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HeartStringsQuiltProject/


While I originally signed up to donate my time quilting someone else's top for them, I've not had any takers. I thought, "why not make my own?" Goodness knows I've got enough strings here to get going on something. Here it is, today's efforts. I have a bin of strips that I don't tend to work with very often - It seems they are two narrow for most of what I do these days. I also have a lot of leftover batting chunks of odd sizes. The guidelines for the HeartStrings quilts is to work on a foundation, then assemble the blocks. Because I'm quilting my own, I can bend the rules a little. I'm doing a quilt-as-you-go method based on 10" blocks. My centre strip is red, then I'm attempting to use light strips on one side, dark on the other. I'm already running out of light coloured strips!


As you can see, the untrimmed blocks leave a lot to be desired - but clean up really nicely!
The light/dark balance starts to really show once the blocks are put together. The last picture here is of my first 6 blocks, not assembled, but laid out.
I'm not sure yet how big this quilt will be or where it will go, but there are a couple of charities close to my heart. I hope wherever it ends up it will be used and enjoyed.

Happy stitching,

Lisa

Panto patterns released in Digital Format

I was just over at DigiQuilter, and saw that there are now 4 of my patterns available in CQ, IQ or DXF files - Catalina, Cogs, Delicious and Flurry. Jodi is building that site up bit by bit, and it's looking really good. My patterns can be seen here.

By the way, thanks for comments on my IlloFriday contribution. It was a lot of fun to do, and I look forward to next week's challenge.

Lisa

Illustration Friday - RED

I know it's a little departure from the ordinary, but here it is: my Illustration Friday contribution. This week's theme is 'RED'. My first thought on reading it was a kid holding his breath because he wasn't getting what he wanted! I talked to my boys about it, after a few poses for photos (what a blast we had doing that!) and a couple of drafts of different pictures, here's the outcome. For those who are interested, it was done with CorelPaint.
The photo I was working from was one of my youngest - NO! Neither of my boys actually ever held their breath in order to get his way. YES! My seven year old looks that ripped!


Don't worry, I'm still quilting!

Cheers!
Lisa

Birthday Blocks

I'm part of a birthday block swap through the APQS bulletin board...I got my first block in the mail this week, and will be sending this one out in return.

This is my Featherweight - it's running so beautifully! I used it for my block exchange block. The stitch is nice and straight, and I find that I have a more consistent seam allowance on this machine than I do on my Janome.

I'll be mailing out my block today!

Happy Thursday,

Lisa

Found Cloth

Last night (after reading my Quilting Arts Magazine) I finally decided to do something I've never done with my Longarm: make found cloth.
I started out with a modest pile of fabric and thread bits that are left from the last few projects I've worked on ( you know, all those wee bits from trimming up, all the threads that are cut and discarded during machine quilting) and some backing fabric that I wonder why I ever bought, and got to playing.

The first step for me was to lay some batting on my backing, a top fabric (you can barely see it here, the white/pink/blue blotty fabric). Next, I got to laying out all the bits and pieces on top of it in a mosaic-like way, layering them and trying to cover my background fabric. (Later I didn't bother with background fabric, but layered directly on to the batting).

With a wild colour of thread and whatever bobbin thread I wanted to use up, I got busy stitching it all down. It started out as a somewhat random process, but as I went, I found myself looking for specific colours and threads for rather deliberate placement.

After years and years of being so careful not to stitch folds into fabric or leave an extra thread hanging this was immensely liberating! I folded and bunched threads and fabrics, then stitched the heck out of them to make them lie relatively flat - I could give this little quilt a haircut!

Here are some photos from the final piece. I'll make more later today (as long as my scraps hold out), then cut it all up. I think there will be a piece for my January Journal quilt, then I'd like to try the wallet and coffee clutch patterns from the new Quilting Arts magazine. I'll keep you posted.


Happy quilting,

Lisa

Oh Baby, we got SNOW

I felt compelled to put some photos up of the amazing amount of snow we have here so far...

You can see by the picture at left that the front of our house has over a metre piled up in front of it! The shot that gives the best impression of how deep it is on the roof is this:

Just for fun, compare the height of the back of our car to the top of the trunk with the amount of snow on the roof - it hasn't been this deep here in around 10 years.

Imagine walking through the carport, through the wood shop, then into our back yard. Thanks to my hard-working husband, the path to our back door looks like the photo at left...compare the height of the snow with the door!

As all good motorcyclists do, my DH put our bikes to bed at the end of riding season last year in here, our bike shop. There is a path to the big door, so that he can start them up from time to time and make sure they still running. They are babied with a low heat on in there.

Notice the depth of the snow at our 4 foot fence...it's a good thing our dog has lost her wanderlust. She used to just step over the fence whenever the snow has been this deep in previous years! DH would get out there and dig a big, deep trench along on our side of the fence so that she couldn't get out. Not anymore. The old girl would rather stay in the house and nap.

And one last shot for fun...

Driving has been really interesting lately...rather like piloting the car through a network of tunnels. There is no way to see oncoming traffic at intersections, as the snow on the sides of the road is higher than most of the cars. I did have the experience today of parking at the grocery store between two VERY large trucks - the kind that have wheels almost as high as our whole car. They may not be having the visibility troubles that some of us regular car owners are having.

Today has been beautiful, though. It was so wonderful to see the sun after at least 3 days of nonstop snow.

I'm hoping the road to the X-country ski trails is ploughed by morning...

:)
Lisa

More about the Hummingbirds

My sister made the LONG drive from Kaslo today with her lovely kiddies to come see us for the day. I got to return her NY Beauty quilt to her and pick her brain about the final borders for this little quilt. Here's what came of that!

Thanks to everyone who gave input on an earlier post...as you can see, we've kind of split the difference - the lightest green is in the top right corner, echoed with a little lighter colour in the lower left. It's almost imperceptible in the photo, but the bottom border is a little wider than the sides, which are a little wider than the top. It's only a smidgen of difference, but it does add a little more weight to the bottom while keeping the top airy and open. We talked about no borders at all, as an alternative, but finally decided that we liked it better a little contained. It just makes it look a little more finished.

Now to QUILT this baby! I'm really looking forward to the next piece here, with the embellishment and quilting. I don't know if you can see it in the above picture, but I've already started chalking in some guidelines!

For a customer right now I've got this gorgeous piece of Chinese Silk on the machine. I'll trapunto some of the areas for her, then she'll make it into a duvet cover. I think it's going to be sumptuous and beautiful. I'll post a pic if I can, once it's done.

Happy stitching!

Lisa

Heather's Quilt is done!

Here it is - done!

My sister's NY Beauty quilt - and isn't it a beauty? Heather worked on this for about 4 months, on and off, finishing it this January. I got the quilting done last night and hung it up in the studio - my oldest son came in, shouted, "WHOA!" and went over to check it out quite thouroughly. There you go, Heather, it appeals to all ages! I hope she doesn't want it back TOO soon, I'm really enjoying having it up in my space.

The stashbusters out there might be interested to learn that it is mostly from fabrics that Heather had in her stash - this is remarkable to me, as her usual use of colour is sophisticated, but restrained. This certainly is sophisticated - but she didn't hold back and used all the bits of the colour wheel! For what it's worth, I got to bust out a lot of thread stash on this quilt, around 14 colours worth - I actually have some empty bobbins now. The quilt is done using a black batting made by Hobbes (80%cotton, 20% polyester). The dark batting really lets the colours glow and the black fabric be really, really black. No batting pokies on this quilt!

Heather did not use a specific print pattern for this, but collected many different NY Beauty block patterns, then played with it until she came up with a setting she liked. She designed the border treatment and much of the quilt was paper pieced.

Woohooo! I can't wait to see this at the quilt show!