Inspiration Iris

Last Saturday's inspiration excursion, was to Schreiner's Iris Gardens just North of Salem. The 10 acre display gardens are lush with an astounding variety of iris, inter-planted with perennials and annuals, lupine, columbine, alliums, clematis, larkspur, poppies and more. It is all surrounded with fields of blooming iris, with every color under the sun, the name iris comes from the Latin for rainbow. Lots of photo opportunities, and textile art inspiration.

The speckled one might be fun to try with some decolourant.

Columbine are hard to photograph because of their 3-demensionality, the spurs stick out the back and the cups come forward. Sara went on our girls road trip with us.

This tall peach colored plant is a fox tail lily, very intricate and delicate color. It was a beautiful clear day, about 70', perfect for wandering up and down the rows, trying to pick a favorite from all the many choices. Then down a shaded columbine, hosta and rhododendron alley to another garden. The gift shop was still open and we each got a plant or two, I got a red wine colored one, and a smaller iris with white top and bottom, but burgundy stripes on the bottom petals. The best time to visit the gardens is between Mother's Day and Memorial Day, any time in May, they were a little early this year due to our mild winter. Next we went across the highway to Aldeman's Peony Gardens, see the next post. Then into downtown Salem for lunch and our favorite quilt shop, Greenbaum's Quilted Forest. With stops at the art supply store next door, and a scrapbook store kitty corner.


I will link this to Nina-Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" click on the badge in the right hand column to see what other talented textile artists are doing.

Stenciled Flowers

My Assistant for this adventure, Lily, supervising from the height of my ironing board.

The Setup - wanting to paint floral stencils on my hand dyed fabric. I went thru my hand dyes and picked out a couple of pieces, mostly blue sky, I wanted something more adventurous, so I picked this multicolor grid fabric. It was made with rug hook grid under muslin, and gone over with dye paste on a foam roller brush. I thought I could pick up the colors in the flowers, and it looked kind of like a lattice in the garden. I laid out my assortment of stencils, mostly made with exposed X-ray plastic, choosing the florals and some large leafy filler pieces.

I used cheap acrylic paints, and did NOT do a typical dry brush stencil technique, I had to cover the background, so I applied the paint fairly thick. Highlighting with yellow, and putting a darker green on the underside of the leaves. Bright colors for the flowers, matched the colors in the background fabric. Working left to right, (I learned the wrong way, working on top of wet paint) and one stencil at a time, snugging them up close and overlapping a bit too.

Have a tin of water handy for the cleanup, don't leave the paint to dry on the stencils. I soak them all as I work, and clean them when done. Use a container that doesn't leak, another hard learned lesson!

Progress on the first round of painting. I will add more foliage in the front to fill in and add weight, more color flowers, fuchsia on the left, and highlight the blue bells, they disappear. I'll also add more pink and purple daisies. Finishing with dragonflies, stitching with rayon threads will bring it all to life. I'll add my favorite glass bead ladybugs, and some shimmery spiderwebs too. My only question is how to stitch the grid background? Any ideas? I've been working on this in stolen moments, painting one stencil at a time as I find 5 minutes to get in my studio. I need the sit down time to regroup, after helping my hubby with Dr. appointments, meals, making the office into a bedroom, etc... The progress is heartening, and having something to post on Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Friday, is a good incentive. Click on the badge to the right to see other wonderful textile artists.

Flower Sketches

I have been trying to do a little sketching lately, and have been drawing flowers. I have been following the blog Sketchbookchallenge.blogspot.com and also dannygregory.wordpress.com they are both wonderful for helping you learn how to draw, and for inspiration and ideas. I use a mechanical pencil to do the original sketch, then use colored pencils, watercolor pencils, or kids watercolor paints to add color and detail. Then I do an ink detail over it all, to outline and detail, I really like the finished look this gives it.

The bunchberry was done from a book on drawing, and the gaillardia was from a blog, so they are both copies of other drawings. They are done with a kids watercolor set from the dollar store.I am getting better with the watercolors it takes a little practice to blend colors and get the right shades.

The poppy was done from my imagination, I have drawn them lots of times for quilt patterns. The colors came out very bright. The hydrangea was drawn from life, sitting in my garden on a bench, under the shady maple tree. I am getting better at the depth and perspective. I used colored pencils and am happy with the blending of the colors, but I wish I had used watercolor pencils instead, for a smoother, more intense color.

The ewe and lamb are done in mechanical pencil, and is from a photo on the cover of the Dharma Trading catalog. I think I managed to get some fur texture in it.

Iris & Peony Garden Tour

Several of the ladies from our textile arts group "Fyber Cafe" went on a photography excursion North of Salem, to Schriener's Iris Gardens and Adelman's Peony Gardens. We had a wonderful field trip, the iris were in full bloom, but, for the Peonies we could have been a week later. You start to take pictures of your "favorites" but soon realize you can't choose just one, and takes pics of everything, then that gets overwhelming too. The gardens kept going and going, large planted beds with tall lupine, delphiniums, allium, clematis, oriental poppies behind the iris, and smaller annuals in front. It was a paradise of color and fragrance and bees. A cool alley way of old rhododendrons and azaleas, columbine and hosta led the way to more flower beds around the back of an old farm house. The whole area was surrounded by fields of iris in rows of various colors.

After shopping in the gift shop and buying some iris plants, we went to Adelman's Peony gardens. The gardens were newer and not as large but the flowers were huge and showy, with intense color, arranged with other perennials in beds with lawn paths between and statuary and a water fall/pond. We took more photos, and had lunch at a picnic table in the garden. Of coarse I had to buy a dark red Japanese peony with a frilly center.

To get to either gardens, take Interstate 5 in Oregon, just north of Salem, exit 263, Schriener's is on the West side of the freeway, Adelman's on the East. Both have good signs to follow. The best time is between Mother's Day and Mid-June.

Daffodils & Crocus

After my morning walk thinking of daffodils, I stopped up the hill and took photos of a neighbor's crocus, that are already blooming, there are daffodils blooming also, so my estimate was a little off. I went home and went through my photos, and selected several to print onto fabric. I pre-treat the fabric with "Bubble Jet Set" and iron on a freezer paper backing, and trim it to 8 1/2" x 11". I run it through my computer, just like regular paper, but I change the printer setting to a heavier weight paper, like card stock or something similar. I wanted vertical strips, to emphasize the tall flowers, I added some lavender crocus flowers to add color, I filled in with some of my hand dyed light green fabric. I added a border of darker green Bali Batik, as none of my hand dyed fabric was a darker green. I am going to thread paint it with rayon threads, with free motion machine quilting.

Thinking of Daffodils

On my weekend walks, I am seeing the daffodils starting to rise up out the the damp winter soil, some are about 6" tall, and starting to form buds. They probably won't bloom for another 2 to 3 weeks, some time in March. The crocus are usually first, and I do have two Hellebore plants in bloom, with lovely mauve bell type flowers, they are also called "Lenten Rose" because they bloom during Lent. They are hard to photograph, because they hang down, you have to lay on your belly and get your elbows muddy to take the pics. So now, I can't wait for spring!! I want to make a daffodil quilt, I don't need any new projects, but I have over 100 daffodil photos, so I am thinking of printing a few on fabric, cutting them into vertical strips and thread painting them. Just a quickie small wall hanging to jump start my spring. Photos - Last years Daffodils, and Hellebore from Feb 2012.

Hellebore "Lenten Rose"

Finished quilt top, glued together, no stitching yet.
Center seeds in progress
Pen Sketch for pattern
Original photo, "Lenten Rose"

Another photo project, I decided to make a large flower quilt from one of my photos. I picked about a dozen possible pics, closeups mostly, I narrowed that down to four choices, an iris, clematis, poppy and the hellebore. I traced each 8" x 10" photo onto a clear plastic sheet protector, basic lines and details for a pattern. I blew each photo up into a 2 page x 2 page poster. I decided I liked the iris, but it will be a challenge, the clematis was too simple, and the poppy's been done to death by others. The hellebore was my favorite from the start, the bold colors of burgundy and white, with lime green center and peach seeds. The 4 page poster had some pretty small pieces still, so I decided to go larger, a 3 page by 3 page spread. This is a nice size, it takes up my whole desk space for working on, and is still manageable. I think if I do the Iris photo I will go even larger! Finding several shades of white for the shadowing and shaping of the petals was a challenge, some "Fairy Frost" fabric was the answer, and two pale multi color pieces. I have a huge supply of lime green batiks, and lots of burgundy prints, but I did choose regular patterned fabric instead of batik for the burgundy. I used a fusible backing for the fabric pieces as they are intricate, and needed clean edges. After that it was just like doing a jigsaw puzzle, cut out pattern pieces, iron fabric, cut out again and glue in place. It got rather boring, after the creative part was over. I assembled the center seed area separately, and put it over the center. A deep blue batik was chosen for the backing, with lighter spots like rain, the batik green leaves were cut free hand, and veins were glued in for more detail then just thread veins. It will look stunning when quilted!

Stitching a Photograph

Wow, machine quilting on the flower photos I took is amazing. If a picture is worth a thousand words, than it is certainly worth a 1000 yards of thread too. 8" blocks of "Drunkard's Path" pattern, so I am only sewing on half the 8" square, the amount of detail is overwhelming. I am stitching the outline, adding a little highlights, and some of the deeper shadows, but leaving the photo color to be the majority of the picture. Still I am using 5 colors of thread at least for each flower and 3-4 shades of green on the leaves and backgrounds. Each picture is a work of art all by it's self. On the columbine picture, in the lower corner, you can see the background texture of the corner pieces, I still need to quilt those areas. I love to use rayon threads, 'cause they have a beautiful sheen to them, this adds highlights and sparkle to an other wise dull print on fabric. The colored pencils also help jump up the color. I am debating about weather I need to get a different printer with more vibrant color capacity. Or if it is something I can do in photoshop to get better color. I have upped the hue and saturation and added contrast, like one book suggests, but the print didn't have half the color that it has on the screen. On the monitor the pictures just glow and the color is intense! Well back to the stitching.

Playing with photos

I've been busy playing with my photos on Photoshop Elements ver6, it is very intricate, simple to do simple things, but it does so much more! I decided to work through the lessons in the book, "Piecing with Pixels" by Hart & Campbell. My first project was making different colored textural backgrounds. I had a photo of some lacy seed pods, almost like babies breath flowers, it was very layered with fine lines. I played with the color, contrast, hue and saturation, I made a negative to get different color options, I was having trouble getting orange and yellow, cause it wasn't in my original picture. I chose matching colored flowers to go with the texture, red/yellow columbine, blue delphinium, red anemone, grape hyacinth, peach peony, lily of the valley, red bee balm, lavender mallow and a purple aster. I made a "Drunkards Path" quarter circle with the flowers, and the rest of the block with the texture. Instead of having to sew the curved piecing, it was all done on the computer. So I printed the 9 blocks onto fabric, that I had treated with bubble jet set, my printer ink lasted, yeah! They were a little dull, they look so brilliant on the computer monitor. So I added colored pencils to the flower pics. I used a lot of white, yellow and light flesh color, to add highlights to the light areas, and added dark blue, dark green, red and dark purple to the darker, shady areas, to define the contrast. This really perked up the pictures, I think the stitching when I quilt might cover up a lot of what I did though, so I will see if the extra work of coloring was worth it. I tried different arrangements of the Drunkards Path patterns, but with only 9 blocks there wasn't much choice, with 12 blocks I could have done a different setting. I pieced the blocks together in 3 x 3 rows, very simple, and decided not to do a border. I've layer batting and backing and have started to do the quilting. I am outlining and accenting with rayon threads, so we'll see when it is done. Stay tuned for more exciting quilting info.