Oz & Circles

I went to a four day Art Quilting Retreat on the Oregon Coast for 4 days. 5 of us went and had a great time, sewing and creating and visiting some good restaurants and quilt shops. I continued to sew circles to the background using my hand dyed fabrics. Since we had a big design wall to pin to, we tried to decide if we liked it vertical or horizontal. I am calling it Marble Madness, as the elementary school I drove school bus for had a Marble season, when the kids all played with marbles and collected them.

I decided to do a second one with some of the printed fabric I had made. They are all resist dyed fabrics, some soy wax, some potato starch, and other resists we tried at a dye class. I had a commercial batik to use for the background, and decided to wait and dye some indigo instead. That way I can say it is all hand dyed. I wanted to plan this one a little bit better, the 1st was just random, select fabrics as I went. So I set out the fabrics I wanted to use, and rough cut them into circles, lay out was more important, as I wanted the darker ones to recede and the brighter ones to be smaller and in the foreground. So we played around with arranging them for a while.

At the retreat one of the ladies wanted to do "Happy Villages" like some of us did last year. I had wanted to do another with the Emerald City as my theme. I took along an assortment of green fabrics, many of them had metallic gold on the printing. It was hard to limit the selection of fabric to 12 instead of 8 to 10. The lay out went quicker as I had experience doing it last year, but it still took hours. After dinner I added windows, doors and turrets.

The next morning I started on the yellow brick road, I had to sketch it several times, trying to get the perspective right. I began with the bottom, larger bricks, in a bright yellow "Fairy Frost" fabric on a brown batik. As I got higher and wanted to change the angle, we had a whole dialog about perspective, angles, vanishing points and horizon lines. It took us awhile to decide on the right way to get it done, and make it look good.

With the yellow brick road leading into the castle, everyone thought it pulled you right into the design. It took an immense amount of work. I did not want it to look cartoony, but not too realistic either, as the castle is not "Realistic." I did the bottom one brick at a time and as I went up I began cutting strips and will put the lines in with the thread painting.

I had gotten some grass fat quarters down stairs at Forget-Me-Knot quilt shop, each was a different height scale. I probably have them all already, but had not thought that far a head to bring them. I fussy cut the greener pieces from the fabric and as I progressed down I did not mind adding in more yellow tones and tan. I stopped at this point because I know at home I have several more grass fabrics that are the right scale and color. I plan on appliqueing some red/orange poppies at the bottom and adding the tips of some ruby slippers at the very bottom. It was very fun to do and see it grow. It took most of 2 1/2 days to get this far. You can get so much done at a retreat with out phone interruptions and spouse demanding attention. Two other ladies worked on their villages too, I will post them on the Fyber Café blog. I am linking this to Nina-Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" click here to check out what other textile artists are doing this week.

Machined Circles

I am always looking for a new project that I can use for my hand dyed fabrics. I keep dyeing more fabric and I get the mind set that it is too good to cut up. So having a project that makes me cut into the hand dyes is a good thing. So when I saw this simple way to set in circles and machine sew them, I was all excited. Pat G. and Lorraine in the Fyber Café arts group, took a class with Claudia Law, one of the things they learned was how to do these circles. I had seen it before on LeAnne Paylor's blog click here but I could not get my head around the concept. So maybe I can help it make sense.

Start with a double layer of freezer paper, ironed together, then trace your circle diameter. I have templates, but for the larger size I used a bowl, butter tub lids are great templates too. Cut out the circle and save the centers too. The smallest circle I've done is 3" you have to be able to pull all your fabric thru the center of the paper, or just rip the paper off when you are finished. You can try a smaller circle if your fabric is not too bulky. I made mine from 4 1/2" to 7" but you can certainly make them much bigger.

Iron the paper to the BACKSIDE of your background fabric, where you want the circle to be. Keep it well ironed in place.

Cut out the background fabric inside the circle, with a generous seam allowance. Then snip around the curve in the seam allowance. Use a glue stick on the paper edge and fold up all the snips.

Find the area on your circle fabric that you want to use, this is a great place to fussy cut. Use the cut out paper center as a guide and rough cut out your circle fabric with a 1" seam allowance.

Add a layer of glue stick on top of the glued snips, then set it onto your circle fabric, both fabrics right side up. Iron a bit to dry the glue.

Remember the first time you did paper piecing, and you had a hard time getting the idea that you were sewing on the paper not the fabric. This can bend your mind too, hopefully this will help. You are sewing from the TOP. With the fabrics both right sides up, peel the top layer back to the freezer paper edge. You will always stitch on the background fabric, right next to the paper. Do Not sew on the paper. The smaller your circle the more times you will have to stop with the needle down and pivot to get a smooth stitched circle.

Remove the freezer paper from the fabric, it is easier if your glue is not all dried. I have reused the freezer paper up to 3 times, until it tears, doesn't iron in place or gets too full of glue. Trim the excess fabric from around the seam. Flip over and iron from the front. It should lay very flat with no tucks or ripples.

You do not have to overlap your circles like I did. Have fun fussy cutting fabrics, or cut the circles out of patchwork pieces. I have another half yard of fabric to add circles to. My background is much darker than the photos show. A lot of the fabric I am using was ice dyed, or 3 layer parfait dyeing. I am going on a 3 day art retreat next week, with my art group to the Oregon Coast, whoopee! I am linking this to Nina Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" click here to see what other talented textile artists did this week.

Vintage Trailer Wall Hanging

I got all the little bitty 1 1/2" squares sewn together, and the narrow black and white check on the inner border. I had just enough of the check to do an outside border too. I have about a 1" x 2" scrap of the check, I used every last speck of it. The black and white helps tone the busyness down, from all the bright scraps. Since it is rainy today, I should probably go and find a piece of batting and start quilting on it. I am such a procrastinator. But I did make a pan of brownies, since the kitchen was cool enough to bake, and I did not have to worry about heating up the whole house on a hot day. I will link this to Nina Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" click here to see what other textile artists have been doing this week.

Vintage Trailer Wall Hanging

I am just making a quicky little wall hanging for my RV. I got the pre-printed panel on my travels in the South West. I cut tons of 1 1/2" squares out of a pack of charm squares and from the bag of scraps I had with me. I'm using them in a double row for sashing and border. I even had to cut a ton more squares to finish it. There is still a small black and white check for an inner border for each block that I have to cut out. I have just the space for it on the wall by the table in my RV. The bright colors are so cheerful.

Foxglove have seeded themselves over my front lawn and now they are in full bloom. It was beautiful watching them sway in the breeze the other day. I am linking this to Nina-Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" click here to see what other talented textile artists have been doing this week.