Alaska Quilting Cruise

Immediately after returning from the retreat, I had 3 days to get ready for an Alaskan Quilting Cruise, whew! I got my laundry done, quilting supplies together, and at the last minute had to go dress shopping for formal nite, 'cause the dress I had planned on wearing was too small :( I stuffed a bunch of friends from the Fyber Cafe group into my RV and we took off for Seattle. After a few quilt shops along the way, and lunch, we made it to Gig Harbor in about 8 hours. One of our dear friends Pat had moved there last year, and we really missed her in our group, we stayed at her house over night. In total we had 6 quilters and two spouses, in the RV, dropped off at the cruise terminal and I went to park. We were all so excited, the Holland America Eurodam, was huge! But docked next to the Princess Cruise ship she was NOT. Pat and I had a veranda room, very nice. Our first quilting class while we traveled North was with Anna Buzzalino, called "Moments" it was a curved machine applique class, where we designed our own pattern abstract from a photo.

I spent most of the day, sketching abstract curves from my photo of a hen and chicks succulent, I ended up where I started with a bulls eye design. Anna helped everyone with their designs, all different and personal. After enlarging it to a 18 x 24 paper, we traced it again so we could mark up a copy with colors, layers, sections and sewing order, and registration marks to match the curves. This took quiet a lot of time and deep thinking. Next we traced it all again on fusible interfacing for our working pattern. We were getting to the end of the day, so she showed us how to iron the fusible to the back of our fabric and paint starch on the seam allowance and iron the edges under. Over lapping the pieces and sewing with a clear monofilament thread in a small zigzag. I managed to get about 4 pieces put together. The designing was fun, I would have made a more accurate copy of my photo by myself, but did abstract the design, which is NOT my thing. I am more of a realist. So I was very happy with the results. When I got home I decided to work on it or it would have been forgotten in my "to do" pile.

I had quiet a puzzle on the fabric choices, I used mostly batiks and finally decided to go bright and light in the middle with very high contrast. Going more subdued and lower contrast, as the colors got darker and faded to the outside. I paid more attention to contrast than value, which was different for me. I ended up using my own technique for construction, not Anna's. I folded the seam allowance under with a glue stick, and glued the layered pieces together. Then I used a blind hem stitch with the clear monofilament thread to applique and quilt all at once. I highly recommend YLI thread, it is thin and very flexible! I was originally thinking of doing some thread painting to shade some of the colors, but I liked the simplicity of the graphic quality so I did not add any additional quilting. I'll post more of the trip next time. I am linking this to Nina-Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" click herecheck it to see what other talented textile artists are doing.

"Rainbow Hens"

More true to life color, before quilting
The color is too cool/blue, it is really very warm, orangey, yellow, like the photo above

I love the title of this one, it evokes multi colored chickens, but is really a photo of one "Hen and Chick" succulent. It is a closeup, centered on the petals of the plant. It was a very blah, monochromatic picture, with sharp edges, good lines and graphic quality, but boring colorwise. I manipulated the colors in Photoshop, to get different color combinations, teal/lime green, orange/violet, and red/navy. I reversed the colors into a negative, and made peach/med. blue and yellow/purple, this gave a light center instead of dark, and the edges of the petals were the opposite color. I printed five photos, each a different color. I used my computer printer to print onto treated fabric, with a freezer paper backing. I heat set the fabric with my iron, and then decided the colors needed to be perked up a bit. I used crayola colored pencils to add color to the print. I started with the main color, adding brightness and saturation in the highlights, then I added darker colors to the shadows. I left the medium tones alone, but this added contrast between the highlights and the shadows. I cut each horizontal photo into 5 strips, 2" wide, I also cut 2" strips of my own hand dyed fabric, in coordinating colors, to make a sixth picture. I swapped all the pieces around until I had a pleasing, balanced composition with each color and one piece of hand dyed. I made a tracing of the pattern onto clear plastic and used a light box to trace it onto the dyed fabric. So that when I stitched the quilting I carried the pattern on to the area that did not have a photo printed onto it. It blended so well, most people don't even know that it is not printed. The assembly was done with fusible interfacing, and fused onto muslin, in a 2 blocks across and 3 blocks down setting. I used clear nylon thread to zig zag all the edges to the muslin. Rayon thread quilting in a rainbow of colors was used to outline and highlight the edges of each petal and to shade into the center. Darker colors were then used in the shadows, to give a lot of depth. It is one of my favorite "ART" quilts. It has an abstract quality to it, while still being a recognizable object, and the multiple colors disguise the object to make it abstract.