Foto Friday 3 - Texture

Quilting by nature is a two dimensional structure, layers of fabric with a batting. By running quilting thread through the layers, quilters create texture. Hand quilting, and cotton batting, and many washings has given vintage quilts a soft wrinkled texture. Modern quilters are giving quilts texture with more than just quilting stitches. By layering organzas, silk, melted Tyvek and Lutrador, by doing fancy stitching with textural yarns, and needle felting, quilters strive for texture in their art work. Folding fabric flowers and making 3 dimensional objects, has taken quilts even further off the flat layer. Use these texture photos to give you inspiration for your quilting stitches, folding or layering. Print them on fabric and use them for backgrounds, or as a main piece for your art, cut and piece them in different patterns. Recreate them in fabric with paint, dye, crayons, Shiva Oil Sticks, or screen prints or Linoleum block carving. What if you......

Try taking your own textural photo graphs to inspire you. A simple walk around the block will give you rock walls, metal sewer covers, leaf & grass textures, tree bark, gravel, fences, and many more. Open your eyes and look at things from a different viewpoint. Play and create texture in your artwork.

These are some of the textures I've created with needle felting, yarns and beading, on my piece titled "To Nurture and Protect II"

Finished - "Leonardo's Sketchbook"

"Leonardo's Sketchbook" is finished! It's ready to go off on a world tour, of Japan, France & the U.S. I am VERY happy with the results. I did not do all the thread painting I had envisioned. I kept the quilting simple, and let the images speak for themselves. The applique at the bottom added objects to focus on the sketchbook idea, feather pen, brushes and pots of ink/paint. The sketchbook itself has a small sketch from the last supper. On the opposite page are "Leonardo's Sketchbook" and "AMVMMXIII" my initials and 2013 in Roman numerals. My initials make great roman numerals!

The last photo shows the quilting on the back of the quilt, the top 4" are covered by the sleeve, so you can't see the "Last Supper." Everyone keeps telling me the statue of David is Michelangelo's, but this is a sketch from Da Vinci. Maybe just a man's pose or maybe he copied the statue. Ancient Plagiarism!

"Fractured Sunflower"

As promised in Foto Friday, here is the art quilt I made from my sunflower photo. It had two flowers in the photo, in orange yellow, I upped the saturation in Photoshop to make a brighter print. Putting treated fabric through the computer printer, with freezer paper on the back, created an 8" x 10" print. I cut it up into 3 pieces and rearranged & rotated the sections. I dug through my box of hand dyed fabric, afraid I wouldn't have any orange, but I did have several pieces. I use a lot of yellow, but not much orange. I also used a piece of dyed green with some leaf printing in acrylic paints. Cutting up rectangles of dyed fabric, and arranging them with the photo sections, made a larger lay out. Pieces of green filled in the edges.

I drew quilting lines on the hand dyed sections, to extend the flower petals in to that area. I began extensive free motion machine quilting. Thread painting the petals with 4 shades of rayon thread, yellow, orange, rust and red gave them detail, texture and shine. The centers were done with a very small stipple stitch in brown with gold highlights. The background was stippled in green and gold to finish off the quilting, and bound in Bali batik in a cinnamon color. All done in less than a week, a quick easy project for me. It is about 14" x 13" a small Autumn wall hanging.

Stash Saturday 2 - Green

"THEY'LL SELL YOU THOUSANDS OF GREENS. VERONESE GREEN, EMERALD GREEN AND CADMIUM GREEN AND ANY SORT OF GREEN YOU LIKE, BUT THAT PARTICULAR GREEN...NEVER!" PABLO PICASSO 1966 I love this quote, it explains why we, as quilt artists, have so much fabric! You have to have your color palette. We can't just mix paints like Picasso to get what we envision. My fabric is sorted by color, in this photo are most of my sections of greens. I do have some more, but that should not surprise you. The top two stacks are just batiks, then other batiks, then the bottom stacks are dark green to light greens. I have turquoise, teal, & blue/green separate. Most of my fabric selection is in quarters, long or fat, and half yards. If I need more for a border or backing, I'll go buy it. Buying smaller amounts, I can get more variety to my palette.

I LOVE lime green! Wow, it gives a spark of light to darker foliage, sunny highlights, and spring sprouts. One of the older issues of Australian Quilter had a quote, that one of the featured quilt shops said "Lime is the new neutral" The photo of the store had a whole long row of lime green fabrics. I used to be a blue/green person, all my leaves matched in color, just a little different in value or print. My older applique looks boring to me now. Nature has an unlimited palette of greens, to show the world. Mix and match, bright lime moss, with rich dark magnolia leaves, shadowy oak foliage and grass green. Then you can reach out to play with blue greens, gray greens, muddy green, avocado green, olive green, & pastel green. Do not limit your green choices with only the greens you like. It will make your art work more dynamic, to use a large variety. I save my scraps in a plastic 4 drawer set, one drawer alone for greens, when I need a leaf to applique I go to my scraps, why cut a new piece of fabric for a 2" square. I am a scrap saver! At $10 or more a yard, I'm being economically thrifty, that's what quilting is all about, using scraps to make something beautiful.

Foto Friday 2 - Sunflowers

Here are some bright and cheerful sunflowers to inspire you. They give me a very Autumn feel as the squirrels run around collecting seeds and nuts. I told my sister once that "you can't take a bad picture of a sunflower." I proved that when I went through the 143 photos of sunflowers I have in my file. Trying to pick just several for posting was difficult.

My sister and her neighbor have a contest every summer to see who can grow the tallest and biggest sunflower. I am amazed how big they can get, they save seed from their best ones and trade with other friends. Sharing at it's best. One year the squirrels got to it, and planted seeds everywhere in her yard. She had sunflowers all over, even in her lawn. I have made several sunflower art quilt wall hangings, one a photograph, that I added 3-D petals to, and machine quilted and beaded the center. As I finished the stressful deadline for the Leonardo quilt, I wanted something quick and easy to just play with, so I printed a sunflower photo, divided it into 3 parts, rotated, rearranged and added some hand dyed fabric, then machine thread painted it. It is coming out very colorful, and fun. I'll post it when I am finished.

So please, enjoy this bouquet of sunflowers I have picked for you! - AMY

Slideshow Added

Whew!!!! It only took me 14 tries to get my photos on a slide show set up on the blog. But I love it. These are my most recent art quilts, now that I've got it done I can add more photos. If you double click on the photo, it took me to the Picasa site with my pictures, let me know if that works for the general public. Then you can click the left or right arrows to move through the larger pictures. Please enjoy, and let me know which ones you like best.

10,000 Hits

WOW! I was waiting for the 10,000 hits, and some how I got almost 2000 hits today. What happened? I think maybe a scavenger hunt from something called vampire stats.com?? Any way, I have had about 20 loyal followers for all the time I have been on the blogoshere, and I want to THANK THEM for staying with me. I know many of my friends in Fyber Cafe and the Umpqua Valley Quilters Guild also check me out all the time. Please take the time to become a follower, and please leave comments on what you like, or don't like. I need some feedback to know what I can do better. I have added a "Foto Friday" and a "Stash Saturday" to spice things up a bit, and give you more inspiration. I have added labels to all my posts, so now, you can find certain subjects that interest you, just by clicking on that label. I'm also trying to setup a photo slide show of my art quilt photos, but Picasa has not been cooperative so far. I think I need to download smaller files of just my art quilts, in a limited album. The favorite post so far has been "How to Thread Paint a Dragonfly." I have also been taking more step by step photos of the projects I'm working on, so you have a better understanding of the techniques I've used. If you have done any projects based on something you've learned or seen on my blog, please email me a photo, and a link to your site, and I'll post it too. I know my art quilting has been improving, I hope my writing style has too, I'm always searching for new techniques and projects to try and share with you. I'd also like to thank the wonderful members of Fyber Cafe for their friendship, and inspiration, challenges, workshops and play days. So please, everyone have fun being creative, have no fear, be inspired and PLAY! -AMY