Sticky Fingers: Southern Cross

I finally completed my glued fabric collage that I started in Ellen Lindner's Sticky Fingers class.   I have not done anything like this technique since I was probably in my 20's.  That was back in the day when I also did macrame and painted nebula on canvas with acrylic paints. It was fun to do something that was not traditional quilting.  And of course I did have sticky fingers working on this!

Instead of sewing the fabrics you glue them to a canvas.  I started out gluing the white on white fabrics that were just cut randomly and then painted.  After that I added the fabrics that make the shape of a cross.  Finally I finished by gluing down some threads that I had saved from the dryer after washing some stonehenge fabrics.  The size of this piece is 12 inches by 12 inches and I call it "Southern Cross" after a constellation in the southern skies.  It was also a song by Crosby, Stills and Nash.

Southern Cross

Thanks for visiting.

Chris

Challenge Quilt Done: The Evolution of a Quilt Called “Dancing Stones.”

And what a journey this one has been.  I was the person that picked the word which was “CROOKED.”  When I picked the word I had the idea to make some leaning Amsterdam canal houses. I was going to call it “Lean on Me.” Well after that idea I began to think of lots of other ideas…crooked windows, crooked doors, crooked fences on beaches, long and winding roads, prevailing winds and crooked trees, crooked stone walls, geologic fault lines, and who knows what else came to my mind.  This turned out to be harder than I thought it was going to be and at some points I was confused and lost. I could not even blame anyone else for the word since I was the one that picked it.

So finally I settled on an old stone window (crooked window and stones). So I printed the window on a sheet of ExtraOrganza and gathered my materials…black tulle, fabrics, red onion bag webbing.

So I created this mess.  What was I thinking? It was painful to look at. The stones had way too much pattern to them. The quilt was downright ugly!!

 
I removed the “colorful” stones and went for plan B although I had no idea what that was going to be.  I had that orange and red in the window and I did not want to tear that apart since that was already stitched down.  So I had to figure out what would go with orange.
I started going through the fabric stash and found some fabrics that I had dyed years ago and started pulling out the pinks.  Yep I decided to go with pink and orange which is a color scheme that I have never, ever used before. I wasn’t even sure it was OK to do that until I searched pink and orange on the web and found plenty of things that were done in pink and orange from bedding to clothing. So the web gave me permission to use those colors together.

After a lot of cutting I ended up with the following quilt which was still pretty bright even with the black tulle on top of it. I had done some hand stitching at this point as well as well as outlining the stones with a gray Fabrico marker.

I decided to add painted used dryer sheets on top of the entire quilt.  So now I have something more subdued.

Now to add the tulle.  Initially I was going to use black, but decided to go with light pink instead since it made it more “dream like.”
So now for the finished quilt.  This is not what I had in mind when I started this whole thing, but I think it turned out pretty well.

 

Thanks for reading.
Chris

Daughter’s New Car

My daughter, Kelsey, is done with her masters and is ready to take on the working world.  She has a nice job lined up at Oracle in Boston, has moved into an apartment near Harvard, and has a brand new car.

We went up last weekend to help her move and buy the car.  She wanted a mini cooper and a mini cooper is what she bought.  Here is her mini in her favorite color….ice blue.

She finally sent us a picture of her sitting (and grinning) in the car.

 

She is so excited since this is her first car. Up to this point she basically just drove one of our cars.

Thanks for reading.

Chris