Two off the wall on Friday

Yes--- my goal to get the 2 quilt tops that were hanging out on my design wall done this week was met. Both of the quilts are quilted, blocked and faced. I still have to sew hanging sleeves on them, but it was a successful week. I even changed the picture at the top of my blog!

First is the Paris rooftops in olive green fabrics that are hand dyed except for the very light fossil fern fabric.

 

I am finally really getting the hang of doing a facing instead of binding. I use Terry Aske’s method that can be seen on her blog, Terry Aske Art Quilt Studio. What I like about her method is how square the corners come out as you can see in this photo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The second quilt that I finished this week is my gray forest.

So it looks like this was a week of finishing some quilts. Now I need to figure out some titles for these two. Do you have any ideas? Sometimes I am so bad at coming up with titles.

Linking to Nina-Marie. http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com/

Thanks for reading and commenting and helping me with titles!

Now to put medicine in my cat’s eye since we are dealing with feline herpes once again….

Chris

The fork in the road

So should I take the left or the right fork?

I have almost decided that June should be a month of finishing things instead of starting a new quilt. As much as I want to work on the canal houses there are some quilt tops that are still hanging on my design wall . One of them has been hanging there and waiting  to be quilted for 1 1/2 years. I dyed the fabrics in EB’s Dyeing to Design class. I even made the quilt top in the class, but never quilted it. It is not that large at 16 in by 22 in because we only dyed quarter yards of a gray to black gradation. This was the last quilt that I made with my beloved Steam a Seam 2 Lite. This fusible has been off the market for a while now. The latest update is that it will be back this fall. I will buy a bolt of it at that time. I have been using Misty Fuse meanwhile, but some projects just really call for Steam a Seam. Not sure if I really like Misty Fuse. One thing is that I don’t find it as light weight as they claim.

 

This is my green Paris rooftops from my master class back in January. I just could not get it done in January and it has been hanging out on the design wall ever since. Again this is not that large at 21 in by 29 in.

 

 

 

 

So I am thinking about finishing these quilts before moving onto something new. Also it might be a good time to do some fabric dyeing, monoprinting, and rust dyeing.

You should check out Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Fridays. She might have her quilt finished by now. I am looking forward to seeing how it looks and what the other artists have posted.

http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com/

Thanks for reading and for all your feedback on the canal houses. I think I need to ponder this one a bit more. I am just not ready to start working on it yet. So I will change direction at the fork in the road.

Chris

Decisions, decisions

I have gathered a bunch of fabrics for the canal houses, but have not done anything else. In the responses to my blog last week about how many canal houses to do came out as follows:

• 5 houses ---6 votes
• 7 houses –3 votes
• No opinion—5 votes

So most folks think that I should do 5 houses. Other comments that came up were that more contrast was needed in some of the houses. I decided that the closest house should have a bit more contrast with the windows and played around in EQ.

Less contrast

More contrast. I do like having more contrast for that closest building which I guess is what it should have since it would be the one closest to the observer and the most visible in terms of detail. Plus I do like more of the green touches among all that blue.

Now to deal with my poison ivy. I never should spend time weeding in the yard. Each time I do I get poison ivy!

Thanks for reading. I should try to get moving on this quilt.

Chris

Self doubt: should I bother to make this quilt?

I was all geared up to make the night time scene of Amsterdam canal houses until I got feedback or should I say lack of much feedback on it in my master class. This month EB is posting the sketches, etc and the students are doing the critiques. So maybe this design is so bad that it is not even really worth commenting about. This quilt will take a lot of time and effort. And we all know you can spend that time and get something great or get something horrible.

Why do I want to do canal houses at all? Because I fell in love with them when I went to Amsterdam. I love how tall and skinny they are. However, is that a good enough reason to make a quilt that could take many, many hours? I chose this photo to do because it was not looking at them straight on although maybe that would be better. That view would show how crooked they really are.

Here are my two original sketches. One shows the entire street scene and one just has the 5 closest canal houses. In both sketches I exaggerated the narrowness of the houses by changing the proportions of the sketch.  Which if either makes a good composition?

 

Then I tried it out in EQ. Of course when tracing a sketch in EQ you cannot do it exactly, but I pretty much wanted to try out color schemes and fabrics.

So I am not sure if I should bother to make this quilt. Maybe I should look for a different photo and try something completely different with this idea. Will this one be worth all the hours spent working on it?

On a lighter note I finally decided to sign up for a class at Create NJ in July. I decided to take a class with Natalya Aikens. She has done a lot of fiber/mixed media stuff with recycled plastics. I love her NYC scenes of buildings and bridges that she has done in this media. I decided I needed a break from the master class. I have taken other classes with Natalya and she is a great teacher. So now I need to start to create a collection of different colors of plastic bags!

Please comment about what you think about this design. Please be honest.

As always I appreciate your support.

Check out what Nina-Marie has been doing at QSDS and all the other great artists at her off the wall Fridays.

http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com/

Chris

Feedback Monday

At long last our feedback is in for our Master Class about our May quilts.

 

Here is what Elizabeth said about it.

“This looks really beautiful...the mistiness is great and at first you don't see the piper but then he gradually emerges from the mist - very nice touch!!  Just perfect - and a good size.”

So the feedback on this one was good from the sketch to the blocking out to the finished quilt. I am satisfied.

So now it is onto finishing some of the previous quilts. I just sewed facing on February’s windmill quilt and have to sew the hanging sleeve onto it today.

And I still have to face April’s arches quilt. I think I will work on that today as well before I start thinking about and pulling fabrics for my canal house quilt. I might have to dye some dark blue fabrics for the canal houses. I should dye fabrics anyways since the weather is really starting to warm up.

 

 

 

 

 

Hard to believe that it is June already. Where did the first 5 months of the year go? Also hard to believe that I have made 5 art quilts this year already.

What are you up to today? I would love to hear about it.

Thanks for reading.

Chris