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Archive for the ‘Machine Quilting’ Category

Just Sitting Around…

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

machhinequiltinggirlquilt

with this! I have spent a good part of the day doing straight quilting around my squares and along the seams using a purply pink variegated cotton thread. I haven’t quilted anything this big in a long time, but it is coming along.

As promise, Kristin has posted a photo of the Illuminate Aspens. My daughter, Lisa, made some birds for Kristin a while ago, using some of the same indigo fabric that Kristin gave me, that I used in her quilt. So they are hanging out together in Kristin’s living room. You can see a photo, here.

Loving the Long Days of Summer

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

m&m&scooter

We have not had perfect weather, but we have had pretty great weather — a little rain and a lot of sun breaks. The family came over yesterday for a Dad’s day barbecue. Miles and Mia have so much fun playing with Scooter, and he loves the vigorous play that they provide.

scootertugofwar

When I went down to my office today, I found this created from my magnetic words.

wisdomwords

I suspect Mia did this, but I don’t know for sure. I love it.

I spent a lot of time working on the SAQA auction quilt. I haven’t been doing a lot of free motion quilting, and felt a bit inept. At one point I had a huge thread nest on the back of the quilt which I had to rip out. Mr C was helping Jack and Steph put drywall on their kitchen ceiling so there was no one around but the dogs to hear my frustration.

In the end, I am saisfied with the result. I think the fabric makes this piece and I was afraid of mucking it up with stitching. Here it is. I have titled it Mystical Forest.

mysticalforest

Say It Isn’t Snow

Sunday, December 21st, 2008

greenchairsandsnowagain

I feel as if I have been transported back to another lifetime in upstate New York. But, wait, that was 31 years ago and they actually plowed and sanded our street. We had studded snow tires, and we just kept on going. We braved blinding snow storms, driving to and from Indiana and my parent’s home. Here we are in Portland, OR and we are stranded in our house. Well, if it wasn’t so darn nasty, we could get on a bus and go someplace. We have had snow and sleet and freezing rain today,  We have been warned by the powers that be to stay off the roads except for the most dire emergency. Mr C has cabin fever. I have been chillin’ in the drafty basement studio, working on my latest creation. This, too, shall pass, right? Lisa will get here on Tuesday, right? We will be able to gather as a family for Christmas, right. At this point, I have my doubts.

I have the quilting done of the Dome of the Rock/Wailing Wall. It needs a bit of fine tuning, but I was getting tired and careless so it was time to call it a day.

juxtiposition

Working in a Winter Wonderland

Saturday, December 20th, 2008

snowyday

This is what it looked like outside today, but I felt like this:

heh

I had so much fun in my studio.

My first item of business was to make a screen for the glue to add foil to the dome. This is the best way to foil, using a stencil or some other method to manage the glue. I wanted to just do some highlights. Here is the screen and the glue test on muslin.

domescreen

Here is the dome photo after I trimmed it and glued it to felt batting.

domeslicesmerged

Here is the test foil:

foilingtest

Looks good to me. Here is the real deal. You can see that I have started quilting the wall.

foileddome

I finished the  Bet Sha’an ruins piece. I decided that I did not want to sandwich it with batting so I painted some canvas for the background.

paintedcanvas

Here is the piece finished: stitched to the canvas with some thread painting.

batshannoncanvas

All photos are clickable. You can see more snow photos on my Flickr site.

Loving Lutradur

Thursday, December 18th, 2008

When I had the problem with the printer fabric not arriving, I began to think of alternative ways to print large photos. Aha! Lutradur. For the uninformed, Lutradur is a spun bond web material manufactured by Pellon.  Originally created as a roofing product, its horizons expanded when some enterprising artist realized that you could use Lutradur in mixed media and fabric art.

I did some internet searches and found that some people were getting good results from painting lutradur with Golden’s new Digital Ground. I happened to have some waiting to be used.

I first did a couple of small prints of a photo of the Dome of the Rock as seen above the Wailing Wall.

smalldomeprint

Here is my first experiment with doing some enhancement with Tsukiniko Inks and then sandwiching and quilting. I also added gold foil to the dome.

smalldomequilted

Not too bad. It is a little difficult to do quilting details on a page size piece.

To do a larger piece, which was my goal, I would have to do it in slices. For my first attempt, the right side printed perfectly, but the left side jammed and screwed up my printer.

firstlutradurprints

What a mess and waste of ink! Argh!

Tonight, we went out to see the new James Bond movie. I just love Daniel Craig. I think he is about the sexiest man alive. The movie was a little violent, but did not disappoint. There were only 5 or 6 people in the theater and it was snowing when we left.

I went back to work when we got home and got the printer fixed up and printed the other side, but whoops, I cut the piece a little short so the piece will not be quite as large as I envisioned. It will be about 24 X 26

largedomelutradurprints

Tomorrow, I will do some stitching on this. I don’t think I will enhance it with inks or paints. I bumped up the saturation. I do want to do foiling on the dome, however. I will try to trim these to an exact match and butt them up on the batting. I used felt on the small ones. I like the firm, flatness.

I may become a Lutradur convert!!