Wednesday, August 22, 2007

burn baby burn


another fun weekend in Kingston at St. Lawrence College playing with fabric & stitch.
used my painted fabric & covered it will rows of sheers. then zapped it with the heat gun. them sliced & diced and woven with the hand dyed. Its so funny at every stage other classmates where like, oh my your gonna do WHAT?! its only fabric people. repeat after me 'its only fabric'. It had a long way to go. I have to sew down the rows may with more sheers to zap then cut open the darker parts & roll them back to reveal the fabric underneath.
dets on this one to follow

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

my melon

This is one of the samples I did in Velda Newman's class or it might be Velda's sample. I can't remember!! they start with a plain piece of white or yellow fabric over cotton batting then plain cheesecloth stretched & pulled this & that way to get rid of the grid. the lots of free motion circles to make the texture. the next step will be to paint

Monday, August 13, 2007

fabric stash at QBL

sew much fabric sew little time!! my we have come a long way. from using old clothes & feedsacks for quilts. Now if we are in a class and we need something - rather want something - we can just pop down to the merchants mall & buy it!!
There is something to be said for limits. Having all the fabric in the world at your fingertips doesn't necessarily make for a better quilt. I brought a large amount of fabric to Carol's and still had lots less than some others. I ended up using many of them but edited them back to a more manageable palette.

but I digress.........I did manage to do some shopping at the merchants' mall. I like to get things that I can't always find elsewhere. I got lovely felted handbags from Nepal for $14. and matching felted balls. I couldn't make them for that price. I bought 5 books by Doubletrouble Press - Jan Beaney & Jean Littlejohn's stuff. They will be in Ontario in the fall but everything is booked!!
I'm not a big fan of co-ordinated things. furniture, clothes, bedding, fabric. but I may have to change my opinion if the fabric designers keep this up!
a gorgeous collection of fabrics called Beatnik. I love the colours and they go so well with the piece of dyed cotton sateen I bought from Carol Soderlund.
I'm thinking of a very modern quilt pattern - something like this.
what do you think?

my piece from Carol's class


This is my piece from Carol's class. I worked in the hall of the new air-conditioned automotive lab- huge windows and the coolest seats - old car seats including the seatbelts. Gave me & Carol a great spot to evaluate the work. I made many many components. did a quick sketch after the first day. On day 2 made made more components with additional colours and fabrics. when things don't go well why do we throw in more of what doesn't work? I did serious editing - out came lots of components and colours. I needed a structure to build on - something to respond to - If Myrna could hear me now!! so this is where I restarted.

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Check out my Slide Show!

These are photos taken on the last of 3 days with Carol Taylor. We had a wonderful group of artists making elements & working with them to make a quilt.