"Eclipse" - Scrappy Improvisational Quilt

When my brother, Thom Atkins, visited last fall, he showed me (and a few quilting buddies) his new method for designing and constructing "scrappy improv wall quilts," a technique that turned out to be a lot of fun for me, especially given my long history with an improvisational, intuitive approach to bead embroidery.

Basically, what we did was to empty our bags or boxes of scraps onto a large table and start pawing through them, pulling out ones that appealed to us at that moment. For me it was all about color - red, magenta, fuchsia, with hints of pink, golden-yellow, orange, lavender, and dark green. All of the fabrics were in my scrap box. We had two days of Thom's demonstrations and guidance. During that time, each of us in our small group produced a unique and very pleasing "piece" or "block," measuring roughly 18 x 21 inches, the size of a fat quarter.

One of my red scraps, cut in a nice arc at one end, was the start of it all because I liked the shape and the color. Next I picked up a small strip of yellow, and held it behind the arc of red. Ooooh! Nice enough to repeat. The scrap of orange/red batik was large enough to cut a similar arc, and the strip of yellow was long enough to go behind that one too. These two arcs formed the basis of my piece.

You can see the two arcs above; the lower right was the first. The yellow strip was only about 3" wide, not enough to go all the way around the arcs, but I cut two shapes that would echo the top of each of the arcs. I layered the remaining scraps from that on top of the arcs along the vertical edges of the design. Then I put a dark green scrap behind the arcs and the yellow, which set them off nicely. The rest was just filling to the edges of the quilt with more scraps, including fussy-cut leaves and flowers.

The next step was to glue it all together along the 1/4" seam overlap, working in layers from bottom to top, and cutting away the excess fabric from the underside after each piece is glued. Cutting away the excess fabric leaves a double layer of fabric only at the seams; the rest is a single layer. The glue is Elmer's School Glue, Disappearing Purple, as shown below. It is an organic stick glue, relatively easy to sew through, repositionable, (in case you change your mind), and purple when first applied, drying to transparent (so you can see where exactly you are putting it).

Thom's method is a type of raw edge applique, typically accomplished with heat-fusible web, such as "wonder under." The typical method, given a complex, layered design such as mine, would have resulted in a thick, stiff, multi-layer surface, which would be difficult to quilt, even with a machine. In Thom's method, there is no web, and in most places only one or two layers of fabric. Like all raw edge techniques, the raw edges must be sewn down, and the resulting quilts are not very suitable for bed quilts unless there is heavy stitching over the raw edges (for example, dense, zig-zag, machine stitching).

After gluing my original (shown above) quilt top, I assembled the quilt, using a spray glue to layer the backing, batting and top. The next step was to stitch along the "seams," the overlapping, glued edge of each piece. From there, it was up to each of us as to how to finish the quilt, perhaps with machine quilting, such as stippling or contour stitches, or perhaps with beading, all of which Thom does on his quilts.

A couple of months went by after getting to the unfinished stage shown above. I liked it, but didn't know what to do with it, until one day when I was at our Senior Center, getting foot care from a trained nurse who comes a couple times a week to help those who need it. Her treatment room, about the size of a walk-in closet, has no windows. Her client faces the door to the room, a plain, wooden door.  "That door needs a quilt," I told her. The rest is history; my scrappy improv quilt, Eclipse,  hangs there now.

Only first I had to finish it. Above is the finished quilt, Eclipse. Below I'll tell you some of the finishing steps and about how I transformed it from looking flat and ordinary to sharp and textured using embroidery embellishments. Please click on the photo so you can see the details!

You might have noticed that the finished quilt is longer (better suited for hanging on a door) than the original piece. That was a challenge, although less than you might expect, because Thom had demonstrated for us how he sometimes extends the size of his quilts. In short, I roughly planned out the addition, the mock-up shown below, then created it using the same process and scraps as the original piece.

I used fusible "tape" made for butt-joining pieces of batting, to add a new piece of batting to the bottom edge of batting on the original (upper) part of the quilt. The horizontal strip of striped fabric overlaps the two parts of the quilt and the joined batting underneath. As you can see below, I added a fussy-cut flower over the striped fabric to break up the horizontal strip and visually join the two parts.

Confession time... I'm not good at machine quilting, and don't even have a proper quilting foot for my old machine (1972 Pfaff). I tried stitching around the fussy cut flowers to secure the glued edges, but failed miserably. What to do? Ah, hand-sew with embroidery stitches and floss? Yes! It took a few tries, but eventually I found stitch and thread combinations that worked.

It looked so good that I decided to add stitching and knots to the yellow arcs next. Wow! That popped the eclipse look! In the photo below, you can see bits of all the embroidery stitches I added. Not only does the embroidery provide embellishment and emphasis, it also further quilts the piece. Click the photo to see the detail and better read the stitch identification.

Here are two more detail photos of the finished quilt (without the text boxes).

Lots of fun, and I like the results! Will I do another one? Well, right now I've finally returned to my hexie project, where I'm likely to remain for many months, but after that, scrappy improv may be just what I need!

Huge Challenge: Making a Whole from the Parts

In the previous posts, you've seen the individual blocks I've been making, 61 of them, for my Travel Diary 2014 quilt. Each block is quilted, bound, and embellished... each a mini-quilt. The difficult challenge was how to put them all together into a whole piece.

This is one of the 61 blocks.

My original thought was to stitch them together into a wall hanging, something like the arrangement below:

No way! As I played with the arrangement, it was obvious that the results were "muddy," confusing, and "busy" from close up... and boring from a distance.

So then, I spaced them apart, like in a photo album, not touching, something like this:

Nope. That didn't work either... still too busy, muddy, and boring from a distance. Akkk, what to do???? Sleep on it!

Next morning, the solution came to me upon waking! Sew them together in clusters, and mount the clusters on a back-quilt!

To see how the idea would work, I grouped the blocks on a piece of fabric from my stash, each cluster representing a whole (or segment of a) trip. This is how it looked:

The idea of clustering worked! Yay! Instead of 61 different things to view, there were now only a dozen or so. And from a distance, the shapes of the clusters against the pathway of background color made an interesting pattern.

What color would the back-quilt be, and how would the clusters be attached, I wondered? After stitching the clusters together, I took them to the quilt shops in Anacortes to find the a fabric for the back-quilt.  It had to be a read-as-solid print, one that wouldn't distract from the clusters, in a color  that contrasted in value with the over-all value of the clusters. I soon found that either too much or too little value contrast was not good. Two green prints and a light coral print came home with me as possibilities.

That evening, after trying all three of them, I decided to go with one of the green prints. The clusters seemed to "pop" nicely on it!

However, the next morning, when I viewed it in daylight, the green seemed just too cool. My travels were warm (at heart) and wonderful...  I wanted the quilt to have visual warmth. Back to the drawing board. I made a "help!" call to Lunnette, my quilting friend and travel companion on one of the trips, who came over and agreed that the green was good... except for the important consideration of "warmth." While trying various possible fabrics, she happened to mention that red is sometimes considered a neutral color, which made me look at the red/rose fabrics in my stash with a different eye. When we put the clusters on a piece of medium-rose batik, we both knew instantly we had found the back-quilt fabric!!! Whooo-hooo!

Next was the matter of how to construct the back-quilt and how to attach the clusters. I made all the mini-decisions on an "as needed" basis. Here they are in order:

1. quilt the names of the people I spent time with on these travels on the back-quilt (picture shows one quilted line, and two lines written in chalk to be quilted)
   
   
2. use the same color thread as the fabric to quilt the names, so they are there, but do not distract the viewer from the clusters of blocks
3. make the edges of the back-quilt irregular
4. bind the back-quilt edges, and then whip stitch the binding with pearl cotton, the same as the individual blocks
   
5. sew the clusters onto the back-quilt on the top edge only, allowing the cluster to be lifted to see the backs of the blocks (all different fabrics, carefully chosen for the subject of each block), and giving a place to sew a label identifying the location, people, etc. in the photos of that cluster
6. use a double row of hand-stitching along the top of each cluster to support the weight
7. make a small identifying label for each cluster
   
8. sew a small, and very personal, embellishment on the back of each cluster, something I know is there but that most people won't see (or know the meaning of if they did see it)

And here is the finished quilt. It's 37" wide by 43" tall. Even if you click-to-enlarge, this picture does not do the quilt justice... So, if you'd like to really SEE it, come to the La Conner Quilt & Textile Museum during April (April 1 - May 3), when it and 29 other of my beaded objects and quilts will be exhibited!

What did I learned making this quilt? Whew... probably more than you'd want to read... The most important thing was a reinforcement of the "just do it" approach to original art, an approach that works so well for me with my bead embroidery. Not stressing over all the decisions, not needing to have all the answers in hand before starting, is a hugely enabling gift to the creative process!

If At First You Don't Succeed.... BJP & Quilt Camp Disaster

Last weekend was Quilt Camp! Four  days to stitch, uninterrupted, meals provided, no chores... oh joy!

For the first couple of hours I worked on making hexie blocks for my Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt... fun, easy, known territory.

Charged, I got out my quilt top, the one pieced together with the 12 blocks I beaded for the Bead Journal Project in 2011. Each of the beaded Xs represents a relationship, a crossing of my pathway with the pathway of some other person or thing, especially one that was important to me during the month when I made the block.  Here's how it looks. For now, just note the blocks and the way they are assembled on the quilt top.

I had this idea of hand-quilting in diamond (or square-on-point) shapes to match the blocks. It wasn't easy. I worked for about 30 hours (2 whole days and into the wee hours of three nights) to do this quilting. The more I did, the less I liked it.

The idea of it is OK, I think... it ties all the blocks together, suggesting the interconnected pathways of my life. The whole quilt and the blocks look OK from a distance. But I'm pretty sure viewers would want to get close to see the beading. Looking at it closely, the hand-quilting starts to compete with the beading. Which to view? Which is important? Obviously, I wanted the beading to show, because that's the point (and the visual journey) of the quilt.

It didn't look too bad on the lighter colored blocks.

But on the darker colored blocks, the quilting stitches were really distracting.

Sad to say, I didn't realize how bad it was until I was nearly complete (with only one block to go). When the light bulb finally came on, I realized I had to take it all out. All 30 hours of work.  OK, so what to do? How to quilt this thing?

Well, my quilt/beading buddy, Lunnette, happened to bring a HUGE stash of thread with her. Stitch-in-the-ditch with a matching color of thread! Still hand-quilted, but not something that shows much at all.  Now you can see the beading!

In the picture below, you can see I've re-quilted the top and right-hand blocks. Is this better?  Is it worth the time to re-do it?  I think so! (Only 10 blocks to go...)

Lessons learned:

1. Pay more attention to gut feelings that something isn't working.
2. Be ready to abandon a plan that isn't working.
3. Trust that a better solution will come along.
4. It's only time.

By the way, if you're interested in joining the 2013 Bead Journal Project, here's a link to information and registration!

Freedom! July's Bead Journal Project ATC

Each of my BJP pieces this year is about a special blessing in my life. How could I be more blessed than I am with the freedom we enjoy in this country? What better subject for the month of July?

Visiting Eastern Europe several times while it was still under Communist rule, I experienced first hand a little of what it must be like to live under political suppression. In Romania, for example, it was dangerous for folks to be seen talking to me, and definitely not safe for them to allow me to come in their home. A person could be arrested (worst case) or denied food (best case) for speaking Hungarian in a bread line. Nobody knew who might be spying on them, reporting them to the police. Many people didn't even trust their own family members.

So political freedom, such as we have in this country (not perfect, but better than in many countries), is a huge blessing. On my piece, I represent this type of freedom with a 1944 liberty dime. The ink-pen point represents a related freedom - the freedom to write and speak our beliefs and thoughts. I include the blessing of a personal freedom, which I grant myself, to write honestly and freely in my journals, blogs, and books.

The butterfly represents spiritual freedom. It has something to do with allowing myself the freedom to explore spirituality in a way that is not boxed by any traditional religious concepts. The bird? Well, birds fly, bless them. I want to be a bird in my next life, free to fly long distances, swoop and soar, and ride the winds.

When I hold my July ATC in my hand, it seems to throb, to exude the outward energy of freedom. May it grace the universe with each pulse.

I use Ultrasuede Light as a backing for each of my ATCs. With a watercolor paper stiffener between the beading and the backing, I stitch them together using a single bead edge stitch. The title, date and signature are rather casual (nice way to say my printing sucks). Perfection is not one of my blessings.

The fabric I used for this piece is some that I hand-resist-dyed in a workshop taught by Ann Johnston. I had been hoarding it for a long time. Working on Freedom gave me the freedom to cut into the piece and use it! You can probably see how this fabric influenced my color choices and the way the piece is divided into 4 quarters, each with a different symbol. The inter-twining vine ties them all together.

Fine Art Finishing Technique for Bead Embroidery

This post is inspired by the quilt by Myrna Giesbrecht pictured above which I saw at an exhibition last November (more about it here). It was set apart from all the other quilts in the show by virtue of the way it was displayed, not hanging soft against the wall, but mounted on a stretched and painted canvas. The artist had painted a stretched canvas black and then sewn the quilt to it, which made the quilt look like a fine art painting. Wow!

Even though it may not be fair to the quality, originality and beauty of the other quilts in the show, I believe Myrna could have sold her quilt for two or three times the amount any of the others could have gotten... because traditionally fine art commands higher monetary value than craft, stitchery, quilts, etc.

Light bulb! I tucked that sweet idea for display of fiber arts/beadwork in the back of my mind for future reference and recently resurrected it because I wanted to enter some of my Bead Journal pieces for this year in our County Fair, and I wanted them in the Fine Arts division! I hoped that mounting them in this way would give them a fine art look. Here's how my three pieces turned out. (All pictures in this post are click-to-enlarge.)


All three (l to r: Release, Believe, Forgive) won blue ribbons, two of them also won "best of class" and one won a "special award gift certificate for art supplies." How's that for an idea that works? And why not share the finishing technique with my blogging friends? OK! Here you go...


How to Mount Beadwork on Canvas Stretcher Frames

Buy a pre-made, canvas-covered stretcher-frame from your local art supplies shop or on-line. No need to get one that is primed as you're going to cover it with fabric. It should be larger than your piece, but not so much larger that your piece is lost in the center of it.


Select a fabric that enhances (but does not in any way detract) from your piece. For the three pieces shown above, I used a black batik. It's a tightly woven, durable fabric with no sheen to it. On close inspection it includes dark red, dark green and dark black in addition to deeply saturated black. I like the way the very subtle colors relate with the colors in my pieces. Cut the fabric about 3 inches larger than the stretcher on each side.

Center your beadwork on the fabric and determine how best to stitch your beading to the fabric. My choice was to whip-stitch over the couching stitches that hold the twisted cording around the perimeter of my piece, using the same holes and matching thread colors. See right and wrong side below.



The next step is to lace the fabric to the frame. I use acid-free photo-mount stickers in the corners of my beadwork to hold it centered on the canvas while I lace it onto the frame.


I use buttonhole thread (but any synthetic beading thread will work as well) and lace side to side first. I make my lacing stitches about a half inch apart at the ends and about an inch apart in the center. At first I simply lace without concern for tension. After the lacing is complete, I work from the starting point to the end, snugging each section of lacing thread as I go. Try to achieve an even tension across the width of the frame, but not so taught that it pulls your beadwork out of shape. Knot off the thread.


Then on the back side, carefully mitre the corners at the top and bottom, folding the fabric inward and pinning it at the corners. Mark the approximate location of the hanging eye-screws. They should be about a third of the way down from the top and about a half inch in from the edge. The reason is that you don't want to cut your vertical lacing threads when you drill the holes for the eye-screws! Record the measurement on scrap paper. The corners should now look like this...


Lace the top to the bottom in the same way as the side lacing. Be careful not to place lacing over or near the marked spots. Snug the tension in the lacing and knot off the thread.


Use a piece of black or kraft paper, acid-free if possible, to cover the lacing. Cut it about one-quarter inch smaller all around than the canvas. I write the title of the piece and the date along the bottom edge of the backing paper and sign it before attaching it. Using double-sided tape or PVA glue all around the edge of the paper, center it over the back of the frame and drop it in place.


Remember the recorded measurement of your drilling spots? Use it to correctly locate the spots and mark them on the backing paper. Use a small hand drill and an appropriately sized bit to drill holes for the eye-screws.


Insert eye-screws. Measure a piece of picture wire 6 inches longer than the distance between the two eye-screws. Insert wire into one of the screws and twist the end around the wire to secure. Do the same on the other side, adjusting the tension so the wire is pretty much straight across. Add felt bumpers to the bottom corners. The completed back side looks like this.


Note: You might ask, why not staple the fabric to the frame, like the canvas? In my opinion, with the beadwork already sewn to the fabric, you need a more forgiving method. You need to be able to delicately adjust both the tension and the positioning of the beadwork relative to the frame. To do that with staples would be tricky at best.

I am so pleased with how professional my pieces look mounted/framed in this way! Originally, I had planned to bind them into a hand-made book. Because everything is stitched rather than glued, I can easily disassemble these pieces and re-mount them in my book. But after seeing how they look like this, I'm tempted to change my mind and display all twelve pieces this way..

Change - May BJP - Finished!

Major changes (which came into full swing during May) are happening in my life. All six of my words for the month are relevant. They are: change, remember, forgive, seek, open and thank. Can you find them in the finished piece below? (You may need to click to enlarge.)


I named the piece Change because that's the most important word of the six. Although I've decided not to delve into the personal changes I'm making in this post, it's not really a secret. If you're interested to read about it, you can check out my journal-blog, Words Paint, which I write under the pseudonym of Peacefulbird.

Obviously, the butterflies are symbolic elements of change and metamorphosis. A once-closed envelope (me) is now open with butterflies flying free. Feathers are another symbol of freedom, flight and good perspective... My husband found these two in our yard. My best guess is that a Northern Flicker gifted some tail feathers to us. The turtles are all about getting there, no matter how long it takes.

I started with the second, luscious, butter-soft, piece of resist-dyed felt made and given to me by Sweetpea. Without thought, I immediately folded and pinned it into an envelope shape. What could go in it? Oh, maybe those flicker feathers I've been saving! Oh, OK, now what paper will I use for the background?

Auditioning papers: This one seems to dark, don't you think?


This one seems too busy.


This one is really too busy; it competes with the pattern on the felt.


This one was my second choice. I like it a lot, but it seems a tad too pale or washed-out looking with the felt.


Here's the one I chose. Doesn't look like much in this picture, but the color has lots of life without being overpowering.


Once that was decided, I started playing around with various beads and elements I might use. I had 4 plastic butterfly-shaped buttons in my stash which looked really nice coming out of the felt envelope and had appropriate relevance to change.

How could I apply my words to these buttons and where could I find two more? Hmmm... gave up on that one and decided to make my own butterflies by sawing them out of copper sheet and metal-stamping the words. Tried that. Too big, and way too visually heavy for the delicacy of a butterfly. OK, well, maybe I could make butterflies out of heavy, water-color paper, write the words on the wings and paint them. Here are the three ideas. You can see why I rejected the copper...


So then I played around with drawing butterflies free-hand. Ummm, I'm not so good at that. However I had a sheet of butterfly stickers that gave me an idea. I peeled off the background part of the sheet and placed it lightly on the water-color paper. Then I used a #2 Micron pen to draw around the inside (where the sticker was), which gave me some nice shapes.


I wrote the words vertically along the edges of the left-hand wings, extending some of the letters to look like the veins. For the right-hand wings, I wrote the words backwards. Ruined a few, but finally got six usable butterflies. Next I painted them with watered-down, transparent acrylic paints.


After painting, they looked like this.


Before cutting out the butterflies, I used an embossing stylus to score along the body on each side so that I could easily fold the wings into flying position.

Next, I had to figure out how to attach them to my piece. Everybody knows how much I don't like glue. So, I needed a way to sew them on the paper and felt. I also needed antennae. A double-layer body might do the trick...

I cut out six little, body shapes from heavy, black paper and made antennae from bent pieces of 28 gauge brass wire. Using PVA (acid-free, bookbinder's glue) and a toothpick applicator, I put a little glue on the back side of the butterfly bodies and along the duplicate body shapes. Then I placed two pre-cut lengths of Nymo thread in the glue, perpendicular to each body and laid the antennae in the glue at the head. When the glue was slightly set, I joined the duplicate body layer to the back of each butterfly. My plan, if the glued layers worked, was to use the four Nymo threads to sew each of the butterflies to my piece. It did work! I hope the picture helps to make sense out of what I just wrote.


I also used 28 gauge brass wire to wrap beads around the feather quills. In a similar manner to the butterflies, I laid two pre-cut Nymo threads along each quill before wrapping, which would allow me to sew the feathers to the paper.

Here's what the back of my piece looks like. You can see where I tied the Nymo threads to secure feathers and butterflies. I used Tyvek (from a mailing envelope) as a backing to prevent the thread from cutting the paper. You can also see where I sewed the felt envelope to the paper using Nymo thread.


Well, there you have it, probably more how-to than anybody needs or wants... but I can't help myself sometimes...

I love this piece and what it represents in my life! Hope you like it too.