Jungle Leaves

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I recently signed up for a Craftsy class with Gloria Loughman called “Linear Landscape Quilts”. It’s  a really good class and the first sections on choosing colour schemes and fabric painting are almost a class on their own. To make her “linear landscapes” she uses two layers of fabric and a clever raw edge applique technique which reveals slithers of the underneath fabric to create the effect of contours. The landscape she created is very appealing but as I watched the video I realized that this technique could be adapted for things other than landscapes so I decided to try it out on one of my own designs.

My inspiration was this jungle plant which grows in the Sarawak rain forest and has beautiful curved and ribbed leaves.

My first piece is a close up study of these leaves using some of my hand dyed fabrics.

I was happy with the way that this first piece turned out so I decided to try it on a larger design using the complete leaves.

I used a bright green for the base, with a darker green for the main part of the leaf, and made three pieces like this. It’s  time consuming but very effective.

Birds and Flowers stitched

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After many hours work I have finally finished machine stitching all the bird and flower applique. Here are a few photos showing some details.

I used mostly Aurfil 50wt thread for the applique as I wanted something subtle that wouldn’t stand out too much but blend with my hand dyed fabrics.

Detail of some of the flowers. The next step will be hand embroidery to add stems and detail to some of the leaves and the tail feathers.

Foundation Piecing a crazy patchwork block

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In my last post I wrote about the piece I made for my Janome challenge group. This month it is my turn to lead the challenge and following on from last month’s project which was to create a stitch out of all our machine’s decorative stitches I am asking people to make a foundation pieced crazy patchwork block and then embellish it with decorative machine stitches. For those of you who are unfamiliar with foundation piecing I am providing a short tutorial. There are many different ways of doing foundation piecing but this is the method I find that works for me.

The completed block:

To start I took a block from EQ7 printed out the pattern on lightweight paper. I use Carol Doak’s Foundation Paper sheets, but there are other products available and it is even possible to use ordinary copy paper, just a little harder to tear out at the end. One tip is to use smaller machine stitches and a slightly larger machine needle.

I take my first piece of fabric and cut it approximately to size, making sure there is at least a quarter inch overlapping all seam lines. This is placed right side up on the unprinted side of the paper.

First fabric patch, right side up on unprinted side of paper.

You can hold the paper up to the light to make sure all the seam lines are covered. I pin this in place, and then working from the printed side of the paper I take a piece of card (a postcard is ideal) and fold back the paper along the seamline where patch one meets patch two.

Place card along the seam between patch 1 and 2

I then take my ruler and trim the exposed fabric to a quarter of an inch.

Next I get my fabric for patch two and again trim it to the approximate size, lay it right side down on top of the first piece of fabric, matching the trimmed seam, making sure there is a generous overlap on all seams. This is the tricky bit because you need to make sure that when you stitch the seam and flip the fabric back all the lines are still covered.

Stitch along the line between patch 1 and 2, starting and stopping your stitching a few stitches either side of the line.

Stitch along the line between patch 1 and 2 then flip the block over and press. I like to press each seam as I stitch it. Remember not to use steam though as it can distort your paper.

Next, use your piece of card, fold back the paper along your next stitching line which will be for block 3. Trim your fabric and lay on your patch 3. Continue doing this for all the patches until your block is complete.

laying on patch #3

I made four 6 inch blocks like this and then joined them all together, backed them with some Pellon fusible fleece and had a bit of fun embellishing them my machine’s decoartive stitches.

The finished block

 

Purple Challenge

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I belong to an online challenge group linked to my Janome 6600 and 7700 sewing machines and last month’s project was to create something using at least five different purple fabrics. This appealed to me because when I’m dyeing I almost always seem to end up with more turquoise and fuchsia left over and from these loads of different purples.

hand dyed purple fabrics

 I decided to randomly strip piece some of these fabrics together to create a background. I varied the widths and curves to create more interest and ended up with this piece.

random strip pieced background

 I then added some applique flowers trying out a new method of machine appliqué which I have just learnt on a Craftsy class with Beth Ferrier. She uses a narrow zig zag stitch rather than the reversed blind stitch which I have used in the past and creates an almost invisible finish.

I then quilted the whole piece with a variegated rayon thread, roughly following the curved lines.

 I wanted to experiment a bit more with this technique so made another small piece using a piece of multi coloured hand dyed fabric which I’d always thought rather unusable but cut into a small square looked so much better than I’d imagined

 

New Hornbill design for 2013

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While waiting for the threads I’ve ordered for my Birds and Flowers quilt I started work on a new hornbill design.

 To start with I made a sketch from the photo I’d taken in a friend’s garden, leaving out unwanted background details.

I drew out a pattern for it in EQ7 and then put it all together using my own hand dyed fabrics for the background and borders, and a mix of hand dyes and commercial batiks for the bird, which I stitched in place using a fine satin stitch and 50wt cotton thread. I used a fabric pen for the markings on the casque to give a more natural look.

 

Birds and Flowers_2

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It’s been far too long since I updated my blog and one of my New Year’s resolutions for this year is to write more regularly, so I hope I can stick to it. New year, new project and I have just started work on something much larger than I usually do and using only my own hand dyed fabrics. This is a detail of the work so far

.… and this is the panel of batik sarong fabric that inspired it.

 I drew out the pattern for the appliqué in EQ7 and then the next challenge was to choose the fabrics I would use. I knew the colours I wanted to use but couldn’t find the right background so had to dye more fabric   until I came up with something I liked. The first stage of construction was laying out all the stems. I used a light box to roughly draw some placement lines.

 The flowers I preassembled on a special nonstick pressing sheet and then applied them to the background.

 It took me two weeks just to assemble all the pieces and fuse them to the background fabric.

The next stage will be the stitching. I tried a blanket stitch, but it looked too clumsy, I’m not so keen on raw edge applique so the alternative is a fine satin stitch using mostly Aurifil 50wt cotton mako and some Superior Masterpiece thread.

 

 

 

Sunrise Over the Belait continued

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In my last post I descirbed how I painted and prepapred the background for my latest wall hanging. The picture below shows the next step with the palm fronds pinned in place ready to be fused, then stitched.

I then added the detail on the far river bank using thread painting. I first used a dark green along the lower  and top edges, a lighter green to highlight the tree tops and then a thicker variegated thread for the palms alng the water’s edge.

The palm fronds were stitched in place using raw edge applique. Then the final step was to layer and quilt the whole piece.

The edges were finished with a narrow black binding.

 The completed wall hanging.

Sunrise over the Belait

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I have recently been commissioned to make a small wall hanging for a friend from some photos she’d taken of here early morning runs along beside the Belait River here in Kuala Belait. She’d collected some lovely photos of the sunrise over the river so the challenge was to put these together to create something special.

With the help of Photoshop I combined the above photo of the sunrise over the river with the following one of the palm silhouette.

I decided the best way to do the sky was to paint it using fabric paints and it took me half a dozen attempts before I was happy with the result. The difficulty was to get the subtle light of early morning without it looking too washed out, and not to have the colours too bright so that it looked more like a sunset. This was my final choice.

The next step was to audition fabrics for the greenery along the edge of the river, and the river itself. The greenery is a piece of hand dyed fabric and I will later add more shading and detail with the use of thread painting. The water was another challenge as I wanted to use something I already had rather than dyeing or painting more fabric. I have lots of batiks with the nice stripes which give the impression of water but none were the right colour. I decided to experiment with fabric paints, first on a small scrap, then on the full piece and the results were just as I wanted.

Next step will be to add the palm tree then some thread painting.

 

West of Ireland

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I’m afraid it has been a long time since I last updated my blog; life has been busy and once you get out of the routine of writing it is hard to get going again. I am just back from a trip to the UK and west of Ireland, where I went to the International Quilt Festival in Galway. The festival itself was a bit of a disappointment for one reason and another but I really enjoyed visiting Ireland again after so many years away. I decided to stay in a bed and breakfast just outside Galway rather than a big hotel and so glad I did. Beautiful views from across the road and braving the cold weather, a pleasant walk into the coastal town of Salthill.

One of the highlights of my trip was the Burren where I went as part of a photography workshop. I had been there many years ago back in the days when we only had film cameras. I remember running out of film and of course there being nowhere for miles and miles where you could buy more but I did get some impressive black and white shots and I’ve always wanted to go back there.

The Burren

From a distance, as you approach, it looks like a barren landscape studded with giant boulders (although the boulders are actually a lot smaller than I remember them) where nothing would grow.

 This is a false impression because as soon as you get down amongst the rocks there is an abundance of vegetation, and a wonderful array of wild flowers peeping out from amongst the cracks and crevices: honeysuckle, wild roses, orchids and many others which I couldn’t name.

Honeysuckle growing wild amongst the crevices.

A delicate purple orchid, and there was another white one growing quite close by. I don’t know what varieties they were but it would have been good to have had a book on all the wild flowers.

I’m sure I will be finding inspiration for future quilts from the photos I took, not just the flowers and vegetation but also the intriguing patterns of the rocks themselves, and also the beautiful Irish countryside.

 

 

 

Rain Forest Quilt continued

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Once the foundation pieced background was completed I started to add details for the rain forest, starting with tree trunks cut from a striped commercial batik which was just perfect for this purpose. I then cut snippets of fabric backed with Mistyfuse to create leaves and foliage.

I used the snippets to help blend the tree trunks into the background to creat an illusion of depth. Snippets in browns, reds and golds give the impression of fallen leaves at the base of the tree trunks and brighter green snippets provide contrast and give the impression of new growth and sunlight shining on the leaves near the top of the quilt.

Once the leaves were all fused in place I then used free motion embroideryand various plain and variegated threads to stitch them all in place.

I also added plants in the foreground and hand couched some cotton yarn for tree creepers.