Duckie Bathroom Complete

It is so good to have a man around the house again! Pierre put up these shelves for the duckies and mounted the quilts on the wall as well :-)

Sorry about the wonkiness of this picture. Needless to say the quilts and shelves are straight, but I was back as far as I could go (practically standing IN the wall!) and it wasn't far enough.

It's a happy bathroom :-)

Lisa

Playtime with Angelina

I've been having a blast playing with Angelina fibers and film. It was all the rage a few years ago and naturally I had to buy some, but I didn't really have time to sit down and experiment with them until recently. This is my Angelina fiber jacket. I call it "Peacock" because I stenciled peacock feathers in the lining.

A side view

And a closeup showing one of the quilting patterns on the Angelina.

To begin with I made sheets of Angelina and quilted them onto a matching background fabric for strength and stability. After all, clothing gets a lot of wear! I did a different quilting pattern on each color of Angelina. Unfortunately Angelina is one of the most difficult substances to photograph! Suffice it to say it looks better in person :-)

Here is a postcard I made using Angelina fibers, film, some trapped odds and ends and some beads.

And finally an upside down :-) picture of a greeting card inset made from a variety of Angelina techniques. I'm really jazzed about all the things you can do with these fibers and plan many more explorations.

I will be teaching a class (All That Glitters #418) on Thursday night at Road to California in January 2010 on Angelina as well as glitter and foiling. I just love bling! Sign ups started today and the class is filling quickly (only 8 seats left as of this morning) so hurry on over if you're interested. http://www.road2ca.com/classINFO.html

Lisa

Free Motion Applique Baby Quilt

I finished the quilt version of my free motion applique class. Now it's all ready for my website update. Lisa

Happy 4th of Juny

Today is a day to just kick back and relax, where ever you are...

This is Cushman who found the perfect bed on top of my daughter's tuba. Doesn't he make it look comfortable?

Enjoy your day!
Lisa

Another Free Motion Applique Totebag

I wasn't happy with the photographs of my previous free motion applique totebag so I made another one. In this totebag I used black for all the free motion stitching so that it would show up in photographs.

And the closeup. Same exact applique, same free motion designs, but now you can see them! Next, the free motion applique quilt.

Lisa

Mini Monday Quickie Quilt

I made another mini quilt on Monday. As usual I was working from a piece of fabric that I gelatin printed a la Rayna Gillman. This one had a rather urban/street/gritty feel. I wanted to put a gold with it, but none of them really worked. I ended up using a muted green with leaf skeletons on it. The symbolism appealed to me. Unfortunately you can't tell what they are so that is a lesson learned.

I'm not happy with this one at all. Not enough value difference and I don't like the over all feel of it. I tried to compensate by adding a streamer of beads, but finally gave up. If you have any suggestions on where else I went wrong, other than the value, please let me know.

The point of these exercises is to try new techniques and use the gelatin printed pieces that were languishing in a pile. I enjoyed figuring out a new design to weave the fabrics, practiced couching over raw edges and did a little foiling. I don't feel like I MUST make every piece a success. The important thing is to be free, experimental and QUICK, not to bang my head against the wall!

Pierre is home! Yay! It is such a relief to know there is someone around that I can turn to, no matter what.

Lisa

The Final Discharge Pictures

Here are the last pictures of my experiments from our Rhap Group playday. I'm sorry but I was having too much fun playing to remember to take pictures of what the others were doing. You'll have to take my word for it that there was other great stuff happening.


This piece started out bright crayon orange. I used some 5-petal flower flower shapes that Jan's husband cut. I think they ended up looking more like starfish, but that's okay. Again I would clamp each petal next time and use a more diluted bleach/water solution.

About the only thing I can draw freehand is a tree so I played with a variety of solid fabrics drawing as many different trees as I could think of. The star of the show is the army green piece that turned a delicious gold. And that's my first ever palm tree, LOL.

Again I want to highly recommend that you invite a group of friends, grab a bunch of cleaning supplies that contain bleach (do NOT use anything containing ammonia as bleach and ammonia produce a toxic gas!) and have at it. Who knows what exciting fabric you will produce?

Lisa

Discharged Stars

Jan's husband was cutting out plexiglas shapes so I asked if he could make something besides circles and squares. He made these fabulous wonky stars!

The fabric on the right is Kona black, but the fabric on the left is a multicolored commercial print. All pieces were accordion folded and clamped on both sides with the wonky stars. I was careful to line up the same points of the non-symmetrical stars. I only clamped them in two places and there was quite a bit of discharge creep (that's a fancy new technical term I just made up) underneath so next time I would put a clamp on each star point. Then they were dunked in the 50/50 water and bleach bucket for a few minutes.

Here is a closeup showing the interesting variety of colors that occurred in a halo effect around each star. Cool, huh?

Lisa

More Discharge Fun

Again these were both done on Kona solid black fabric.

On this one I placed pieces of torn blue painters tape in random spots. Then I sprayed it using a mildew remover spray that contains bleach. In hindsight I wish that I had sprayed it more because the tape design doesn't show as clearly as I had wished.

This piece was accordion folded in both directions. Once it was a folded square I clamped a square piece of plexiglas on point onto either side. Then it was placed in a 50/50 solution of bleach and water for about 3 minutes. Next time I would make the bleach solution less powerful so that it would work more slowly. That way I think I would have better control of the results.

Lisa

Discharge Fun

When the Rhap Group was here on Monday we experimented with bleach and cleaners containing bleach. Here are a couple of my pieces from that day.

Originally these were both Kona solid black. On this piece I pole wrapped it on the diagonal, scrunched it up and tied it in place with thread (I couldn't find any string). I painted Soft Scrub on the uppermost folds. When it had visibly changed color I slipped it off the end of the pole and dunked it in water to stop the action. We had several water buckets set up to keep dunking it in cleaner and cleaner water. Then we rinsed it in vinegar and water followed by clean water. The last step for me was a wash in the washing machine using Synthropol.

The flower was one of those rubbing plates. Jan got the brilliant idea to paint the Soft Scrub on with a foam brush, then we pressed it onto the fabric. Cool, huh? I put a little too much Soft Scrub so mine is messier than hers. Definitely a learning curve.

And before you write to tell me about Anti-Chlor, I know, I'm going to order some in my next Dharma order, just didn't have any on hand. That said I have pieces I did in 1997 with the same products we used this time and they are still fine, no holes.

I highly recommend play day. Get out some cleaning products and some solid-ish fabrics, set up a workstation or two outside, invite your friends and have at it!

Lisa

Curves Totebag

Here is another guild workshop sample recently finished. The reason there are 2 totebags is because the technique makes 2 sets of curves and I wouldn't want to waste any!

On this totebag I worked from the lightest color for the background to the darkest color at the top.

And this one is the other way: darkest for the background and lightest for the top.

I expected to like the dark at the bottom better since the "weight" of the composition is at the bottom, but I like the light at the bottom better. I haven't figured out why this is...

So if you're interested in having me come to your guild for a fashion show this is a new option for an accompanying guild workshop. Of course there is a jacket using the same technique for those so inclined :-)

Lisa

Free Motion Applique Totebag Done

I finished the free motion applique totebag, but I think I'll have to make another one. While this one is gorgeous in person, the free motion stitching doesn't show well enough in a photograph and since it's for my website... The next one will have stronger colors and BLACK stitching! Even the closeup is hard to see. Oh well, back to the drawing board, I mean the sewing machine!

Lisa

June 22 Quickie Quilt

As I mentioned last week, each Monday (time permitting) I want to make a quickie quilt using some of the gelatin prints, etc that I have been accumulating. After all, it's hard to justify making more when I don't use them, even if they are too much fun to make.

Here is this week's quickie quilt. I sliced one of the gelatin prints (navy background with copper and gold Liquitex paint using coreopsis leaves) and inserted a rust colored hand-dyed. I put a narrow border of a funky sheer I found in my stash (after taming it with a black fusible interfacing) and followed that with the original navy fabric. I kept the quilting minimal after overdoing it last week :-) with some stitch in the ditch in the center and 2 trees in the border free motion quilted using gold thread.

I ended up cutting it a bit wonky because there was a blob of pink and purple on the lower left corner which I found distracting. I decided the emphasize the angle even more and I like it!

As for new techniques, I've done inserts before, but I had been wanting to play around with inserting tree branches to see if I liked the results enough to do a larger piece. My decision is no because I think it's too linear for my taste, even if I split it up with more and more branches, twigs etc. Lesson learned without a huge outlay of time or fabric.

Lisa

Woven Quilts all Finished!

Sorry to be away so long. We lost our hot water heater which necessitated moving a lot of things and took up a lot of time.

The Rhap Group met here on Monday. I was thrilled to see the completed quilt tops from our last project: Simply Stunning Woven Quilts
Here is Jan's quilt complete with broderie perse flowers.

And here is Patty's quilt with palm tree silhouettes.

And this is Jerre's quilt with broderie perse flowers, couched stems and raw edge double sided fused leaves.

After show and tell we went to my backyard and enjoyed a playday with products containing bleach. Photos to come soon!

Lisa