A smaller view

There were 47 entries in the “Small” Pictorial Quilts category at the International Quilt Festival. In this post, I have managed to narrow it down to a dozen favorites!

So…..let’s go!!

Mimi Ghauri-Young produced this quilt that really does look like a Matisse painting…..

This quilt from Judith Phelps is painted and machine quilted…..

As with many of these pictorial quilts, the quilting makes all the difference…..

The expressions on these sheep faces drew me into this quilt from Enid Weichselbaum……

Karen Hull Sienk used mixture of piecing and fused applique to create this wonderful canyon scene…..

I love how the pieced border echoes the interior picture.

This Third-place winner from Roxanne Nelson was a study in detail…..

Just look at how many fabrics are used to create the eye…..

….and these couched threads work perfectly as whiskers….

For the last few years, there have been so many quilts that came from the quilters in Taipei City, Taiwan. This beauty from Li-hsiang Wang is another of those…..

Sandra Mollon used fused applique, dying, inking and machine quilting to create this wonderful landscape….

Ann Pigneri created this quilt from a photograph that she had taken……

In particular, I love the reflections…..

Carolyn Allison used a photo to depict her grandsons on a windy day at the beach…..

In particular, I was enamored with the movement in the clothing…..

The horizontal lines in this quilt by Deanna Corrigan are the perfect contrast to the applique!!

I loved this quilt from Sue Colozzi…..

And was particularly impressed and interested in the thread painted foliage…..

Finally, Kestrel Michaud presented this fun quilt based in a steampunk junkyard……

Just look at the detail in the Roadrunner…..

Well, that is it for the pictorial category. Tomorrow we will have a look at some of the quilts in the Pieced category!!!

A quilt with a view

I am not sure exactly what is the difference between a “Landscape Quilt” and a “Pictorial Quilt”, but today let’s look at a few of the quilts in the Landscape division!!

Now I LOVE these types of quilts and, if you remember, have one in process, although if I don’t get going on it, it may end up in the UFO category!!!

I’ll start with this one that was pieced and was one of my favorites, made by Barbara Danzi…..

It is very stylized but I love the impressions that you get from the piece!! You can definitely feel the ferns!!

This next quilt, by Susan McBride Gilgen and Cheryl Paul Styler had a bit of everything in it…..

There was Applique, Embellishing, Embroidery, Dyeing, Piecing, AND Quilting. There was even some tatting!! I had to scour the photo to find it, but it is used as an embellishment in the binding. Sorry for the quality of this photo, but at least you will get the idea…..

The colors in this quilt by Susan Jackan definitely appeal to me…..

She said that it was inspired by photos of rock formations in Utah and she marveled that a tree could actually take root in such a challenging environment. She used painting, hand piecing, and machine quilting.

Nancy Hershberger created this magnificent Autumn scene based on a photograph of the Great Smoky Mountains….

The leaves were done with snippets and were super effective…..

….and the quilting added great movement. You can feel the leaves blowing in the breeze!!!

I am always interested in how quilters portray water in their masterpieces…..

Finally, Barbara Matzke produced an amazing river mill scene…..

The threadwork in the trees was wonderful…..

….and I especially appreciated the piecing in the bottom of the quilt…..

It was a great way to recognize that this was a quilt and not a photograph!!

In the same vein, tomorrow I will show a set of Pictorial quilts. Believe me….you WON’T want to miss them!!

If you are enjoying this walk thru the International Quilt Festival, please consider subscribing to my blog. You might also be interested in the free pattern that you receive when you subscribe to my email newsletter. Both of these are shown in the right column. And, PLEASE share this with your friends!!!

Meadow Play

Don’t you just love it when you finish a project, and especially when you feel like you did a good job!!!

This past weekend I spent several hours doing the last of the hand embroidery and yesterday I called the Meadow Art piece complete!!!

The final thing to do was to put it in a frame. I had bought a reclaimed wood frame from Amazon a few days back and was so excited to see it ready to hang……

This has been a fun project and one that has opened my eyes to ways of adding texture and depth. There is another design in this book that uses architectural designs and I can see lots of possibilities in it as well.

So what’s next??? Today I start quilting on the Brown Stripe quilt and then I need to look back on my “Inspiration Day” to see where I want to head next!!

Practice makes…..one crazy!!!

The last step on my Meadow Art project is to add the daisies. In my last blog installment about this project, I showed some of my attempts and concluded that the best way to do them was to do the initial work on the machine and then use embroidery floss to finish the petals (#4).

THEN, I started thinking about using Perle cotton in the bobbin and working the flowers from the back. The first few attempts were not successful as I didn’t have the tension set correctly……

I kept changing settings until it looked like this…..

Those are better and would work for another type of flower, but not for these daisies!!

I made several other tries using a smaller Perle cotton (size 5) in the needle but it just didn’t look right.

In the end, I moved back to my plan of machine work under and hand-work over.

I decided to color in the centers to give me an idea of exactly where I wanted the flowers to fall…..

….. and then stitched the first five flowers on the machine The two on the left have been finished completely with hand stitching and centers stitched……..

They are not nearly as good as the ones on the sample, but they do look good on the piece. I also noticed that the ones on the sample have some shading on certain sides of the petals so I am going to explore that further before I finish the artwork.

The important thing is that I am still enjoying this process and am already starting to think of other ideas that I want to do in this same format!!

Too many ideas

Do you ever feel like you have so many ideas at one time, that you just want to do all of them…..at the same time?

That was me on Friday evening.

I knew that Saturday was completely free for me to be creative and it was almost overwhelming to try to figure out what I wanted to do…….

I needed to make a new mask (since I apparently dropped mine in the Kohl’s Parking lot).
I have two quilts that are ready for quilting and “FINALLY” I have an idea AND am excited about doing them.
I want to finish the next step on my Mystery Quilt but want to video one of the processes as I do it
Since I spent Friday playing with thread painting flowers, I am now ready to move forward on my Meadow Art
And, to add another level of creative tension, I just found a video series on operating our new camera and, when I watched for 10 minutes, I learned 4 new things!!!

The first thing that I did on Saturday morning was to go for an early 2 mile walk….in the dark!! As I walked, I listened to a podcast entitled “Calming an Overwhelmed Brain”…..it just popped up on my suggestion list which is a little bit eerie!!

The first thing that the host said was that FOCUS stood for…….

Okay….what can I take away from this??

As I entered my studio, I decided that to maintain any focus, I needed to tidy up a bit…..

Once I had things neater, I decided to pull the batting and backing for my two quilts and at least get them ready to baste.

Next was to make the replacement mask…..that didn’t take long.

With a couple of the “tasks” off of my list, it was time to get interested in the Meadow Art project again!! I had purchased this book…..

….and on Friday I had spent some time playing with the flowers designs……

As you can see, they did improve as I went along!!!

Her suggestion in the book was to work without a presser foot…..

…. but the stitches often wouldn’t catch the bobbin thread so I ended up with a free-motion foot instead. The daisies are supposed to be done in a series of long stitches, quickly moving the fabric back and forth as you take SUPER slow stitches…..

I was NOT good at this technique!!!

Then I started drawing the petals with short stitches (#1 and #2) but those didn’t look great either.

For #3, I pulled out embroidery floss and did it by hand. It looked better but still fairly sparse.

Then I got the idea for #4….. machine sew the stitches and then over-sew them by hand with floss. Ding….ding…..ding…..ding…..we have a winner!!!

So, back to Saturday……

I now decided that I wanted my “focus” for the rest of the day to be on the Meadow Art…..adding the “buttercups”.

These were done by taking a small piece of yellow organza and sewing over it using a “whip” stitch. This stitch is made by tightening the top tension to it’s highest level and loosening the bobbin tension, which allows the bobbin thread to pull thru to the top……

Many of these were stitched over a small piece of yellow organza……

After I was happy with the number of these flowers, I went back in and added a few more “grass” lines over some of the flowers so they would recede to the background.

At this point in the day, my creative brain was fried!!! But I have to say that I am thrilled with the look so far……

Oh, I did spend another 20 minutes with the Camera video but there is SO much to learn and I realized that I need to take it in VERY small bites!!!

So “Creative Saturday” is now in the books and, all in all, it was a good one!!!