Casa Amarela

A few weeks ago I ranted about a project that I was scared to start because I didn’t know if I was capable of finishing it.

It was a quilt based on this photo that was taken when I was in Porto, Portugal back in May……

I knew that I wanted to replicate the stairs and houses, but was frightened to start it!!!!!

I started out by printing the photo in an 8×10 format, using Black and White printing, on regular computer paper. I then used a ruler and fine point Sharpie to draw the major lines on the drawing. If the Sharpie is fairly new, the ink will soak thru the paper so that you can see it easily from the back side. I re-traced those lines on the back, giving me a reverse pattern.

I then printed out the reversed version of the line drawing using the poster function which allows the one page to be printed out onto 4 pages….2 across and 2 down. Finally, I printed the photo itself out onto four pages as well….of course I ran out of toner mid photo!!!

I began working with the fabrics by dividing the picture into straight-line sections and tracing them onto Golden Threads paper. I paper pieced each section and then sewed them all together. A couple of the seams were hand sewn to help me get the parts lined up properly.

At this point, I decided that I wasn’t happy with the piece, but couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it. So, I took it to my Charity Bee the next week and asked for their suggestions.

They immediately said……add the details from the photo and add some shading to the stairs!!! Simple little changes, but they definitely did the trick!!!!

I was nervous about using gray markers on the piece to shade it, but once I finally got my courage up, it made a HUGE difference. I ended up adding shading to almost every part of the picture.

The quilting was fun, although I had to take several lines out and re-do them because they didn’t match with the perspective of the quilt.

Here is the final version, named “Casa Amarela”, which stands for “Yellow House” in Portuguese.

Sunflowers in the Rust

Well, I can happily report that I have finished the rust piece that I have been working on for the past couple of weeks. I wanted to enter it in an Atlanta show and the deadline was today, so I was working down to the wire.

In doing some practice work (see previous post), I realized that I was going to have to do some thread work on the piece, so I started out by backing it with a very lightweight fusible interfacing.

I used Golden Threads tracing paper to draw the sunflowers…..wasn’t game to try to freehand them with thread.

I then sewed around the paper design.

…..and removed the paper.

I did the same thing with the leaves, and then sewed around the designs 2, 3 or 4 times, depending on how heavy I wanted the lines to be.

As I did the thread work, the fabric started to draw up slightly, making the fabric look wrinkled in the flowers, so I decided to trapunto the flowers and ended up adding extra batting to all of the elements, including the grass at the bottom.

I am happy with the borders on the piece as the first one on the right and bottom used fabrics that I had stamped.

Final step was to baste and quilt the piece. All of the rust colored lines were quilted just following the design of the flowers. Then I had to decide what to do to the background. I started with even lines at the top, but moved into curvy lines in the interior of the piece. The main reason that I did this was because it was easier to do, but, in retrospect, I really like the way it looks.

I decided to face the quilt rather than bind it.

It is always a good feeling to finish a piece…..now on to the next 4 or 5 that are in my mind!!!!

Here’s to a free Sunday Afternoon!!!

It was nice to realize that, after Church this morning, we didn’t have any plans for the day, so Michael hit the deck to catch a bit of sun and I ran to my studio and grabbed the paints that I had bought this past week.

The first project was to get the border fabric ready for the Sunflower Quilt. I had bought a really cool abstract sunflower stamp and was planning to use it to spruce up the border fabric for the quilt.

My first problem was getting the stamp mounted…..the first piece of wood that I cut was slightly bowed and wouldn’t print properly. So, instead of making a trip to the store, I found an old stamp that I never use and mounted the new one on the top side of the old stamp….two for one!!!

I then started playing with paints, starting out with a brown Setacolor. It seemed to disappear into the fabric too much, so I decided to play with mixing my own colors (thanks to Maggi for suggesting this in the previous comments). I had read that you could mix all of the Jacquard water based dyes, so I started with Brown Dynaflow, added Copper Lumiere and then a small amount of the original brown Setacolor. I was mixing these in an old butter container and was trying to figure out what to mix them with. The light bulb went off and I grabbed a straw to mix with.

Then I used the straw to drip spots of the paint onto the shiny side of Freezer Paper and used a sponge brush to pick up the paint and transfer it to the stamp.

Here is the fabric with just a portion of it printed.

There were a few spots that I felt needed to be filled in a bit, so I got out the sponges that I use when I am doing a faux surface on my walls, and used it to fill in some more.

Here is the finished product (click on it to see the stamping)…..I am really excited about using it in my quilt!!!!

Now, I had this small amount of mixed up paint and I really did not want to throw it away, so I decided to take Melody Johnson’s advice and quilt worrying about the rules of dyeing and to just play!!!!

I wet a fat quarter of PFD (Prepared For Dyeing) fabric and put it into a bowl. I then added a small amount of water to the dyes and poured them over the fabric.

After the fabric was well saturated, I took it outside, laid it out relatively flat and sprinkled Kosher Salt over the top. For the next 30 minutes I went out every 5 minutes and checked on the progress. It was fun to watch the color pool around the salt to achieve a mottled effect.

Here is the final result, after heat setting and washing again. It will be a great addition to my “Lights” section of the stash.

I still had some afternoon left, so I wanted to plan and play with the quilting that I was going to do on the sunflowers. I didn’t want to practice on the real piece, so I copied part of the image onto a piece of fabric, made my quilt sandwich and started quilting.

I learned a few things with this practice……. first of all, I dont have to be really concerned about the design of the sunflowers….they seem to take care of themselves.

Secondly, I realized that it is going to take more than one line of stitching to make the sunflowers stand out……it is actually going to take 3, 4 or 5 times around them…..and with more than one color of thread. SO, I have decided to do some thread work on the piece before I sandwich it to quilt.

Anyway, it promises to be a fun piece to work on and I can’t wait to get started!!!! But, it may have to wait a week or so because we have friends from Australia coming for a week-long visit starting Tuesday.

Another one finished

On Monday, I finished a quilt that will be given as a wedding present for one of Jenny’s good friends. I pieced the top during tax season….one of my “dont think….just sew” projects.

I really like how the rectangles float on the surface.

I debated for a long time about how to quilt it and ended up using my friend, Anita‘s, idea about printing out several photos of the quilt and practicing different quilting designs on paper. I finally decided to divide the quilt into areas and quilt each of those in a different pattern. All in all, I am fairly pleased with it. If you click on the photo, I think that you can see the quilting.

Basting Saturday (Take 2)

The other quilt that I worked on Saturday was a “White on White” quilt that I have had for a number of years but simply haven’t gotten around to doing.

The top was given to me by Elsie, who was a member of our guild. She had started hand quilting it, but hadn’t gotten very far along. I took out her hand quilting, thinking that I would use the piece to practice my machine work. ……. This was maybe 5 or 6 years ago

Then I decided that I wanted to add some trapunto to the piece, so spent quite a bit of time getting the extra batting sewed on and ready to quilt.

The piece had a pillow-top that I was not interested in, so I cut it off, practiced my quilting and then tried washing out the blue lines. Well, they did not immediately come out!!!! I contacted the company that made the piece and they told me that it was only guaranteed to come out for about 2 years. She did suggest that I try washing it in Shout and Oxi-Clean, and that seemed to help remove the lines.

The bottom line here is that I have NO idea whether the lines will wash out once I finish the quilting, but have decided that it is a good practice piece regardless.

I had planned to pin-baste this quilt, but decided that I would just use a Basting Spray and get it over with. Who knows if that will further hinder the line’s disappearing act.

I had thought I would use a variegated King Tut thread, but didn’t like the way it looked in the final analysis, so have decided to just use a beige thread and let the texture do the talking….hopefully with no interruptions from the nasty blue lines!!!!