Canoe Art Quilt and Using my New Machine

The Canoe Art Quilt top is pieced together! My Office Time App tells me I've worked 71 hours on it so far.

Finished quilt top with very rough edges.

The light green and light blue section across the quilt are where the organza will be placed to create the mist rising from the water. Today, I placed several layers of organza on the quilt top to see how it would look and noticed that the section of land in the middle of the composition is supposed to look like it is far in the distance and it wasn't reading that way. In order to fix that I also placed a larger piece of organza (just one layer) over top of that section and it does a nice job of pushing it back into the distance and making the two land forms on either side of the quilt come forward into the middle ground.

In the photo above, I have one layer of organza over the mist area of the water. In the next photo there are about 6 layers of organza laid in that area.

I haven't sewn the organza down yet because I am not sure it reads as mist yet. Maybe you could let me know what you think.

Over the summer I had the opportunity to buy a sit-down quilting machine at a discounted price because it was a demo and was a bit damaged. I had to wait a long time for all the parts to be sent to me and I also had to spend some time putting it together and figuring out how it worked. It is a Janome Artistic Quilter and it has a large table and a larger space under the machine than my domestic sewing machine which will make quilting much easier and quicker.

I did some practicing on scrap fabric and adjusted the stitch tensions before I used it to sew down some of the organza on my quilt top. I still have a lot to learn about this machine but I'm sure it will make my job a little easier.

Eco-Dying Experiment

This week I took some time to experiment with eco-dying. This is dying with natural substances like plants and bugs. I didn't use bugs but I did gather some plants from my garden to use.

I took out some of my white cotton fabric and first boiled it in vinegar and water for an hour to make the fabric ready to take the plant dyes and make them fairly colour fast so they wouldn't wash out of the fabric.

Apparently silk takes the dyes better than cotton but this time I just used the cotton.

I laid out the fabric on my deck and placed the plants on top of it.

This one has goldenrod, chestnut leaves and mountain ash leaves and some pink mandevilla blossoms on it.

I then rolled and bundled the fabric with the plants inside into small tight packages and kept them together with elastics. Then they were placed in a colander above a pot of water in order to steam them for 1 hour.

After the hour I placed each bundle in a ziploc bag and put them outside in the sun and left them out there all night to continue steeping.

In the morning I unwrapped the bundles.

The dying is very subtle as you can see but the different plants gave me different results. The bundle with the chestnut, mountain ash, golden rod and mandeville was a very light result.

Bundle#2 had goldenrod, mountain ash leaves, petunia blossoms, verbena blossoms and geranium blossoms. This one turned out the best with some nice pinks and purples in it.

You can see the pattern of the mountain ash leaves in the section above. 

The third bundle was just brown leaves that had already fallen from some of the trees in the yard. These also gave more colour than in the first bundle.

I was hoping I would get some distinct leaf prints and blossom prints but I am happy I got some colour on the fabric. I will have to do some more experimenting and perhaps studying on this technique.

I am not certain what I'll use these little samples for but I am sure something will come to me.

It's Getting Close!

I have been steadily working on my art quilt and it's getting close to a completed top. The piecing is almost done. I placed a small amount of organza on top of a small area that I want to have the mist coming up on just to see if it will work and I think it will.

At the Fibre Content Show that is also exhibiting one of my art quilts, I saw several pieces which used silk organza and I really liked the look. I took special note of how these artists used the organza and how they applied it. The organza is transparent so the background is still visible behind one layer of it. If you want to see less background you just place a couple of layers over each other. The organza also gives the piece a bit of a shimmer which might be a plus on my quilt.

Watercolour Flowers

Each art day I go out into my garden and do a few watercolour paintings of the flowers in my garden. These little paintings become cards that I send to various people. Here are a few of the recent creations.