Art quilts

Our exercise this month was colouring our background fabric with watercolour paints, I just loved this, watching the paints blend and merge.

Then we used real leaves to stamp images on the fabric using paint, and transfer rubbings done on paper or direct to the fabric, using transfer crayons.
I didn't really like the lack of control over the printing, some leaves were good, others just a blotch, so it was hard to do a few together and get a good 'run'

We were also encouraged to take leaf photos and alter them in photoshop,
I took a lot of decaying leaves in the garden




I had a great time altering the photos but the hard part came trying to depict that decay in fabric.

the first quilt was just using the paint and crayons:



Next I tried some tyvek, machined onto fabric, painted and melted with the heat gun.



then some machine embroidering onto water soluble fabric (Solvy) and tulle. The green leaf has green wool in between two layers of Solvy. The top leaf was machined over thin florist wire and tulle.



With the next hanging (don't think I can quite call it a quilt) I left the rough edges of the fabric, I quite like the shadowy outline of the leaves but am not sure about the binding at the top, might have to rethink that perhaps make it more narrow (it's still pinned)



then tried some free machining leaves onto cheesecloth and attached them to the top of the hanging




The next poor quilt went very wrong:
I spent so much time on this, I wanted an open background, so ironed the cheesecloth onto freezer paper to give it body while I attached the bindings, then removed the paper and free machined the cloth and attached the leaves, of course this should have been done before the binding (ain't hindsight wonderful) because it went a little wonky, so I gave it a tug to straighten and tugged the cheese cloth right out of the binding! Gave up on this one after that.



This next is using the tyvek leaves, but once again they may not be staying so are just pinned on



I can't say that I'm happy with any one of these, I don't think with these classes you can take one exercise and say "that's it! I've finished"
I think they probably have potential but I look at them all as just being a jumping off point for further development, maybe something to come back to in the future.

It will be very interesting on Sunday to see how the rest of the class interpreted the theme.

textiles art quilting

Matilda's journal - slideshow

How cool is this!
A new toy from Susan at the Artsy Asylum
(and just when I planned to spend the morning ironing.....)

this is an art project I started some time ago and work on every now and then - it's an altered book and a collection of odds and ends in a box - I planned on one day making a web page for it but I'm thinking now it could be interesting to create a blog for Matilda, that could be a good way of telling her story and showing pics, what do you think?

Create your own video for free at www.onetruemedia.com

Art quilts

I'm attending a six month art quilting class with Carolyn Sullivan at the NSW Embroiderers Guild, we have one lesson a month, then make a sample quilt piece based on that lesson.

Our first class was based on architectural shapes, we cut shapes from coloured paper before making our fabric piece.

I think I took the exercise too literally, I understood that we would follow through from the paper cutouts but some of the others said 'oh, that's not how I work so I did.....this".
Their work was great and it would have been easy to for me to say the same and go off on my own tangent, and eventually that is the aim of the class - to help us develop our own style, but I felt during the class I should be sticking to the plan and producing something that relates to the particular technique taught in the lesson.

Does anyone else feel like that when they attend a class?
I know a few people who go classes and finish up doing their own completely different thing, I don't break out til I'm home from the class, I think if someone is teaching a method then that method is what I'm there to learn.

Do teachers find it frustrating when students break away from the course outline or are they happy to have inspired them?

...and it was hard to just make one exercise piece so I finished up with four of them...