Birds of Paradise

Birds of Paradise

Tuesday 29 June 2010

Parfait Dyeing ---Part 2











This is the result of the parfait dyeing.  I also did a two-tone fabric.  I am not being as aggressive as I should be about pushing the fabric into the other colors and allowing things to intermingle.  I think my inner perfectionist is coming out. 

Monday 28 June 2010

Quiltart @ 15

I can now reveal my Quiltart @ 15 project which can also be seen in the context of the other entries at http://www.quiltart.com/15 .  The challenge was to create a 15 inch square work for the Quiltart list's fifteenth birthday.  My quilt is designed to highlight fifteen things I have learnt from belonging to Quiltart. Can you find them all on the quilt?  I chose to use cotton, silk organza, machine embroidery and quilting, and TAP transfer. TAP is a product developed by Lesley Riley for image transfer. It can now be bought at http://www.ctpub.com/.  Their blog entry for June 27, 2010 has a link to a 90 minute tutorial on using TAP.  I wish that I had had access to it when I created the project! 

Wednesday 16 June 2010

Fabric Parfait

I signed up for one of Shelagh's Challenges (http://shelaghfolgate.blogspot.com/) which just closed.  The first step was to dye a fabric parfait (she swears that they are calorie free so I will see what the scale says this week.)  This is another form of slow fabric (fabric which sits and "percolates" for several days).  This is a picture of the fabric parfait in the garage, hence the less-than-perfect photo.  I cannot give out any more information----I have been sworn to secret by Shelagh. But..... tune in for more in a day or two!

Tuesday 8 June 2010

Slow Cloth

These are samples of a type of slow cloth I created for one of the City and Guilds exercises.  The fabric was painted with a base paint, and the the second color was added.  After the paint was worked into the fabric, it had to sit for several days without my peeking into the closed bags to see what was happening---so I had no idea what would emerge until four days later.  I was pretty pleased with the results for my first attempt with this technique.  I actually liked the back side of the green better than the front!  The grey reminds me of a stormy wintery sky.


Monday 7 June 2010

Serenity Bag

This is my take on the Serenity bag pattern by byAnnie. (http://www.byannie.com/).  It was made as a class sample but no one signed up for the class.  Hopefully I will be able to offer the class again in the winter.  The quilting on the flap followed the fabric design.  I used Hobbs Tuscany Wool batting as well as Texture Magic to bring out the quilting. The quilting was done with Superior Thread's copper-colored metallic thread which behaved beautifully.  Instead of using headliner foam to shape the bag and give it structure, I used fusible fleece.  When i make the bag again I will enlarge the pattern slightly so I can use 1/2" seam allowance.  I found 1/4" too skinny.  The lining fabric which was in my "resource centre" frayed a lot, making construction a bit challenging with the skinny seam allowance.

Saturday 5 June 2010

Embroidered Jacket

This jacket was embroidered using my Bernina 830 and the jumbo hoop. The designs are by Embroidery Library http://www.emblibrary.com/.  Multiple designs were combined using the Bernina Artista v.5 software. There were many hours of stitching involved, especially as I changed some of the colors and the color order. This was a project which I had to "babysit" all the time. Many of the threads were from Ricky Tims' Art Studio line (Superior Threads.) The others were from Superior Threads' Nature Color line. The jacket is a slightly stretchy cotton.