Courtenay’s portrait is progressing. I add fabrics, then take a photo in black and white to make sure the values are still working. Just a few of the darkest fabrics to add and the collar, maybe a bit of fine tuning here and there, then I can think about the background.
As always, I’m linking up with these blogs for WiP Wednesday. Click on the buttons below to see all the people participating and check out their projects.
I’ve been working on a new dog portrait. This is Courtenay, an Airedale Terrier. Here’s the starting photo, and the fabrics I plan to use.
I used Picasa to crop the photo, then used the ‘posterize’ feature to reduce the number of colors. I printed the posterized image and outlined the colors with a Sharpie marker pen. The marker pen shows on the back of the paper which gives me a mirror image to use for tracing onto the fusible web.
I took the posterized image to FedEx/Kinkos and enlarged the front and back to the actual size of the quilt.
I always start with the face, as that’s the most challenging part – once I’m happy with the fabrics for the face, the rest will be easy. I usually start with the lightest fabrics first then layer the darker fabrics on top. That way the darker fabrics don’t show through the lighter ones. I constructed the face by fusing it to parchment paper then peeling it off when it was complete. Here’s the face and one paw pinned to the full size posterized photo on my design wall.
I’ll construct the other paw and rest of the body before I even think about what colors I’ll use for the background.
Check back in a day or two for more process photos.
On April 27, I will be teaching a workshop for the Textile Arts Guild of Richmond on freezer paper piecing. I will provide each participant with a full-size pattern (12 x 24 inches) of two Japanese maple leaves. Here’s my class sample, with some photos of the techniques and tips I’ll be teaching.
Pattern is traced onto freezer paper (FP) and pinned to pattern on design wall; background and stem fabrics are pressed onto FP pattern pieces and pinned to pattern:
FP pattern piece is marked with a directional line to ensure stripes are aligned correctly. Press fabric to create a straight cutting line without a ruler:
Auditioning fabrics for leaves; all leaf fabrics ironed to FP pattern pieces and section O has been removed for stitching:
Section O ready to sew; section P ready to sew; sections P and O ready to join:
Sections O and P pinned together, and checking that edges are straight before sewing:
All sections are sewn together except 2 which are pinned. Because this is a class sample, I’m not going to sew the last 2 sections or remove the freezer paper.
I have several projects in the works right now, all very different techniques.
I’ll be teaching a workshop on freezer paper piecing at the end of the month, and I’m working on a class sample. I’m going to make bright red leaves on a light taupe background.
I’m starting a dog portrait of this Airedale Terrier. Her name is Courtenay.
Last June the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild challenged members to make blocks with our guild colors. I volunteered to piece the blocks into a guild quilt.
On top of all that, there are four quilt shows with entry deadlines in April that I’d like to enter, and for at least one of them, I was thinking of starting a new quilt!
As always, I’m linking up with these blogs for WiP Wednesday. Click on the buttons below to see all the people participating and check out their projects.
Tonight I’ll be attending the opening reception of the 5th annual juried exhibition “Cherry Blossoms: A Textile Translation”. The show runs to April 21st, at the Silk Purse Gallery in West Vancouver. http://silkpurse.ca/exhibitions/ This is my entry in the show.
I’ve heard from several people that they’ve seen my Good Morning quilt in the April/May issue of Quilting Arts Magazine. I glanced through the issue last weekend at the bookstore, and it looks like it’s full of great articles – but I’m still waiting to receive mine in the mail.
I did buy the March/April issue of Cloth Paper Scissors which includes the Art Supply Doodle reader challenge results – and my little thread-painted piece can be found on page 85, along with many other fabulous doodles.
I’m featured on the Janome Life blog this month – check it out.
My two entries for the Quilting Arts “Text Me!” reader challenge are finished and submitted. They are each 8 x 8 inches, so I thought a really narrow binding would look best. I cut a strip 7/8″ wide and fused a 1/2″ strip of Steam a Seam along one edge. I sewed the binding to the front of the quilt with an 1/8″ seam, turned it to the back and fused it in place. It worked really well.
Linking up to:
Another Quilting Arts magazine reader challenge has caught my fancy – “Text Me!”. The challenge is to create an 8″ x 8″ inch quilt inspired by text. That made me think of my original Rainy Day People, which I created last fall in my Houston hotel room, and used a newspaper as the background for the photo. The newspaper text reminded me of rain.
So here comes Rainy Day People 4, with text as rain! And I thought of another idea involving text and punctuation that I’m also going to submit. They both have to be finished and images emailed by March 29th.
As always, I’m linking up with these blogs for WiP Wednesday. Click on the buttons below to see all the people participating and check out their projects.
Rainy Day People 2 has been posted on the SAQA Auction site. It’s on page 1b about half way down. While you’re there, check out all the other awesome quilts. And there will be lots more coming.
Rainy Day People 3 is finished and submitted. I’m very happy with it, but wish I had made it a bit bigger at the top. By the time I trimmed it straight and folded the binding to the back for a clean finish (using this wonderful tutorial, by the way), I lost at least a 1/2 inch of the sky. Oh well, I’ll know better for next time.
This quilt – and a few others – still need sleeves and labels. That’s going to be my project for this week, and I’m not going to start another quilt until I’m all caught up with sleeves and labels.
Linking up to:
Rainy Day People 3 is almost finished – ‘just’ the zigzag stitching, sandwiching, quilting and binding. The entry deadline is March 15th, so I’m concentrating on getting this finished today or tomorrow.
As always, I’m linking up with these blogs for WiP Wednesday. Click on the buttons below to see all the people participating and check out their projects.
Terry Aske Art Quilt Studio
