Many Were Entered,

few were chosen. Sadly, mine was in the latter group. But I had fun making it.

"Wisconsin Seasonal"

26" x 52"

Rust-dyed, hand-dyed, and shibori-dyed cotton fabrics, machine pieced, appliquéd, and quilted. Highlighted with textile paint. Cotton and rayon threads.

I wanted to showcase the seasons of agricultural Wisconsin with the bright blue spring sky, the verdant green of the fields, and the state tree, Sugar Maple, leaves quilted into the border.

The all-important corn over the golden field of grain in the fall.

And the winter snow -- under which the ground sleeps and renews itself for the coming year.

The Weather Outside is Frightful

All day long the snow has come down and piled up outside,

while inside I try to quilt realistic looking snow.

What a Wonderful...

I see fields of green, corn tassels too,

I see skies of blue and clouds of white,

OK, the cloud isn't white -- I think it's going to need some paint. And I had a little trouble with the thread tension. I had to use some YLI thread that was in my stash and it works differently than the Superior thread that I've been using. New needle...adjust tension... try out on practice sandwich...
Still had trouble on the actual quilt -- spent a bunch of time today "reverse quilting." Luckily, with all this practice, my stitches are pretty even and, therefore, easy to unpick. I also was worried that the quilting would look like water when I wanted soft, gentle, spring breezes flowing through my sky.

And I think to myself, what a wonderful...

WHAT? Oh no! We must be in Wisconsin...SNOW!

Stay tuned...

How to Quilt a Cornstalk, Part II

At the end of the first posting of "How to Quilt a Cornstalk" (which can be reviewed here), I promised detail shots of the leaves and ears when I finished. Here is the whole thing:

Here are some leaves and the top of one of the ears on the Rust-Tex cotton.

And here is the other ear. I used six different colors (three variegated) and three different kinds of threads -- all cotton.

I had a little trouble with the needle (not enough to warrant any bad words or gnashing of teeth, fortunately) on the Rust-Tex cotton. The needle made a popping sound -- like it does when you need to change it -- but I tried three different Topstitch 90/14 needles (the ones recommended by Superior Threads for this type of thread -- King Tut) and when they didn't work so well, I switched to a Schmetz Gold Titanium 90/14 embroidery needle. That still made the popping noise, so I switched to a Microtex sharp 80/12. That worked for a while, but when I switched from a thinner thread back to the King Tut thread, it made the King Tut fray and break. So I tried yet another Topstitch 90/14 and that one worked well enough to finish.

All the needles and threads worked just fine on the hand-dyed cotton, so the problem must be something to do with that particular piece of Rust-Tex cotton. The other piece of Rust-Tex cotton, which will be the snow portion of the picture, is soft and easy to quilt.

Next up: summer fields of green.

Bird's the Word

OK -- the title has nothing to do with anything except that this song was in my head while I composed this post. I have been procrastinating on my Rust-Tex quilt because I couldn't decide whether I should put more thread on the wing. I tried some fancy stitches on my machine and decided that a feather stitch (oh yeah) set with almost a satin stitch length would give the wing nice texture. I tried out a couple of different rayon threads: one a variegated black and silver, but the colors didn't change often enough and I got the results below:I didn't like the dark gray, so I went with black.
You can click on the pictures to see them even closer.

A Bird of a Different Feather

Today I took the day off from work work and housework and played in my studio. I got the whole background for the Rust-Tex piece pieced together.I cut out the crow and fused it to the background with black Mistyfuse. Then I embellished it with some more rayon thread.

Preview of Rust-Tex Quilt

Yesterday, I took a day off from work and played in my studio. I started working on a quilt for the Rust-tex collection (which is here). Here is a sketch:I'm playing with proportions using a Fibonacci sequence ( 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, etc.) where each number in the sequence is the sum of the two numbers immediately preceding it. I'm not using all the numbers (wink), just the ones that interest me...
These are the fabrics I'm using. There are hand-dyes (the blue sky and pieced greens), a shibori-dyed brown on the left and the two Rust-Tex pieces on the bottom right.

Rust-Tex is fabric dyed using actual rusted stuff by my friend and fellow MCFA member, Lois Jarvis. There's a much more complete discussion of how she does it on her website (which is here).
So I needed a bird and I chose a crow (or maybe it's a raven) from a copyright-free Dover illustration. I drew it on a piece of black cotton sateen with my beloved Bohin mechanical chalk pencil (thank you, Beth). I backed it with a piece of black fusible non-woven interfacing to stabilize it for the threadwork.
I thread-painted the body and head of the bird with black rayon thread -- I used rayon because it's shiny. I just thread-sketched the feathers of the wings -- I haven't decided if I'm going to use more thread on them.

I painted the eye with black fabric paint, then used raw sienna paint around the black circle (note to self: next time paint first, then thread -- it's too hard to see the black paint with all that shiny black thread). I sketched a circle of orange rayon thread around the eye and used opaque white paint to highlight.
The working title for this piece is "Seasons of Wisconsin" -- I know, that's booooring, but as I said, it's a "working" title.