Structure: How I did it

My list of things to do has long included seeing the colorful row houses that one sees in Europe.    So for this challenge, I took the structure thing a bit literally and drew a row of fantasy buildings.  This was a piece of washed cotton that I ironed to a bit of freezer paper to stabilize it for the drawing.  

After I finished the drawing, I layered it with a wool batt and stabilizer on the back.  Then I stitched over it with my machine using white and dark grey cotton threads.

Then I rinsed it to get rid of the blue pen.  After it dried, I ironed it to flatten it.  

I used Derwent Inktense pencils to color in the buildings.  Those scissors were handy for snipping threads.  

 I used these three different textile mediums.  Why?  Because I felt like it.





This is a bit of a close up of the penciled piece before I used the mediums on it.

 The bright green building on the left and the partial one to the left of that have medium on them.  After I finished the penciling I brushed on the diluted medium.  I haven't done this in a while and forgot how much it spreads.

And a much better photograph of the finished piece.  Actually, it's not finished. I think it needs more quilting.   I'll post again after I quilt the sky.

Structure Challenge

"A Row by Any Other Name"

I created this for the "Structure Challenge" at Art Quilts Around the World.  Hopefully, I will get it together in the next few days and put together a couple of posts detailing how I did it.

Watercolor Workshop

 A woman with whom I am friendly from my BOM club really liked the watercolor crayon stuff I was doing and asked me to do a workshop with her.

 So I packed up my brushes, textile mediums, and texture plates and went over to her house for a fun morning.


She had a couple of embroidery machines and uses them a lot for quilting.  She made up a bunch of samples with neutral threads on neutral backgrounds and we got out the crayons and played.


The texture plates were the most fun.  We put the fabric over the plates and rubbed the crayons on the fabric.

Then we brushed on the the textile medium -- we used my GAC 900 by Golden.

She made up a bunch of embroideries and her 13-year-old granddaughter had fun coloring.





I really like the colors she chose.

 I think my favorite is this sailboat.









But the butterfly is pretty neat too.

To Market, to Market

to buy a fat hog,

Home again, home again,

Jiggity jog

"Pinky"

31" X 28"

As I said here, this was created in response to a Creative Cue.

First I drew the pig on cotton sateen (I used sateen because I wanted a sheen to the finished piece.)  Then I sewed on the borders, planning to extend the quilting out into them.

I layered it with cotton batting and did all the stitching with cotton thread.  I outlined the pig first, then did the fence.  I followed with the mud and sky background.  I used threads that were slightly lighter in color than the colors I wanted to finish with.

When all the stitching was done, I colored the pig lightly with my watercolor crayons and went over it with Golden GAC 900 Fabric Painting Medium.  Why use this one?  Because it was the largest bottle I had (very scientific, I know).  I have been working on a test piece using all the textile mediums I have available to me, but I'm not done with it.  I'll put together a post with all my findings at some point.

Then, I decided that I wasn't happy with the quilting in the sky and decided to just go in between the lines I had already quilted.  I wanted the whole background to be very flat so that the pig would stand out.  That was the reason I chose a wool batt and quilted the background elements very densely.

Then I colored the trough and the mud.  I found that I had to allow enough time to finish "painting" each section, or there was a line where it dried. I also had to be careful not to use too much medium because if it got too wet, it bled.


After I finished the sky,  I let it dry overnight, heat set it, then added some little tufts of grass along the fence.

Of course, all this begs the question:  Why use the crayons at all?  Why not just use paint? Well, the short answer is: Because it's fun! These crayons rock!  And who doesn't like to color?

Actually, I like the look of the water color crayons after the liquid has been applied.  Also, it's fun to blend the colors.  I didn't like the mud when it was done (too golden), so I added some textile paint over it all to give it that "muddy" feel.  I may go over the fence with some white paint to give it a "whitewashed" effect.  I haven't quite decided.  But these crayons are just another tool in the color tool kit.  And a really fun one, I might add.