Another Creative Art Book Review



If you love surface design, making altered books or even art journaling, along with incorporating snippets of fibers and adding various textures, this is the book for you.  It is chock-full of ideas to give you plenty of inspiration for utilizing texture, color, fibers, design elements, resists, "Brusho" (a product from the UK which is fabric dye in powder form-use caution), oil paint-sticks, wax, papers and options for recycling products we all have available.  This book covers multiple projects and materials such as: mark-making, block printing, mono-printing, hot & cold wax, tie dying, collage and guess what-this is only half of what the book covers! 
The other half of this book will give you plenty of ideas for hand & machine stitching, embellishing, fabric manipulation, applique and ideas for creating your own unique textiles.  Plenty of eye candy to get your thought processes working, so grab your copy today!

Fabric On-Line Class-Free

I came across an exciting opportunity for everyone who likes to sew or create with fabric this morning and I would like to share it with you. Elizabeth (Liz) Kettle, Ruth Chandlers and two other co-authors book: Fabric Embellishing is now available, but these ladies are also offering free on-line classes, based on the techniques found in their books. They are hosting this free class at their forum  If you are interested in doing some fabric weaving, that is the first weeks lesson. Check it out!  Sounds like lots of fun and since I love to do surface designing with fabrics and thread I hope to create a fabric altered book during these weekly classes.
The first week lesson was to weave strips of fabric and here is my little sample.  The second part of the lesson was to create free-form flowers but I didn't have time to do that.  If you go to the forum and look for the Week 1 Photos, you'll see what everyone has shared.  

"Air Brushed" Journal Page

This was the first air brushed project I did. I used watered down acrylic paints, because at the time it was the only kind of paint I had. Acrylics are o.k., they just make the fabric slightly stiff. The winged fairy was masked off using a water-soluable gutta resist, in the "French Serti" style of painting. It was further embellished with machine embroidery, and the India style of applying mirrors, (don't recall the exact name for that technique). The whole project probably took 20 hours, mostly because of the embroidery.

"Abstract Sunset"

This mini quilt was made for a magazine challenge, but I never sent it in. I wasn't thrilled with the completed project. I started the project, using gradation hand-dyed fabrics, cutting them into strips with a wave rotary cutter and sewing them onto a muslin background. I appliqued the white areas, and machine embroidered other white areas to create the illusion of the sun reflecting off the water as it sets. From a distance it looks great! I'm too much of a realist I guess. Abstracts are not my thing, I struggle with them, and prefer not to make them. I challenge myself constantly, and this allowed me to move away from my comfort zone.

"Butterflies Secret"-mini quilt

Every year I donate a mini quilt to the Children's Foundation for their silent auction. This raises funds to provide under priviledged children with Christmas presents. This particular mini quilt is only 18" x 18" and is contained inside an embroidery hoop, which was used to create a magnifying glass. The interior of the hoop is hand painted (using an image from a rubber stamp), beaded, machine embroidered and real dried leaves were glued in. Clear vinyl was attached to the embroidery hoop, to seal the whole thing, and give the effect of looking through glass. Butterflies were glued to the outer rim of the hoop to give a reference to size.

La Fiesta Art Quilt-2005

This is my first and probably my last round quilt. It was created using a pie wedge shape, sewn together, hand painted and appliqued. The dragonfly's wings were made with angelina fibers and to finish the whole thing off, I added hot fix crystals in different areas of the quilt to give it some glitz. The problem with making this quilt, was working with the bias of the fabric. The quilt didn't want to lay flat and I ended up taking in darts around the outer edge of the quilt before sewing on the binding. Thank goodness that worked!

"Old Man Winter" Art Quilt 2004

This is a close-up view of Old Man Winter that was hand painted three times, and used for two quilts and an altered jacket. Each fabric painting took about 20 hours and is completely done in acrylic and metallic fabric paints. He is heavily embellished with beads and pearls. All three images are quilted with metallic threads and some machine embroidery. The jacket was published in Nov/Dec 2006 Belle Armoire. The fabric base I used was unbleached muslin. To get the image on the fabric, I used an overhead projector and transparency created from a hand drawing.

Fire & Ice Art Quilt

In 2004 I paper pieced this quilt for a local challenge of the quilters guild in Tallahassee, Florida. Yes, I do get around! There were a lot of firsts with this quilt. The center medallion was created using angelina fibers under

organza. I designed the quilt, using paper piecing as the technique which was new to me, and I used satin stitching for the greek key border, which I hate to do!!!

"Mountain Spirit" Art Quilt

I made this art quilt for my hubby to hang in his office. It was the first one I made using tiny scraps and fusible webbing. The horns are 3-D free-motion embroidery. I knew I wanted hanging fibers on this quilt, so another challenge, how was I going to do this. I actually cut the quilt to add eyelets that the fibers are draped through and knotted on the back. It was very difficult cutting into a quilt I had spent weeks making!

"Midnight Reflections" Art Quilt

Commissioned Art Quilt

This quilt was a commissioned piece. Sorry it's long gone! It was quite a challenge as I wanted to keep adding something in the background, like white birch trees or something. The person who commissioned it, wanted only a dark background. I prevailed, and added the crescent moon which definitely finished the piece for me. It sets the place, and time for the quilt. This was my second quilt made using this technique. Each tiny piece, and some where tiny enough I needed to use tweezers!, was reversed onto fusible web, and bonded into place. The whole quilt was stitched and the feet were done free-motion with machine embroidery.

"Morning Dew" Art Quilt

2006 Hoffman Challenge Art Quilt

"Morning Dew" was my first 3-D art quilt. I knew I wanted to use the Green Man in this quilt, with some of my hand-dyed cotton fabrics. I also wanted dew drops that looked like real rain. I'm always challenging myself! I experimented with everything on the market until I was able to create little drops of rain. Next challenge: how to apply them to the quilt and get them to stay! I experimented with every available glue I could find until after weeks of experimenting, I hit the right combination! My quilt came alive! To finish this, I added hot fix crystals, that gave just enough glitz to look like the sun was shining on the dew drops. This quilt won the Honorable Mention Award in the mixed techniques category. I danced the jig for days!

"All Eyes" 2005 Hoffman Challenge Art quilt

"All Eyes" Art Quilt

I made this quilt in answer to the Hoffman Challenge, 2005. While it did not win any awards, I was thrilled that it was selected to go on a world wide tour with them. The biggest challenge in making this quilt, was it had to withstand being folded for shipping over 100 times! Originally I had planned to use real peacock feathers, but of course they cannot be folded. The next challenge was to create a fake feather, that looked real! Several experiments with paints, fabric, and beautiful imported threads from Japan, helped me create a beautiful, touchable feather.

"Leather Lizard" fabric postcard

"Leather Lizard" fabric postcard

I created this fabric postcard, back in 2005. It was an experiment, using wonder-under fusible web, metallic paints and an image transfer. (Dover Publications). The experiment worked so well, that I still use the technique today, on fabric, cardstock and even photographs. Being careful not to overheat and melt the photo!