A Little Handwork

Before I left for Florida, I searched among my many UFOs (UnFinished Objects) for a project needing handwork to keep me busy.  I came across a notebook with a number of flower/nature studies that I began in an online workshop with Pamela Allen in 2010.

I remembered that these were in my project bag a few days ago, but alas, I had not packed a needle.  A trip to Target produced a tapestry needle that will do, so I have been doing some stitching.

This one is supposed to be morning glories climbing on fence posts.  I have stitched down all but the leaves and flower at the bottom center and right, using embroidery floss.

I think I must have made those fence posts when I first got my needle-felting machine.  I detect some wool roving and strips of fabric felted onto a cotton base.  The wool makes it look a little hairy, I now think!

When it is all stitched down, I will machine-quilt the piece, adding more wood grain and some veins in the leaves.  Looks like it could use some wire between the fence posts, as well.

Here are the other pieces I brought from this series.  They all were missing bits here and there.  I compared them to the photos in the original post and tried to fix them up.  I may have to add some more fabric when I get home to Raleigh.

Poppies

 Perhaps a hydrangea?  It is missing about a hundred of those x-shaped petals!

Some tall blue flowers on stems.  Looks like I need a bigger piece of background fabric!

 I think this one is an abstract  version of aspen trees.  The purpose of the exercise was to observe shapes in nature, and not always make the stereotypical daisy shaped flower or symmetrical pointed leaf.

A tree...Not sure what's going on here, except maybe I was trying to utilize the botanical patterns on some commercial fabrics to make the leaves and branches.

I sat outside on Jeff and Anna's deck to work on my stitching today.  While I was stitching, there were three iguanas criss-crossing the lake.  I think the big brown one is getting amorous, and the two smaller green ones are trying to swim away from him.  Here is one of the green ones climbing out of the lake onto the grass.

We did visit a fabulous place on the way home this morning.  It is right here in Fort Myers, and my sister-in-law told us about it yesterday.

Norman Love's Chocolate Salon...oh, my goodness, Heaven on Earth!

The pastries and candies look like jewels or pieces of art.

Here is a chocolate cake with several tiers.

 We each had a pastry and coffee, and then we brought home a box of assorted truffles for our hosts, a dark chocolate bar for a fellow patient we have befriended at the Dattoli Center, and a sugar-free chocolate bar for us.  I predict more trips to visit Norman Love before we leave!

Mountain Tote Bag :Finished!

I finished something!  A while back I posted about an art quilt UFO from an online Pamela Allen class.  I decided it would become a tote bag.

This piece is already quilted with backing and batting.  I just satin-stitched through all layers to attach the appliqué and do the quilting at the same time.

I found an old canvas tote bag that had dark green handles and was approximately the right size.

I remembered a workshop with Karen Eckmeier in which she had covered a canvas tote with patchwork.  I couldn't find her book which I think had instructions for the tote project, but I set out to make a quilted tote bag cover.

I ripped out the stitching along the side seams.

Then I created some more patchwork with mountainy, leafy fabrics to make the cover large enough.  I just happened to have some fabric with log cabins in my stash!

Since the other piece was already quilted, I quilted the new section as well.

I added a narrow dark green binding to each end, using some leftover binding from another project.
Then I sewed the two quilted sections together.  I trimmed the canvas tote to be the same size as the quilted cover.

 I used an overcast stitch on my Janome to finish the tote bag edges, since I cut off the serging that was on there.  Canvas can unravel very easily.

Next I applied a fusible mesh to the quilted cover, and ironed it to the canvas.  Then I stitched the pieces together around the edges.  It seemed like it needed more quilting to hold the layers together, so I just did some in the ditch stitching through all layers.

I sewed the side seams back together.  Then I made a gusset so the tote bag could stand up.

After trimming the seam, all I had to do was turn it right-side out.

Here is the front side.

And here is the reverse side.

This bag is just the right size and padded enough to carry my iPad, a library book, and my chargers when we travel to the mountains.

And we did travel to the mountains this weekend...and look!  We got to see the new cabin lit up for the first time!  They hooked up the electricity and the gas on Friday.

I love the way the house lights are reflected in the pond below.

The fireplace is now functional with gas logs, although the mantle is not finished and the rocks need to be mortared.  But it made a cozy fire and for the first time it was warm enough to be comfortable inside the cabin.

We did not sleep in the new place, because the water is not hooked up yet, and the gas furnace is not yet fired up.  But next weekend we will have new beds, and couch and chair delivered, and hopefully we will be all set.

Ready to Quilt

It has been a busy few days.  Our son Bryson and his wife Melissa came up on Thursday, and we went to Durham to a concert by legendary country singer Don Williams.  It was fabulous!  Don sits on his stool, says, "I don't talk much," and then launches into a program of all his most adored hits from the past four decades or so.  No stories, just an evening of wonderful mellow music.

On Saturday we went to see the movie Lincoln, which we enjoyed tremendously.  It is the only one of the Academy Award nominees that we have seen.  I also want to see Life of Pi, which I have read, and Charlie wants to see Zero Dark Thirty.

It snowed and iced off and on this weekend, but we still had a showing on our house on Sunday.  Cleaning up and having the house ready to show is time-consuming...and then you have to clear out for awhile.  So far we have not had any offers, but the showings have picked up.

I have been doing some handwork off and on.  I have an art quilt top that is hand-stitched and ready to quilt.  It is from one of my five or six online workshops with Pamela Allen.  I think this one was from About Style.  It was meant to be in the style of  Cubism...think Picasso and his idea of breaking down objects into shapes and seeing multiple views of the object in space at the same time.  Pamela said the Cubists would often use fractured, positive and negative shapes, collage, and text.  Voila:  I give you Picasso's Coffee Cups.

I used stick-on scrapbook letters on cloth, then painted over them and removed them to make the text.  The letters will be the color of the back ground fabric.  The large brownish fabric behind the orange negative cup was hand-dyed, then stamped with black acrylic paint.  I have had a fat quarter set of the coffee bean fabric for many years, having won it as a door prize at Capital Quilters' Guild.  

Each shape is arranged and glue-basted, then stitched with either embroidery floss or Perle Cotton thread.  Next step is to machine quilt.  I can't decide whether to try this on my Janome, or wait until I visit my Gammill's foster mother next week and quilt it on the frame.  The whole thing is only about 16" x 18".

I have enough of these Pamela Allen UFO's to stitch that it could take me the rest of my life!  I will probably start hand-stitching another one tonight.

One Palette, Two Quilts

Here they are, two finished projects!  All bound and ready to hang.

I started both quilts in November during an online class with artist Pamela Allen called Four Quilts.  In Lesson One, we chose a painting and tried to reproduce the palette or color  scheme in fabric.  I chose this lovely painting by American Impressionist Mary Cassatt.



Portrait of Mlle. C. Lydia Cassatt, Mary Cassatt, 1880



  Usually, this color study is a quick mock-up to see if the fabrics we select really work.  In other words, are the colors in the same values?    The fabrics are cut free-hand with scissors and glue-basted to batting.



Miss Lydia, Jeanne Turner McBrayer, 2012


It was fairly easy to cut all the rather loose blobby shapes except for the face.  It took about four tries to cut a head that was the right size and had a pleasing profile.  In fact, I liked my color study so well that I decided to hand-embroider the raw-edge shapes, and then quilt it.  I also added gold and other colors of Shiva Paint Sticks to try to replicate the light and reflections of the painting. I quilted it with a variegated orange-yellow-green thread, a pear green, and black.

The other project is my original composition using the same palette.  My chosen subject for the class was landscapes.  I worked from a photo of a barn in the North Carolina mountains.  It is actually a horse stable that we pass every time we descend from the top of "our" mountain on our Gator rides.



Glen's Barn in Autumn, Jeanne Turner McBrayer, 2012



In the late afternoon, the sun is rapidly blocked by the mountain.  The last rays of the sun really light up the goldenrod and the beautiful autumn foliage.  Usually, our dog Kasey is running ahead of us, so I thought about putting her in the picture with her golden glowing coat.  Maybe next time!

Landscape #3: Emotive Landscape

I do intend to revisit my Cubist landscape from Lesson 2 of the Pamela Allen series workshop, but went ahead and plunged into Lesson 3 yesterday.  The purpose of this online workshop is to interpret a chosen subject using four different interpretations.  This week's study is Expressionism.  How do you convey a mood or emotion in a piece of art?

Well, this artist did it rather effectively!
 

The Scream, Edward Munch

There are many ways to achieve a certain mood, one of which is color.  Light and bright often equals happy, as in this lovely seaside painting by Monet;

The Garden at Sainte-Adresse, Claude Monet


 
 Dark colors can be foreboding, threatening, or just plain depressing.

  

The Potato Eaters, Vincent Van Gogh


How about this one?  Not exactly warm and fuzzy.   Not only is the subject old, blind, underfed and dressed in rags...the blue tone adds to the depressive mood of this painting.

The Old Guitarist, Pablo Picasso

For my expressive landscape art quilt, I decided the subject would be an old abandoned barn.  There are many of these in the Ashe County mountains where we have our cabin, as well as throughout North Carolina as family farms are abandoned and development encroaches.  This photo is of the barn across the road from our cabin.  It belonged to my brother-in-law's late grandfather.

Here is the composition I created as a "melancholy" landscape.

The barn has weathered gray boards that are leaning at odd angles.  Kudzu vines are starting to take over.  The old fence is falling apart.  There is an empty garden with nothing but a dead plant.  The dark hill behind the ban looks threatening, as does the stark leafless tree.

This is a fascinating workshop that is stretching my artistic abilities!









Landscape #2: Cubism

I got the nod of approval on my Lesson 1 landscape in my Pamela Allen online workshop, so it was time to move on to the next lesson.  The assignment was to interpret our chosen subject in a Cubist style.   Instead of one moment frozen in time on a flat canvas,  the Cubists interpret what can be seen at different times and from different viewpoints.  Of course, one immediately associates Cubism with Pablo Picasso.  I theorize that one reason he had so many different lovers in his life is because they all got a little bit miffed after he painted their portraits!  Consider this painting of Dora Maar!

Head of a Woman, Pablo Picasso



Besides the strange portraits with faces portrayed in different planes at the same time, Picasso painted landscapes, my chosen subject.  In Landscape at Mougins, the mountains, lake, and a house are all at least recognizable.



Landscape at Mougins, Pablo Picasso

 This style is rather daunting for a non-artist to attempt, but Pamela offers many ideas such as fracturing objects, layering, including transparency and real world objects such as paper.  Here is an example of a still life by Juan Gris.



Still Life With Geraniums, Juan Gris

So, on to the fabric landscape in Cubist style.  My first attempt used some realistic looking woodsy fabric, an oak leaf in both positive and negative shapes, and a strong tree shape that also includes the roots.  There is a representation of a building that is made of newspaper. 

Even I realized that this attempt was too realistic to be a Cubist interpretation, so I removed all the elements I had cut and rearranged them on a plain background.

In the revision,  I added some rather geometric mountains and a river, and attempted to add a foreground.  I was a little happier with this and uploaded it for Pamela's critique.
She agreed that the second version is a more semi-abstract landscape, but noted that I was still clinging to realism.  Her suggestion, illustrated by her Photo Shop magic, is to make the scene more of a birds-eye view with map imagery.

Notice the dashed lines to indicate roads, the fracturing of the oak leaf, a stronger foreground, and the addition of more text (exit sign).  This is getting closer to my implied theme of man-made objects imposing on nature.

I have not gotten back to this project as real life has intervened.  I loaded the big candlewick quilt on my Gammill yesterday and got started on the quilting.  After all, I still need to make a little more money to cover the repairs to the garage door I backed into last week!

And today begins my first workshop at Art of the Carolinas in Raleigh.  The class is The Easy Approach to Starting a Watercolor Painting, instructed by Tom Jones.

"Truly a wild and wonderful NEW class where at the end of a busy week … you want to just paint … not have to “think” … or take notes … This class is for you! Great if you need to learn how to loosen up, or if you are a beginner, Tom will help you build a successful painting first, and then show you how unity, color, contrast and a focal point were utilized without you ever knowing."

I am super-excited about this class.  If I produce anything close to the lovely landscape in the sample image, I will be delighted!

Don't forget to enter the drawing for the Elm Creek Quilts novel.  Leave a comment at the end of this post and tell something about the friendships you have shared through your love of quilting.

Here We Go Again

I am in Week 1 of another online class with Canadian quilt artist Pamela Allen.  This one is about working in a series.  We got to select our own subject matter.  I have chosen trees/landscapes/mountains.  Not very far from my comfort zone, am I?

In Lesson One, we began as we have in other workshops by choosing paintings which we admire, pulling fabrics that are in the same palette, and making a color study of the painting in fabric.  I chose this portrait by the Impressionist Mary Cassatt called Mlle. C Lydia Cassatt (the artist's sister.)

After pulling my fabrics, I cut out shapes freehand and came up with this.

I really loved this attempt, but when comparing it to the original image, my backgrounds were too light.  Pamela did her magic with her photo editing and suggested the darker values to make the figure pop.

That does look much more like the original.  I tried again this afternoon and came up with this version.  Now I am waiting to hear from PamelaMaMa to see if I "done good!"

You may have seen the Cassatt portrait if you are one of the growing numbers of people who have discovered Pinterest.  I'm not sure how I discovered this online pinboard, but it is extremely addictive and interesting.  Members post pictures that they have come across online and pin them onto "boards" listed by categories.  One of my boards is "Paintings I Love."  Check it out!  I've got one on quilts, art quilts, fiber art, and color inspiration, among others.

New Work in Progress

Here is my latest art quilt in progress...tentatively named "Sunday Ride."

This was done for Lesson 3 in my Faces and Figures online class with Pamela Allen.  We were to put at least two figures into a composition this time.  I chose to depict Charlie and I riding through the Christmas tree farms at the top of our mountain.  Kasey is there too, and if you look closely you might also spot some wildlife lurking behind the trees! 

Pamela did not make any suggestions to change this piece, although I have redone my right arm (too spindly) and changed my shirt color so Charlie's hand would show up better. Also, this is all just glue-basted- and Charlie's left ear appears to have flown the coop!  It is a good thing to take digital photos of your work and check them for contrasts in values. 

I started stitching this one by hand last night while watching the finale of Dancing With the Stars.