Tyvek Experiments

I received some lovely gifts at Christmas and some came in tyvek envelopes!! Sometimes you just can’t think about something too much - you just need to gather up the materials and give it a try. That is how it came about that I spent a lovely hour or so playing with tyvek, some fabric paint, a teflon sheet, an iron and a heat gun.

Trying this out wasn’t my intention; I seem to recall that I was looking for something totally unrelated when I saw the envelopes and something in my head clicked. Whatever it was, I gathered everything up, laid it out on top of the other bits and pieces I was working on and I found myself painting and heating tyvek. 

Everything I have read or seen about this process tells you to work in a well ventilated area. Disclosure - I didn’t and I didn’t use a mask. Bad of me, I know. I tend to be slack about this type of thing, but I do encourage everyone else to take the necessary precautions. I figure after lettering signs with lead based paints and silk screening for years with little or no ventilation...and besides, it was just two envelopes and I didn’t breath deeply.

Lots of fun to be had playing with this technique! And you don’t need to use fabric paints - any old acrylic paint will do apparently. I can see beads and such intertwined with the pieces I have created. There will probably be some bits of over painting, too, and maybe some fibre bits added. Right now I have some of these laid out with a couple of the pieces I sun printed this summer and I am thinking there are possibilities..

Full Disclosure

These are two views of my dining room. Kind of a before and after..haha I was hosting a planning meeting so had to tidy up this first shot so we could sit at the table. Not even a half hour after everyone had left, the room looked like the second photo. And it isn’t the only room I work in..My excuse? I am working on some techniques and surface treatments as I create fabric for some designs I have going on. 

I am part of the organizing committee for one of my guild’s annual retreats, so there is a pile of materials and props and goodies accumulating in another room upstairs. It is sharing space with the Christmas things I still haven’t sorted and stored again for this year. Maybe I should get to that..

My long arm takes up the back half of our living room, cuddled in next to our treadmill and my beloved spin bike.

I have a room full of fabric, materials and tools downstairs..

I try to contain everything, but I tend to spill over and over into the other spaces in the house. I prefer to work in natural light and when I can’t work on either of my decks (boo! winter), the dining room is perfect for sewing and painting, catching sun from the east, south and west. 

How lucky am I that I am married to a very understanding man. He is used to dirty paint pots and brushes lying by the kitchen sick, dye tubs and rags sitting on the washer, bundles of knitting projects scattered here and there, rug hooking that sits in the living room, plus all that other clutter that comes with me. And he cooks..

Superwoman in Training

I redeemed myself the next day. I started early, stayed focused and didn’t give up until the quilt was done. I was tired at the end of the day as I finished sewed the binding on by hand, but I was pleased with my results and felt back on track. Well, not completely on track, that might be asking too much, but it was another project checked off my list.

We were hit with freezing rain on Wednesday and our road was not passable until after 2 pm, so my plans for the day were put on hold. Ah well, staying home gave me the incentive, as well as the time, to piece and quilt and sew.

At the end of the day I had this..

It really doesn’t ripple on the edges - it’s just the way I draped it over the edge of the bed for photos.

A quilt my daughter asked me to make.

It has been carried by friends to Halifax and tomorrow it will travel a little further to be delivered to its new owner.

The true color is more like in the photo below on the bottom left corner. 

It’s a surprise gift for someone who has been generous and loving and treated my daughter like one of her own.

Like most of my projects, I seem to think I am going to be able to make exactly what I want with limited amounts of fabric. (Do I really have to wait until Christmas Day to open that 3D printer, Santa??) As it turned out, I had to get creative with what I had and the result was a bit smaller quilt than I originally planned. But, at 48 x 68 it is still a lovely size for keeping cosy and the minky (from Marden’s!) will add to that warmth factor.

Interestingly, in this rather small project, I used fabrics from Sew Sisters, Hamels, Mardens, Avonport Discount and thread from Barbados and New Maryland! Cotton top, poly batt, minky back, Glide Thread and my free wheeling on the needle.

It’s bright and cheery and I hope it is well received.

My Dumptruck Pantograph

A local fabric store was selling these cute little panels and I was asked by two quilters to quilt one for each of them. They were excited when I said I could quilt trucks on them, so with two to do, I invested the time to create a pantograph of dump trucks.

When I create my own pantographs, I use a very basic method. I draw my design element out, outline it in a fine black line with a Sharpie, then I print multiple photocopies of the image. I cut the excess white background away from around the edges of the image and then lay them out on paper I cut from a roll. Once I am happy with the layout, I tape the individual images down and add marker lines to create a continuous line of quilting.

This is a fairly antiquated way to create pantos, considering I could be creating digitized ones on my computer if I had the right software, but I actually enjoy this process. I am able to enlarge or reduce my designs and I can flip them and reverse them. And it allows me time to study how pantos are designed and how to best create a flow for the stitching line to follow. 

As well, I sometimes enlist the use of my opaque projector, or even my overhead projector when I want to enlarge a design and adjust it to the size I find best suits the quilt top I am working on. My opaque projector was one of the first tools I purchased when I started out in the sign business and even this many years later, I still find lots of uses for it.

Both clients provided me with Fireside for the backing and 80/20 cotton batting. 

Kaffe Fassett, We Meet Again!

In 1975 my sister Joanne, of Madaboutcolour fame and I boarded a plane with backpacks and dreams and found ourselves in England. Being maybe a little bit hippie and a lot dedicated to handcrafts, we focused our adventure on design, museums, live theatre, buying up wonderful items like Birkenstocks for 25.00!!(me) and corduroy jumpers and skirts at Selfridges (Jo). We spent a full week going to the Victoria and Albert Museum where time stood still for us to sketch (Jo), wander and soak it all in (me). We stayed in hostels, cheap rooming houses, B&B’s, and gathered stories as we experienced life on the road. We saw sooo many theatrical performances! Chorus Line, Agatha Christie’s The Mouse Trap, Swan Lake (for perhaps the 10th time....growing up on PEI with the Confederation Centre and its focus on live entertainment meant we had the opportunity to see lots of ballets), and Jesus Christ Superstar to name the most memorable.

We also visited a small shop in downtown London to see an interesting display of knitted items. I remember there weren’t an overwhelming number of pieces, but each piece there demanded your attention. Machine knitting was something I was just vaguely aware of and fashion design in these days before the immediacy of the internet, was something you saw in magazines. Joanne, being very smitten with the work we saw, bought a beautiful hand knit vest, it being the one article she convinced herself she could afford. We chatted with the proprietors/artists, no doubt gushing over the amazing designs..

I am not really sure when the pieces all began to fall into place, but on July 18th, in a little church in Amherst, Nova Scotia, Joanne stood up and showed Kaffe Fassett one of his earliest knitted vests, designed by his then partner, Bill Gibb. And the circle grew even tighter; she also presented Kaffe with a photocopy of her Scottish born husband and Bill Gibb in a class photo taken when they were both youngsters, attending the same school, sharing a desk. Kaffe very graciously accepted the photo and seemed pleased and intrigued to see a piece of his early work. He listened as Joanne explained that Bill and her husband had been close school friends and had spent hours preforming plays Bill made costumes for.

After Kaffe’s talk, he patiently chatted and signed books for attendees. He signed several books of Jo’s extensive collection of Kaffe books and again thanked her so kindly for her thoughtful gift. I remarked that he didn’t look a day older than the first time we spoke, way back in 1975 in that little showroom  on Bond Street..

Even More Sun Printing!

I can’t seem to get enough of making sun prints! A little walk along my favorite beach yielded a nice size bag of gull feathers to use in creating more fabric this way.

In order to make the feathers lie flat on the fabric, I had to snap the quill, or shaft, in two or three places along the length. Even so, they balanced precariously in some spots.

I know if I add paint to the fabric, brushing over the feathers, they will stay in place a bit better. But, once I have painted my fabric, I hate to muck up my design and coloring, so I hesitate to do that. So, I snapped and pressed and tried to will the wind away. The feathers stayed down quite well on my first pieces, and I wandered off to do other things.

While I disappeared, a breeze started blowing and jostled some of the placements on the second batch. Once the fabric is dry, the opportunity for printing is lost, so they didn’t turn out quite as I had planned.

But, I liked the subtlety of the design and since these are only the first layer of many in my quest for complex cloth, I know I can work with the results. 

Today I am linking up to The Needle and Thread Network. 

A Client Quilt of a Musical Theme

This quilt was such an absolute pleasure to work on.

The piecer, Elaine, is a very skilled seamstress and she did an wonderful job creating this beautiful top as a gift for her grandson on his graduation from high school. Music plays a prominent part in her grandson's life now and will continue to do so, and thanks to his grandmother, he will have this lovely themed quilt to keep him cosy as he begins university this fall.

Elaine told me she liked my swirls and leaves, so swirls and leaves it was! As I free styled over the musical instruments on her carefully pieced blocks, as well as on the pre-printed panels, I tried to create movement and what I imagined to be beautiful music flowing from the horns, pianos and stringed instruments.

I quilted this with a variegated Rainbow thread on the top and a honey gold Glide in the bobbin. I didn’t get a close up of her backing fabric, but it was music bar-lines with notes and treble clefs.

  

A Client’s Beautiful Batik Floating Star Quilt

I love being given free reign on the quilting on a client’s quilt. I absolutely love free styling a quilt top!

This lovely floating star was a blissfully beautiful quilt to work on.

Each wonderful block was made with a different batik fabric and I just so enjoyed admiring each one as I quilted the top.

Claudette did a great job piecing this large top (96 x 106) but unfortunately I really couldn’t get a photo of it in its entirety. Weather and my circumstances made it necessary to keep it inside to photograph.

If summer ever does arrive here in the east, there will be many shouts of graitude. For now we try to make ourselves feel that a high of 17 degrees really is warm and that the rain is refreshing. Meanwhile I wrap myself in three layers and dream as I quilt as to where we can go this winter that is hot and dry. And that is hosting a quilt show, of course!

For those who might be interested, I quilted this with Omni thread on the top, a polyester thread from Connecting Threads in the bobbin, and Claudette provided me with a Quilters Dream Cotton Batting. 

Freehand Quilting

I find myself in the very fortunate position of having a number of comfort or charity quilts to stitch. These lovely quilt tops give me the opportunity to learn as I go and to practice my own longarming designs. When I am faced with a client’s top and I am still not completely sure what approach I will take, I load one of these tops on my machine and stitch away. It is always interesting because I often have an idea of what I will be quilting and then when I start, well, what I stitch is usually nothing like what I have been sketching out and practicing in my cool and handy Wipebook my sweet daughter gifted to me.

This time I did stick to my plan and I am especially pleased with this design. I love being in front of the needle on my longarm. In some ways it reminds me of my days wielding a brush and letting the paint flow!

This design is one I randomly stitched on a sampler with while at Road to California and I was itching to take it a step further and develop it into a full edge to edge freehand design.

I always tend to try to fill every space and I working to learn the fine art of less is more - for some quilts! I think it has a lovely, casual feel and yet maybe is a bit folksy as well.

Changes

I have been gradually transitioning away from a job that has kept me very busy and pre-occupied for the last 14 years. There was very little, if any, creativity in my work and at the end of the day, I was exhausted. Finally the time came for me to say goodbye to this part of my life and to move on to something that makes me happier. 

And, you know what, I am really okay with my decision..

A little more about Road to California 2014

This morning when we got up, the temperature was -2! It only reached a wet, windy high of 8 degrees and someone remarked to me that if it really were the fall (which it feels) we would at least dress for the weather. No one wants to pull out their toques and mitts, but really? Well, if we were sensible, we would. But, sensible does not abound in these parts apparently. Today I saw more shorts and bare feet and bare arms than I have for days. Meanwhile I am wrapped in three layers, a scarf around my neck, shoulders up to my ears and anxious to get home so I can stuff a heated magic bag in my sweater! I am still sporting wool socks and flannel pj’s to bed and any tan I might have gotten last month while in Cozumel has long ago faded to pasty white. Sigh. 

Well, I am trying to keep warm thoughts and that brings me back to California. While there I had the pleasure of taking classes with numerous instructors. Lisa Sipes and Pam Clarke were both longarmers I had become familiar with and classes with both provided me with lots of tips, techniques and possibilities. Lisa is a relaxed, casual teacher and displays obvious skill on the longarm.

Pam is very, very organized and has developed a method of marking and quilting that is pretty much fool proof. As she says, when you have quilted as many quilts as she has, you need to be organized and use a method that you know will deliver.

I also had the pleasure of speaking with the very gracious, Alex Anderson of The Quilt Show fame. She was there representing the show and took the time to speak and pose with everyone and anyone. She was chatty and gave me a friendly jab of her elbow when I teased her about the trials of being a superstar! lol

Road to California attracts a large number of Canadians, mostly snowbirds who winter in Palm Springs, and mainly from the western provinces. On the day we were to take a class from Angela Walters who unfortunately got the flu and had to cancel, we posed with a couple of fellow Canadian classmates. We seemed to meet up with Colleen (second from the left) quite a bit and always enjoyed some laughs with her.

For a group that is missing out on a class with Angela, we look fairly happy. I know we were all very disappointed, but I think unexpectedly having a free day to spend shopping here...

helped keep our spirits up.

I normally don’t pose for photos since I am usually the photographer, but I am glad I did during that trip. It is proof positive that I did attend and that I did meet those great instructors and all those wonderful quilters! Looking at each photo takes me back to the moment and that particular experience and I remember something more about it each time.

I really think meeting so many friendly, generous quilters was one of the best things about going to Road. Every teacher relayed the attitude that if they could do it, you could do it. Every person shared information, offered assistance, moved over if you needed a seat. There were smiles, lots of laughs, oodles of positive vibes, and I couldn’t have asked for a better experience.