Water Falling

Several months ago I made a pieced top with the traditional coin design. I chose colors to give the image of a waterfall.

I wasn't sure how I wanted to quilt it to further the idea of a waterfall.

 I made a few sketches on a white board.

 I loved the top and recently made another, similar top.  This would be a good place to try out my quilting ideas.

This is the back of that quilt. I love the quilting, but it wasn't giving the look I wanted on the front of the quilt. 

Back to the drawing board for more ideas.

 This bowl features an Art Deco style design for a waterfall.

 So does this vintage dressing table.  I really like the V design to depict water falling. I thought this would work well in my vertical pieced strips.

Then I found a photo of this Waterfall design necklace from the same era. I needed to figure out how to give this idea of drops falling to quilt in the white vertical strip.

Here is a close-up of my quilting. There are irregular V's with an occasional diamond shape in the colored strips. 

And here is the final piece.

Image Transfers with Fiber Junkies

The same day we celebrated Val's birthday, we also transferred images onto cloth. Judy was our expert.

 We used this transparency film. It has a film on one side, which is the side on which we printed our images.

 The film is adhered to a piece of white paper. The blue tape on the leader edge helps hold the 2 layers together.

 Judy is applying a fabric medium to her cloth.

 Then she placed the printed side of the transparency to the fabric. The spoon was a good way to press the image onto the cloth.

 She peeled away the top of the transparency to look. Note that there is a little of the printing left on the transparency. So, she placed the film back down and pressed those few images on the cloth.

 This is the final image. The photo doesn't do it justice. It was really special, on a rusted cloth.

 Val had this hand drawn image she transferred.

 These old color postcards of Gen's transferred beautifully.  This process prints a mirror image of the original image. So, Judy photoshopped Gen's postcards to a mirror image so that the final print would not be a mirror image.

 Denny had some transfer film at home and brought a lot of images already printed. It may not have been the best transparency film for this project. Her images were wonderful, the transfers had a bit of a fuzzy look.

 This is another of Denny's. I like the look of the transfer.

I had brought a lot of photos of power lines taken on a recent trip to Quebec. I had cleaned up the image in Paint Shop Pro to emphasize certain parts of the photos.

Fiber Junkie's Celebrate Val

One of our dear friends in Fiber Junkies had a very special birthday recently and we decided to surprise her with a "Lifesaver Birthday" party. She had told Judy about a story from her childhood when she had a beautiful blue dress from lifesaver printed fabric. So, we each made something from lifesaver candy for Val.

 Here is the table with the cheesecake, made by Mary, with lifesavers. The cone shaped hats, with candy decor were for the 5 of us. The tiara, wand and necklaces were all for Val, the Lifesaver Queen of the day.

 Here is Val in all her finery.

This is our Fiber Junkie group. Such a wonderful time.

 Val had been away for 2 months in Florida, though she had taken plenty of supplies to create some fabulous items.

 These are a few of her books. She collaged images on this one.

 They are really so wonderful.

 I like the lace and images she applied.

 This small piece is stunning.

This looks like more lace, but is actually a transfer of the lace image on paper using lemon juice. This sounds like a project for FJ another month.

PTA 2014 Retreat

This past week was our 6th annual Professional Textile Artist (PTA) Retreat. It was 3 days with lots of laughs, fun and some projects.  I had 2 projects to work on there. The first was a Trip Around the World project I did with Georgia. She has lots of wonderful ideas for organization.

This is the fabric I selected.

Here are swatches lined up in the order they will be used.

Layering the strips of fabric in order in a magazine was suggested by Georgia. It is a very convenient way to prevent myself from getting mixed up.

See how organized she is?

 Sometimes we eat healthy snacks as we work, like Gen.

 Sometimes we have extra large queen sized projects, like Mary.

Sometimes we bring 3 projects to work on which all use the same fabrics, like Judy.

 Some of us spend most of our time pressing blocks for other people, like Linda.

Some of us did a little knitting also.

But we like to work away all day.

 We like to show off our sparkly jean pockets.

 And we like to have fun and play games all evening, maybe with a little bubbly to sip on.

Some of us bring presents to share (Thanks Leigh Anne). 

I managed to get pictures on the last day of some of the projects we worked on.

 This is my Trip Around the World.

 This is Lynne's latest quilt that she finished at retreat.

This is a really fun "stack" project Leigh Anne made with her Charlie Harper fabric as a memento of her 2 month stay in the Asheville area.  Barbara worked on a similar project but I missed getting a picture.

 Gen almost finished this stunning red and white quilt top.

 Judy worked on 3 tops. This one is lovely and soft colored.

This is my second project, the same design as Gen.  I like to see how different they look with our different choices of fabric.

Handy Tools- Bloc Loc and Scissors

My friends have some tools I really like.

 Mary Kay makes a lot of half square triangles. She cuts the fabric pieces larger than necessary, requiring trimming after the pieces are sewn and pressed (I adopted this practice from her).  This is a good way to ensure precision of the completed squares.

 This is her handy travel box of items to trim.

This is a wonderful new tool she uses which makes trimming much easier. It is called a Bloc-Loc and quite ingenious as it has a groove on the underside to allow space for the seam allowance. This way there is no rocking of the template over the block while cutting. Naturally, I needed this great tool and found it while in Houston for Festival.

Georgia brought these scissors, sold by Karen Kay Buckley, to PTA last week. They are extra nice for handwork and trimming. They are very sharp and the handles have nice large, rubber-like grips.