Making the Hills More interesting

I didn't want the hills to look flat and boring so I used a combination of techniques for added interest. In many instances it was just a matter of selecting the right fabrics. There are wonderful batiks or prints in cotton that I used for a lot of the hills. The batiks have irregular shapes and colors that add a lot. 

I also used upholstery fabrics because of their texture, and silk to add some sheen.  

Upholstery fabric hill

Silk fabric hill

Another technique I used was to add some tulle shading to them. In the upholstery fabric photo above you can see the shading on some of the hills. 

I also used tulle to create a lighted top to these jutting rock shapes.

Some hills I created by stitching shapes to the hill fabric. Here you can see two hills with fabric that I have stitched on: 1) the purple-ish fabric shapes stitched to the orange silk fabric and 2) a large number of fabrics were stitched to the batik hill to depict striations in the hillside. 

If variety is the spice of life, then these are some spicy hillsides!

My next post will be on the Palms and Oasis area. Thanks for visiting my blog!

Palm Canyon - Sky and Hills

Here's the next installment for the Palm Canyon landscape shown here. Today I am talking about the construction of the Sky and Hills:

Creating is usually a combination of excitement, doubts, fear and thrill.  To tamp down the doubts and fears I like to start with an easier task. In this case the sky and hills were the easiest area to work on, so that is where I started. After laying the sky fabric at the top of the muslin background, I cut out my hill shapes on freezer paper using the enlarged drawing as my pattern.  Here are some of the freezer paper hills shapes.

The next step involved selecting fabrics for each hill shape. I used my color plan to guide me and pulled out various fabrics from those pulled for this quilt. Once the hill fabric was chosen I ironed the freezer paper on the fabric, cut the shape out and placed it on the background muslin. I used a light glue to temporarily hold the piece in place. Here are some photographs showing the work in progress:

 This photo shows the sky fabric and several hills in pinned in place.

After stitching some of the hills down I went to the next hill area and filled it in. Here you can see that the orange hill is stitched down and the lower hills are pinned in place.

This photo shows some of the hills after they are machine quilted. My next post will talk about how I added some details to the hills. Thanks for visiting my blog!

I'll be doing a lecture and workshop on June 14th...

I've been asked to provide a lecture/trunk show and teach a "Tie-Scape" workshop on June 14th at the Surface Art Association meeting in Burbank, California. This is a description of the lecture:

"My Journey As an Art Quilter…So Far

We all start somewhere. During her talk Eileen Wintemute will describe how she transitioned from traditional quilter to art quilter to artist. She will give a trunk show of work showing her progression along this pathway and describe how her background in watercolor painting has influenced her work. She will also talk about what inspires her as an artist and provide tips for making art quilts. "

The workshop will involve creating a simple city scape using a couple of re-purposed men's ties. 

Meetings of the Surface Art Association are held on the campus of Woodbury University. 7500 N. Glenoaks Blvd., Burbank, CA 91504. Meetings begin at 10:00 am. Sign-in begins at 9:30 am.

Palm Canyon Construction Technique

This series of blog posts describes the process I used to make the commissioned Palm Canyon art quilt shown below.  Today’s post is about my overall construction method. Prior steps are shown in my previous posts. 

Starting Construction of the Top

My first step is to take my “to scale” sketch to FedEx office and have it printed  full size on one of their large format printers. Here is the enlarged drawing laying on my floor. It is about 3 feet by 4 feet. It would have been better to enlarge just a line drawing instead of my value sketch because it makes it easier to see where a piece starts and stops. Oh well, I'll try to remember that next time!

I use this enlarged sketch to make pattern pieces of each part of the design. My pattern pieces are made from freezer paper. I lay the freezer paper over the enlarged sketch, draw the outline of the item and then cut the pattern out of the freezer paper. The freezer paper pattern is then ironed to the fabric and the piece is cut out. I sometimes leave an extra ¼ inch around the edges if I intend to turn the edge under, or slide this piece behind another. This photo shows the freezer paper patterns for some of the hills and waterfall area. 

I decided to also draw the outline of the image onto a piece of muslin and use the muslin as a background for the top.  I laid the muslin over the enlarged sketch and used a Frixion pen to mark key lines on the muslin. I didn't mark every line on the muslin, just enough to give me a guide line for placement of fabric.The next step was to sandwich the muslin, batt and back together right from the start.


I placed the cut out fabric pieces to the muslin as I went along.This photo shows the markings for the subsurface design on the muslin next to the trailhead area. You can barely see my lines, but they are there.

 Sometimes I used glue stick or white fabric glue as a temporary hold for the fabric pieces. I have found that watering down the glue a little and applying it with a flat paint brush avoids any the possibility of the area that got glue on it showing up on the top.

But, as soon as I had a few pieces placed that I was satisfied with, I went to my quilting machine and quilted those pieces down. I approached construction this way because the quilt was a little on the large side and this method would make managing the top construction easier. I avoided fabrics shifting or falling off when I moved on to the next section. I found it worked well and would do it again the next time.

That was my overall approach to constructing this quilt. My next posts will show how I put the various sections of the quilt together.  Thanks for visiting my blog!