Next Step - Quilting!

After getting the background set, I placed the cut out peacock on the background and used a tacky glue to hold it in place until it was sewn down.





I started the machine quilting on the peacock itself. I used a tight meandering stitch to secure all the little pieces that make up the body of the peacock.
















I considered placing tulle over the entire bird and stitching on top of it to make this process easier, but I didn't like the change in color that resulted from the tulle. The only area that I used tulle was the white/gray feathered area on the back of the bird.





After stitching down the bird I started on the background. You can see the area near the feet of the bird has been stitched in the photo below.




I moved around the background and did the majority of it, saving the tail area for last. The peacock's tail extends down to the ground, so I needed to add more tail pieces in this area, and use the stitching down of the tail as the quilting stitch. I will show that on my next post.




Thanks for visiting my blog!

My Peacock Project!

In the spring of 2017 I took a workshop with Susan Carlson to learn her fabric collage technique. It was at the Asilomar Conference Center. The workshop was a fun and worthwhile experience. I started a peacock art quilt in that workshop. I am almost done with it, so I thought I would use the next couple of posts to show the progression of the making of this art quilt. Here are some photos:

My inspiration was a peacock that I saw at a zoo in Hawaii. Here is my photo of that peacock:



My drawing from that photo:



The drawing on white muslin. The collage process has started.




In progress:











This was about as much as I did in the workshop. Once I got it home I finished the bird up and then it was time for the background. I'll show that in the next post.  Thanks for visiting my blog!

A Witch's Outfit

This post is the next in the series showing the making of this art quilt with a little green witch. Today's post will show the dress, hat, shoes and cape.




She is obviously in a black outfit. Black fabric presents some challenges to make it look three dimensional. The key is to put in highlights on the fabric rather than shadows. To make highlights you need a white opaque paint. For this piece I mixed the white paint with a bit of green.


I traced the dress, hat and cape sections from the full size enlargement. I used a solid black Kona cotton fabric for these pieces and a sliver of soap to mark where the folds in the fabric occurred. This was my guide for placement of painted highlights. You can see the soap line on the cape neck and hat brim below.

I mixed my white and green paint and put it on the highlight areas. Below you see a photograph of the highlights on the dress. These highlights definitely give the dress a three dimensional appearance to me.

The inside of the cape and hat presented an opportunity to introduce some other fabric. Here is one of the green fabrics that  I used:




I used a collage technique to place  additional green printed fabrics in these areas.  This is the inside of the cape being constructed piece by piece.



This photo shows the collaged fabric inside the brim of the hat.





I hope this information gives you some ideas for your art quilts. In my next post I'll show the orange/brown parts of the witch's outfit:  the shoes, pumpkin, and broom. Thanks for visiting my blog!