Cup Runneth All Over...Getting Ready to Paint!

When painting images on fabric I like to use a  background fabric that is lighter in value but  has some variation in color that I can use as part of the painted image. I hope you know what I mean by that, so here is an example. I knew I wanted my doves to be done in tans for the lighter areas and purple mauves for the dark values. I looked for a background fabric in my stash that would work with that. I found this piece shown below.

I painted this piece last year in my backyard using watered down acrylic paints. I was trying to get a "rusted" look without acutally doing the rusting process. I didn't completely achieve that but I liked the result anyway.

I had my drawing on paper, so I just placed the background fabric over the drawing on a light table, and traced the outlines of the image on the fabric. I took some time to figure out the best placement for the image relative to the colorations in the fabric. I used Frixion pens for the tracing since I knew they could be removed with an iron. Here you can see one bird and the cup.

My next step is to select the ink colors I wanted to use for the birds. These are Tsukineko Inks. I chose dark blues, violets, reddish browns, tans and peach colors.

Below  I also show my ink painting palette, brushes that I used and medium.

Making "My Cup Ranneth All Over the Patio"

This is the first of several posts that I will use to describe how I made this fiber art piece for my Serendipity Exchange group. I have been trying to do a bird themed piece for each exchange for the last year, at least. I want to try to keep it going as long as I can think of ways to configure the theme to birds in some way. 

I have bird feeders hanging from my patio cover, and the finches and sparrows make a huge mess out there, with seed dropped all over the paving. The doves are the clean up crew and come in to collect the spilled seed. I love seeing my chubby, well fed doves and hearing their cooing sound when I wake up. So this art quilt is dedicated to them. 

Below you can see the photos I took of the doves on the patio. I made black and white copies of the photos and enlarged the birds to a few different sizes. I cut out the black and white birds and made some arrangements with them to determine my layout. 

Once I decided on the bird sizes I wanted, I traced the birds on tracing paper and cut the tracings out. This is the cup and saucer I used as my inspiration for the piece. I photographed it and cut out the cup from the black and white printed image.

After doing my tracings I worked on arranging the doves and cup in a 12" x 12" square, which is the size requirement for this Serendipity exchange. This is what I came up with:

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My next post will be about starting the painting on the background fabric.

Thanks for visiting my blog!

Cup Runneth Over

I am a member of a Serendipity Exchange group, and our most recent theme was "My Cup Runneth Over". This is the piece I created for that exchange.

"My Cup Ranneth All Over the Patio", Eileen Wintemute

I have been doing a lot of smaller pieces based on birds lately, so I decided to use the doves that eat bird seed on my patio as my muse for this one. They eat the seed that falls from the hanging bird feeders, but I put it in the cup and had it overflowing from the it. I decided to call it "My Cup Ranneth All Over the Patio". I will be giving details of the making of this piece in the next couple of posts.

You can see the Serendipity exchange by clicking on the Serendipity link on this page, to the right.

Thanks for visiting my blog!

Delphinium Field At Mancuso Shows on East Coast

This is my "Mellow Yellow" art quilt that I made for the traveling exhibit entitled "Delphinium Field".

This exhibit will be at the following Mancuso QuiltFest shows:

Mid Atlantic Show
February 27 - March 2, 2014
Hampton, Virginia
Greater Chesapeake Bay/Williamsburg Area

Mid Atlantic Quilt Festival XXV

The Quiltfest of New Jersey X

March 6 - 9, 2014

Somerset, New Jersey

Quiltfest New Jersey X

If you're in the area try to check out the shows!

Thanks for visiting my blog!

Facing and Sleeve

I used a facing to finish the edge of this piece. You can see it stitched down and pinned here.

And here is the strip I chose for the sleeve. It is a piece of bias binding from a package. And once those are stitched I called it done! Yippee! Onto the next project!

Some Final Touches

My final touches for the top of this mini-quilt included couching some yarn to the front of the pitcher and adding a smattering of buttons. Here are some photos of that work.

I extended the yarn off of the vase and into the background. The yarn is supposed to be a twirling vine shape or something.

And here are some red, white and blue buttons from my button stash.

Leaves, Stems and Flag

I'm getting close to stitching all the parts of the bouquet down, but before I do that I need to stitch some stems on for the flower buds and flag stick. The stems and flag stick are strips of yarn couched to the background. For me couching is just using a zig-zag machine stitch over the strip of yarn. Here is the yarn I used.

The leaves for this piece are made by stitching batik fabric leaf shapes to a wool background. The wool background was then cut about 1/8" from the batik fabric. In some instances I did a wavy shape cut in the wool to make it a little more interesting. 

One of the leaves was given a bent shape in the middle before stitching it to the background.











The flag was made by appliqueing star fabric to a red and white striped fabric and then stitching it to the flag pole. I hand stitched the flowers and flag to the quilted background. The leaves were machine stitched down.