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Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Quilter's Tool Caddy

In between several other projects and chores, I've been trying to add the fiber and embellishment parts for several clay pieces I have stacked and waiting. This morning I was suddenly inspired to create this little quilt for one of my vessels.


I usually include petals, leaves, spices, etc. but am happy with this simplicity of a mini raw edge quilt. Perhaps a similar design may work for my wall curves .... back to the sewing room .....

Hope you're having a wonderful creative week!

Click on the middle photo to see more photos of this pot at my etsy shop.

Monday, March 19, 2012

Balance



Yesterday was reveal day over at Tangled Textiles. As usual I spent most of the two months brainstorming ideas and techniques for the theme. The two finalists for my quilt included a color principle by Itten where I planned to create a color field illustrating the 'balance' of color relationships. I did a few sketches with my Nook (above). Finally I settled on the idea of showing the Attempt at Balance using a yoga based figure to illustrate our attempt at balance in the midst of our swirling lives. My figure is falling off balance as I often do in this yoga pose as I attempt to hold it beyond my limit, just as I sometimes do in other areas of life as I take on more than I can balance.
This is a whole cloth quilt, a first for me, using acrylics and fabric medium. Basically, paint, quilt, paint, quilt and finally for the binding I wanted something frayed yet finished on the outer edge, so I created an inside frayed edge. I thought of the napkins I've made by simply doing a wide decorative stitch around the square of fabric then unraveling the threads to created a fringed edge. For this binding I used a single piece of fabric rather than the usual folded double piece used traditionally for a binding. I sewed it wrong side to wrong side, turned the binding to the front and stitched it down using a wide herringbone-like stitch. I then measured the width I wanted the fringe, drew a line and cut off the excess fabric. Then simply unravel the threads to create my inside fringe.
If you open the photo with the scissors in a new window it enlarges enough to see the stitch I used on the binding. Any stitch really should work - it just needs to prevent the fabric from continuing to ravel. 


Enjoy the amazing variety of balance quilts over at Tangled Textiles!

Namaste!