A great studio weekend

It has been a while since I have had a free weekend.  On Friday, I decided that this weekend would be all studio time - something I've been missing!  It has been a great weekend, on Saturday I worked on a writing project, made some progress on unfinished projects and worked on the quilts inspired by the books in my last post.  Sunday was spent outside, sunprinting fabric with Setacolor.  I wanted to take advantage of the sunshine & comfortable temperature.  After I cleaned up from that, I headed back to my sewing machine.  It's been a fun weekend!

I decided on the photo for the quilt inspired by Jean Wells' book, "Journey to Inspired Art Quilting". I took this picture in Bermuda, while my sister, Leslie, and I were walking to the "sea glass" beach in St. George's. 

I stopped to take a scenery picture and the color of the berries against the color of the sea caught my eye.  I love these colors so much that I'm working on using them as my logo colors.  Persimmon, Apple Green, Turquoise & Slate.  Yummy colors!

Here is the scenic shot I stopped to take:

The quilt is a work in progress, as is the quilt from the book "Quilting Modern".  I should have them both finished by the end of the week.

Hope you have had a wonderful weekend, spent doing something that you love!

I'm back to blogging!

I've found some new books that I have been enjoying and have decided to revive posting to my blog and making projects inspired by those books. 

The first book is "Quilting Modern" by Jacquie Gering & Katie Pedersen (Interweave).  I love this book for reminding me that less is often more.  The quilts in this book are clean and crisp in design - a refreshing change from quilts that sometimes attempt to include every technique known.  One of the things I've taken note of is how the machine stitching is showcased in these "modern" quilts.  I've got a wonderful selection of Cherrywood hand dyed fabrics & some great prints to play with.  Come back for a look at what this book has inspired me to make!

While I'm on the subect of inspiration... the second book I'm in love with is the newest title by Jean Wells, "Journey to Inspired Art Quilting" (C&T).  This book is completely opposite of Quilting Modern in that the quilts are made of many different fabrics, fifteen, twenty or more, per quilt.  I love the rich combinations of color and pattern. 

Another thing I love about this book is the in depth discussion about sources of inspiration, design principles, and color theory.  There are great examples of using photos to inspire quilts and color choices.  This book is a "must have" in my opinion.

So, there you have it.  Two books, equally interesting to me yet about as different as you can get, from a design persepective.  They are both great books!

Time to get busy making my projects - they should be posted in about a week.  Come back for a peek!

Stencil-icious

At long last, here are images of some of the quilts I made with the fabrics I stenciled back when the weather was warm.

The quilts were made as trade show samples for my friend, Jaime, who is the design mastermind behind the great stencils from The Crafter's Workshop (www.thecraftersworkshop.com). She comes up with new designs several times a year and I have a lot of fun figuring out new ways of working with them. I've employed a long list of techniques and materials with the stencils through the past few years. These samples use three of them, Setacolor fabric paints/sunshine, acrylic paint, and discharging. I love to layer the techniques - for example, the background of the center square in the first quilt was dyed with Setacolor, then I placed the stencil on the wet fabric and left it in the sun to dry. I later added the weed & butterfly design using that stencil with black acrylic paint.

I started the tree silhouette quilt with Setacolor & leaving it out in the sun with the stencil, as above. I wanted to have the look of a sunset in the background so I added some orange and yellow Setacolor before the fabric was totally dry. Later, I used a dot stencil with orange acrylic paint to add the dots. The harlequin edge is also a fabric I altered with stencil techniques. I got just the effect I was looking for.

"Stencil" is a word that brings up images of the bunny rabbit & flower stencils used in home dec projects in the 1980's or of the stencil designs of colonial times. It is clear to see that has changed, a lot! Updated designs combined with imagination and easy to learn techniques have revitalized interest in stenciling, both for textiles and paper art projects, like scrapbooking & journaling.

This quilt in shades of purples & blues measures about 24" square. The idea was to showcase a variety of stencils and combine them with commercial fabric, Kaffe Fassett in this case. These fabrics were done with a combination of discharging, Setacolor/sunshine and acrylic paint.

Most of the fabrics in this red-orange quilt were discharged using Clorox Bleach Pen or Soft Scrub with Bleach, then overpainted with acrylic paint. Be careful when discharging, work in a well ventilated place & be sure to use a neutralizing agent on your fabrics or the bleach residue with eventually eat away at your fabric.

This last quilt, "Trust Your Heart", is about 12" square. Setacolor/sunshine and acrylic paint were all I used with the stencils. I really love the flower stencil & plan to make a small pile of fabric using that one.

The fabric I begin with is important to the success of each method. When using the Setacolor/sunshine method, I start with prepared for dying cotton, in white. I tear it into manageable squares, about 16" or so. The stencils are 12" and 6" squares. I like to use slightly larger fabric so I have matching dyed fabric, in case I need some solids. Sometimes I sprinkle kosher salt on the edges to get a starburst effect in the borders. For discharging, I like the hand dyed fabrics from Cherrywood the best. Optimal results are achieved by working with fabrics in rich colors.

If you haven't played with stencils for a while, I encourage you to do so. The Crafter's Workshop stencils are available in Michael's stores and from www.joggles.com . I'm spending my Sunday working on a stenciled quilt for an exhibition for a quilt group I'm a member of - I'll post a photo when it's ready for show and tell.

Finally, I took this picture of my sweet husband, Steve, over the summer & am posting it as my little thank you to him for his never ending support of my creative journey. He's a wonderful husband and I am one lucky girl.

Out with the old, in with the new, tossing the useless...

At last, my new computer is on the desk in my studio, full of all kinds of fun things like Photoshop Elements & a Bamboo tablet and several other things I wanted on my old computer before it croaked. Before I start learning about the new things I have a lot to do in setting up things I took for granted, like shortcuts on my toolbar and knowing where my files live. The fun stuff will have to wait until I get all that figured out. I wish this computer mumbo jumbo came more naturally to me!


I love this photo, it is of a bunch of stamps I made using fun foam. The look so good laid out like this, sort of quilt like. They look so good as is I'm going to hate to dirty them with ink!


Putting the new computer on my desk led to my clearing the whole thing off so I could clean it and set it all up "brand new". My studio is now a mess (who knew one could hide so much on one little desk???) and I am going to go through everything, being ruthless on what is allowed to continue sharing my space. Quilter + Collager + Assemblage Maker = Hoarder of Stuff (most commonly heard phrase "I don't know what I want it for but it's cool and I'll use it for something someday...). Well, I'm not going to ditch the really cool stuff, just have to re-define "cool", I guess.


I've already begun going through all the magazines & books that no longer interest me - it's amazing how fast they accumulate into very big, shelf-clogging piles. I'm taking a big bag of publications to my next Art Quilt meeting in hopes they will find new homes. I'm planning to do a lot of weeding out in 2012.


And, with the new computer comes the realization that my Lexmark All in One is a dinosaur that will have to be replaced. Too bad, we actually understand one another. Guess that's another new thing I'll have to learn about.


Here's to learning about new things, appreciating the old, and knowing when to get rid of that which no longer serves a purpose. The amazing elinor peace bailey once told me that keeping "stuff" in your studio that doesn't serve a purpose (or inspire you) just clogs the creative path. Here's to taking her good advice & clearing the way!

RIP Old Computer...

In case anyone noticed that I haven't posted for a while, my studio computer has bit the dust, is pushing up daisies, has gone to the big computer wasteland in the sky... I've been waiting for my husband to get my new computer set up and, of course, he has been pretty busy so I'm being patient. I'm finally going to have Photoshop Elements to play with.... my Wacom Tablet is going to be installed.... lots of other programs that I've been wanting to use but couldn't because my old computer was a T-Rex, just limping along without room to install new things.

So, I wait a little longer, hopeful that it will all be set up soon. I don't have any pictures loaded on my office computer & the scanner is plain B&W so this is a pretty boring looking post... I'm dreaming of all the things I will be able to do with the new computer & software :)

I have made several new things & have found some great new books that I'll write about after I get all set up. Until then, take a look at Pinterest at www.Pinterest.com and sign up to follow me. It is a lot of fun & a wonderful resource for a million things that you can post & share. I'm still figuring it out and am enjoying all the things I'm finding along the way.

Happy Holidays everyone! Cheers, Gail

Fabric that is all my own....

Stenciling on fabric is a great way to build a stash of fabric that is uniquely yours. I use a lot of commercial fabrics but the ones I like most are the ones I've "made" myself using a variety of surface design techniques.

My last post was about using Pebeo Steacolor textile paints (which, I think act more as easy to use dyes) and sunshine to stencil designs on fabric. I wound up with a nice pile of fabrics to take to the next step, adding another layer of stencil design with acrylic paint.
I used Liquitex acrylic paints and their textile medium, mixing about equal parts of paint and medium. Using straight acrylic paint works also but the "hand" of the fabric is significantly changed by straight acrylic paint. I like using the textile medium because the paint is a little more transluscent and the hand of the fabric does not become stiff.

I use stencil brushes to apply the paint, tapping & swirling the paint through the stencil to get good detail. After dipping the brush in the paint, it is important to "tap off" most of the paint onto a paper towel. You should be using a semi-dry looking brush - too much paint leads to globs of paint seeping under the stencil and ruins the design. On some of the pieces, I used a nearly dry stencil brush with remnants of black paint to get the shaded effect.

Next, I plan to do a little discharging with bleach pen and maybe do a little stamping with some stamps I made using fun foam. After that, I'll be using the fabric to make some small quilts and a tote bag or two. I'll post some pictures of the finished fabrics next weekend and of the finished projects shortly thereafter.

Sunny Saturday Art-play

On a recent sunny Saturday, I set up a few tables in my backyard and brought a bunch of art supplies out to play... new stencils from The Crafter's Workshop, Pebeo Setacolor textile paints, sea salt, and a lot of mixing cups, sponge brushes & mixing sticks. I had several yards of PFD (prepared for dying) white fabric that I tore into 14" squares.

I mixed up small batches of the textile paints & used the sponge brush to apply it to a square of fabric - sometimes using a solid color, other times adding splotches of another color or applying a couple of colors in stripes. I then placed the wet fabric on another table & placed a stencil on top, gently pressing the stencil to the wet, paint saturated fabric. After an hour or so, I lifted the stencil & moved the fabric to the shade. The result was a perfect outline of the stencil design with the positive space in the original paint color & the negative space lighter, from its exposure to the sun. I sometimes threw on some sea salt which creates a lovely mottled effect.

I spent the entire day mixing up colors and playing with the stencils. I've wound up with a nice pile of fabrics to use in my next steps, overpainting and bleaching. I'm going to work on that over the next few days, I'll post pictures of some of the finished fabrics.

Great news for anyone looking for The Crafter's Workshop stencils, they are now being sold at both Michael's and A.C. Moore! You can see the full line and some inspirational photos and ideas at http://www.thecraftersworkshop.com/ . It is a wholesale company so you can't buy their products there but you will be able to find a list of where they are sold.

My next post will include pictures of the fabrics after I do some overpainting & bleaching. After that, I'll show you what I did with the fabrics!