Hearts for You

Happy Valentine's Day.

We are all thinking hearts this week, 

so I wanted to share some of the hearts that I made.

I started with two fabrics, a light batik and a solid pink. 

After seaming them together, I enhanced them by using crayons over a rough texture. 

I set up my sewing machine for free-motion quilting and quilted a feather design.

Adding a touch of Lumiere paint in each feather provides fabulous detail.

I  invite you to join me for a class exploring these techniques.

"Feathered Art Quilt"

I will be at Sew Smart in Rhinelander, WI on March 13, 2014, 

and at Sew Smart in Wausau, WI on March 27, 2014.

Linked to Off the Wall Friday

The Art Quilt Blog

Tuesday's Tile - Resisting and Using Resist

Quilter's Tile - A Gossip

8" x 8"

©2011 - Sharon V. Rotz

This Quilter's Tile is one of my favorites because of both the words to live by and the technique used. First, this should be my prayer everyday, to take the time to think before words come tumbling out of my mouth.

A troublemaker plants seeds of strife. 

A gossip separates the best of friends. 

Proverbs 16:28

To make the project, you need a resist (something that the dye or paint would not penetrate) to draw the lips. In this case, I used a bottle of white children's school glue that would later wash out. After I drew the lips and let the glue dry, I painted on the fabric using Dye-na-flow paints. After the paint was thoroughly dry, I soaked the fabric to remove the glue. The hardest part of this process is the waiting for things to dry. I tend to be too anxious to see the results and waiting is SO hard.

After the fabric was prepared, I layered the fabric and used free-motion machine quilting to highlight the lips and add the words.

The binding was made by turning the backing fabric to the front and hand stitching mitered corners. After folding under the raw edge, I used cross-stitches to secure the binding. 

Will you spend your day resisting?

Tuesday's Tiles - Punch Patch Posies

Quilter's Tile - Punch Patch Posies

8" x 8"

©2012 - Sharon V. Rotz

 

Since I had all of the tools close at hand, I thought  I should try another method of needle felting. It is also possible to needle punch patches of wool cut from wool fabrics.

Here I made a simple quilt using patches cut from scraps of wool clothing fabrics (clothes that I had made, not that I was wearing, altho...)

I dug into a long lost bag of yarn and found wool yarn left from a crewel embroidery project, a beautiful piece that my mother-in-law had made. I remember it hanging in her house at the top of the staircase. (Now, lucky me,  I have it hanging in my studio.)

I cut yarn strands about a half inch longer than my background and punched them in. Oops. They shrunk up quite a bit, I wasn't counting on that happening.  I now know they should be much longer.

Here you can see the back of my background fabric with all of the punches coming through. This side also presents possibilities. Oh good, another quilt will soon be dancing in my head.

What do you see?

Tuesday's Tile - Wisdom or Gold

Quilter's Tile - Wisdom or Gold?

8" x 8"

©2011 Sharon V. Rotz

Today's tile combines a variety of techniques. In the background of the piece, I've used Shiva Artist's Paintstiks over texture plates and Dye-na-Flow paints to vary the color of the fabric. I then took the fabric to my machine and added some decorative stitches using metallic thread. (Some of the over 200 stitches that my machine will do and I usually never use. What great options, I need to expand on this.)

For the writing, I dropped the feed dogs and machine quilted the words.

To finish off this tile, I went green and used recycled items. The borders strips were strips from old ties  and the buttons cut from an old suit coat.

Today we have flight

Yesterday, my dragonflies were grounded by faulty techniques. Today, after reviewing and making a new plan, I now have dragonflies to spread their wings across my quilt.

I layered the water soluble stabilizer over two layers of sheer blue polyester fabric. I took it to my machine which was set up with silver metallic thread and started to free motion stitch the dragonflies. I went over all the lines at least twice and added more stitching to give detail to the wings. After completing the stitching, I trimmed away the excess fabric and soaked off the stabilizer.

The dragonflies have just enough body and the wings tend to curl up slightly gives them a dose of character. Perfect for what I have in mind. Actually, I found they are so much fun to make that one more, and one more, lands on my table.

Now to press on and give them a quilt to permanently land on.