Themes for the Coming Year?

Just posting and wondering about the future. There are no more themes. Are we continuing into the next year? I hope so. And what about themes? Should we be suggesting new ones? If everyone's on board, I'll start:

"Favorite Book"

New Theme

A big thank you to everyone who linked up 'Spices' quilts. 

I thought this was the hardest theme we've had but, as usual, it was a great collection. 

Now it's time to announce another theme but, today we have no Mr Random or tossing of coins because we have only one thing left on our list.

The theme this quarter will be - 'Mosaic'

The Reveal Day will be 1st February at 10.00 GMT. 

In the meantime, you are always welcome to post anything related to this theme or art quilting in general here on The Endeavourers.

Good luck, and Happy Sewing!

SPICES

 

I've had a deal of trouble with this post but, finally, here it is!

I was so much at a loss about what to do for this theme, in the end I decided to focus on the word "spices", rather than spices themselves.

I used the same fused silk technique as my circles and squares quilt but, this time, I embellished with embroidery, beads and sequins.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what everyone else came up with for this quarter so hopefully my internet will hold out and I will visit all the other reveals now :)

The Spicy Neighborhood

I had a little fun with the Spice challenge. It took me awhile to come up with an idea, but once it came to me, it went together quickly. It was a delightful week or two of quilting this whimsical little piece. 

What in the world does a neighborhood have to do with spices? Well, each little house "body" is dyed using a spice from my spice cabinet. So I introduce to you "the Spicy Neighborhood".. From left to right, the spices used were: Curry, Chili, Tumeric, Clove, and . . . Beets. Yeah, yeah, I know beets aren't a spice, but I had left over beet juice and I wanted to see what would happen if I used it for a dye. 

Here is each house, a little closer so you can see the details. 

The Curry House

The Chili House

The Tumeric House

The Clove House

And lastly, the Beet House. 

To construct the quilt, I made the background using a blue and green fabric from my stash. A quick improv wave gave me the "rolling hills" for the neighborhood. Then I basted the landscape, batting and backing and did the wavy line quilting. 

To dye the fabrics, I used five white scraps of fabric. I will confess that my dyeing was pretty short and sweet. Heat water, stir in the spice, drop the fabric in, shake, and let it sit for about 24 hours. The beet dye is lighter because it didn't brew as long. I didn't set the dyes or anything like that. Once taken out of the dye, I just rinsed them with water. This is a wall hanging, and I don't ever expect to fully wash it, so I cut corners a bit. 

The houses are all done raw-edge applique using my machine. I didn't use any templates for the windows, doors, trees, etc. I just cut them either freehand or with a rotary and ruler. Once I got going, I had fun creating the neighborhood. I enjoyed adding the little button flowers and stitched stems. The last thing I added was two small pieces of batting, pulled and torn to look like clouds. 

The back of the quilt looks a bit of a mess, but it won't be seen, so I didn't worry about that too much. My backing fabric is a piece I picked up and then decided I really didn't like it, but it works great for quilt backs! And striped binding just had to be! 

My Spice challenge quilt measures 11 inches x 31 inches. I thoroughly enjoyed the Spice challenge! Over on my blog, I've had a little fun describing the families that live in each house. If you're in the mood, pop over and visit! 

Wendy

Spices - A Trio

This theme said circles to me, and I struggled with it.  I had an idea of the tops of spice bottles with gorgeous warm yellow and orange, and deep earthy, rich colours, but for some reason I couldn't get it to come together.  So I abandoned ship on the first big idea, and thought about a smaller lifeboat sized idea.

 

I have a tendency to go big on these challenges and then struggle with getting them finished so my lifeboat idea was going to be small, only 6 inches.  So, still playing with that spice bottle concept, I came up with this illustration of three bottles side by side.    I had a lot of fun playing with shadows and highlights and selecting colours from my scraps that I thought would work.

This came together very quickly, though the little highlights were a bit fiddly, and I used fabric glue in addition to bondaweb to keep them stuck.

 I had the idea of matchstick quilting but after completing the first pass of straight line quilting I added a line between the quilt lines and I didn't like it.  So I ripped that one line out and went across instead for a grid. I managed to catch each of the pieces quilting in both directions.

Single fold binding to finish which as this was small I thought would be a good piece to practice machine binding and I hated it (I always get a neater finish handsewing the binding down).

But you know when you have a challenge in mind it informs other things or other projects inform the challenge idea in your head?  I took a curves class with the Quilters Guild who had Carolina Oneto doing a workshop online and it was a lot of fun.  

 

So I went back to playing with circles and came up with this idea the other day.  I just had to have another go at it.  

A project for another day maybe.  In the end what exists in the world is my trio of spice bottles.  Looking forward to seeing everyone's interpretation of the theme!

Spice Market

 I have not traveled widely, but I hope to some day.  I keep a big binder of travel articles, and one thing that always draws me in is photos of markets and their displays of spices.

This year, I bought a huge collection of photos from the estate sale of a couple who had traveled the world in the 1990s and early 2000s.  Among their photos, I found these two that inspired me for this theme:

I decided to stick with those simple shapes of bowls and piles of spices, but I used more heavily patterned fabrics to portray the bowls, instead of the solid colors shown in the photo.  These are all scraps of my own handwoven fabrics, and to me they evoke the feeling of travel in exotic locales. I turned the selvedges up to be the top of the bowl, and then tucked in triangles of wool felt and vintage velveteen for the pyramids of spice powders.  I did some hand-stitching on the felt, and also did blanket stitch around the cut edges of the handwoven fabrics.

As always, there are things that could be improved in this piece -- it would be fun to embroider the names of the spices in the background.  But I do love the warm spicy colors, and the fact that my handwoven fabrics are now out on display instead of tucked away in a box.

To read a little more about this piece, you can also visit my home blog, Deep in the Heart of Textiles.

Just Spliced

 I was so full of good intentions this quarter, even if it did take me a while to come up with a project (what's new??). 

However, life has rather thwarted the plans.

For the last couple of months I have been stitching up a storm making Halloween costumes and winter outfits for the grandchildren. A Ghostly Bat (or Batty Ghost!) for the older grandson was fairly straightforward.

His younger brother takes a more creative approach to Granny's capabilities as a costume maker and put in a request for a Crash Bandicoot costume, his favourite video game character (overnight I might add, which he was quickly dissuaded of!). 

 

Our lovely granddaughter wasn't left out either, but I forgot to take a photo of her outfit :(

With those out of the way I finally decided on a topic for this quarter's theme.

 

 Many years ago we spent part of our honeymoon on Grenada, the Spice Island and this photo was taken from our beachfront villa at the Spice Island Inn.

Just before we headed off to France to close our house down for the winter I bought this book, so this was the perfect project to try out the technique. 

Alas, no progress was made on this sewing whilst I was in France, too easily distracted by good food and great wine :) 

My plan to knuckle down and get at least a quilt top done in time for the deadline has been completely scuppered by both the OH and myself coming down with a lurgy that has us wrapped up in quilts and reaching for the Lemsip at regular intervals since our return. 

I do hope my fellow Endeavourers have been more successful this quarter than I have :)

In the meantime here is a different type of spice to brighten your day (or not if you were not a fan!).

"Spices" Reveal: Saffron

For the "Spices" prompt, I wanted to do something floral. I couldn't figure out any other subject that wouldn't involve a line of jars. One idea was to do the flower vanilla comes from. It's a pretty flower. Here's one I found in the Openverse.

(Image credit: "vanilla flower - Goa, India" by She Paused 4 Thought 

is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.)

Pretty, huh? 

My other idea was the crocus flower where saffron originates. And I fell in love with this photograph, also from the Openverse.

(Image credit: "Saffron - Crocus sativus" by themts is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.)

I decided to use this photo to create my quilt. Before I could print it, I wanted to turn the background white. To print it as it's shown above would probably have used up all the black ink in my printer cartridge. They're kind of expensive to replace, and so I turned the background white, and then printed it. This is the photo I was working from.

And then it was a matter of choosing colors and building the flowers on a teflon pressing sheet. 

Day by day...

by day...

until the flowers were finished.

I decided to stick with the black background as it appeared in the original photo. When it was fused to the background, it looked like this:

Since I didn't have a border fabric I liked, I went on a shopping excursion to find the one I used. I'm not sure, but I think those are crocuses on the fabric. I gave it a dark purple stop border, and I liked that black in the corner just to break it up some.

From there, I went to work doing the thread painting for dimension and realism. It was hard to bring enough darkness to the flower center to give it depth. I ended up using both thread and a purple Sharpie paint pen to darken it up some. The thread painting was all done before adding the quilt back.

When that was finished, I added the back fabric and quilted it lightly with some crocus in the corner...at least, that what I was going for. Not sure if I was successful.

And then a leafy feather in the borders.

I used the same purple from the stop border for the binding, and my quilt was finished.

Here's how it looks from the back. I really like that fabric. Happily, I have a good amount of it left over to be used in another quilt.

It ends up at 23 x 20 inches, and I hope you like my quilt!

New Theme

A big thank you to everyone who linked up 'Vintage' quilts. It was, as usual, a wonderful collection. It's always interesting to me how each of us interprets the same prompt differently. 

And now, it's time to choose another theme. There are just two options remaining:

Spices and Mosaic. I decided to do it by coin toss. 

Heads = Mosaic

Tails = Spices.

So, I flipped an American quarter and came up with...

If you're not familiar with American coinage, this is definitely tails. So our next prompt will be 

Spices.

The Reveal Day will be 1st November at 10.00 GMT. In the meantime, you are always welcome to post anything related to this theme or art quilting in general here on The Endeavourers.

Good luck, and Happy Sewing!

Vintage Bouquet

For this challenge, I used lots of small vintage textiles, such as napkins and handkerchiefs.  For previous themes, I have used them in their natural state (white, cream, and pastel), but this time I spent two days painting them with diluted Setacolor paints. Cheryl Sleboda had written an article for Quilting Arts magazine in 2014, about getting the effects of dye with these paints, and I really like her method.

 After heat setting, I cut out shapes for baskets and flower petals.

When possible, I used the already-finished edges of the textiles to provide decorative details.  Where I had to cut into them, the acrylic paint kept the edges from raveling, and it also gave those pieces enough body to stand out dimensionally from the background.  I cut some motifs from old lace pieces, and also made origami-style flowers to "fill" five baskets.

Then I appliqued everything to a quilted black background, which reminds me of an old tole-painted tin.

Vintage Bouquets

 

 

The filet crochet and hem stitching on this vintage cotton napkin make interesting details on a flower basket.

 

These stems were cut from an old handkerchief, and then I added embroidery and flower buttons.

The pink flowers were cut from a damaged commercial doily, and the yellow-orange flower was made from an old collar.

I am very happy with this piece.  Back for our fourth challenge, Improvisation, I also attempted to make a bouquet, with fabric paints on a vintage linen, but I think this current piece is much more successful.

A similar subject, November 2018.

 

Using the paint as a thin wash, instead of in thick blobs, made the fabric much easier to handle and stitch through. It's hard to believe they all started out dull white, even stained.  Now they are the colors of my McCoy pottery collection!

Vintage pottery in soft colors.

And okay, I do not understand this blogger platform and how to publish!!  It tells me my location is in Australia, so I set it to publish at 10 am on Aug. 1, Australian time -- or so I thought!  Instead it was apparently scheduled for Texas time (where I actually live), so now I am publishing way late.  I try a different procedure every quarter and it never works. Sigh.

To see more views, and to read about all the resources I used, you can check out my home blog at textileranger.com.

Getting Shirty

 I mulled over lots of different ideas for this quarter's theme - Vintage - from replicating vintage patterns to trying out the vintage technique of Manx quilting but in the end the (re)discovery of these in my cupboard decided the project for me :)

I bought this set of hand-stitched hexagons several years ago at a Craft and Vintage fair, with no idea of what to do with them. In all honesty, I think that I felt a bit sorry that someone's work had ended up on a stall selling all sorts of odds and ends, so rescued them to leave them hanging about my cupboard for years! 

There is also a rather large bag of loved, but now redundant shirts in my cupboard.

So, I had a rummage through to see if there was anything that might work with the salvaged hexagons and found these. 

There were 15 hexagons in the original set purchased, but I whittled them down to 6 that were compatible in colour and also quilting cotton weight fabric. There were a couple that seemed to be made with heavier furnishing fabric that were very easy to dismiss :)

It was hard to tell exactly when the hexagons were created from the papers used, but it looked like it might have been in the early 1980's or possible even earlier in the late 1970's, so I reckon either of those definitely qualifies them as vintage! The shirts used in the blocks are not nearly so old, but as vintage in fashion can be as little as last season, I reckon they qualify too :)

I went with a traditional layout for this quilt as you can see. I know that this has ended up bigger than our usual art quilts and, indeed, is very far removed from the idea of an art quilt but I really wanted to make something that would give the hexagons a new lease of life. In a further nod to the notion of vintage I wanted to end up with something that was useful as well. 

 After cutting the blocks I was left with these pieces from the shirts so, in true vintage quilting fashion, I pieced them together randomly to create a backing for my hexagon quilt.

I didn't have quite enough shirt fabric left over so supplemented the pieced backing with strips cut from an old pillow case.

The blocks were shadow quilted around the edges and the hexagons were quilted with a zig-zag stitch around the outer and inner rings.

As you can see the quilt is not quite complete as I have not yet added a binding. I have struggled to find another shirt in a colour that will work for the binding so might have to broaden my search :) 

I hope to donate the finished quilt to Project Linus as I think that would be a fitting outcome for these vintage hexagons, don't you? 

Looking forward to seeing the results of my fellow Endeavourers vintage projects.