Happy Hallowe'en

End of another Season - Final

In the end I made 2 more leaves.
Another maple leaf and a generic leaf.
The 5 seemed to balance the scene......so I stitched them down.
This is self bound as I I knew I couldn't match the colour of the cloth.
On my "Portuguese Blue" wall it truly says Autumn.

And tomorrow is the end of October. The end of a busy and hectic summer.
And my muse?...............he just made dinner! LOL

End of Another Season - 2

Assembling this piece is quite different from my usual approach. I'm not working from a picture per se, so I spend a lot of time simply looking at the piece on my wall.

So what did I add today.

I tried thread painting a maple leaf on the gauze to maintain that open look.
I added an oak.
I added a series of tiny falling leaves and I added another leaf "path".

Doesn't sound like much but it took awhile.
( I also took some time out to carve the pumpkin! )

This was the maple leaf from yesterday. I was very happy with it but I tried a different approach today.

In order to thread paint on the gauze, I had to include netting, so there were more locations for the threads to grab. I stitched this one with gold and orange. It doesn't really show for all the effort. The higher contrast seems to work better.

This little oak adds some weigh to balance the intense maple leaf from yesterday. No thread painting, just veins and edges.

This, too, was from before, but I used a bit of darker cheesecloth in the body of the leaf. I like that effect.

And then I spent the better part of two hours making a few dominate leaves. We can't have this whole thing airy fairy!
Each one of these is very different because they are a sandwich of organza, Cheesecloth and netting. I was able to pick the small bits of colour I wanted to use to give each leaf distinct and at the same time subtle colour.

 I'll probably spent a few days, now auditioning the position of these 3 leaves. I may make more or I may stitch more onto the background. I might even turn it upside down!

However. there are some other things that need my attention. I'm comfortable with this piece now, where it is. But I'll get back to it soon.






Tomorrow there's a family birthday and then.....................

 

End of Another Season

Now is my time to explore pure art, simply creating with no real goal in mind. This is the shoulder season at LeBeausoleil where my sister displays and sells my work. They're closed till after Christmas. Her walls are filled and she even has extras to fill holes in the display when they occur.
I painted and dyed all summer. NOW is the time I get to re-examine what I made and use it.

This painted FQ was almost cut for another use but I'm glad I put it aside.

The colours in this are warm and muted. They are the colours of late Autumn, when the intense reds have vanished in the rain and wind.
Yesterday I played with stamping it very loosely. The deep brown at the top was a paint stick, oil.



The three leaves at the bottom were paint, also applied with a stamp. There but not there. There are a few in gold as well.

At long last I can apply some of that cheesecloth that I used to sop up all the leftover paints and dyes.
I placed this off centered and anchored it with a muted satin stitch.



Then I began cross hatching the whole piece. I usually don't think far enough ahead to the quilting of the background. But this time I did.

It's been awhile since I played on the fabric surface.
Here is a tight satin stitch mimicking the path of a falling leaf.

Organza  leaves appliqued in yellow and gold.

And then back to my cheesecloth.
These last two leaves of the day were hooped to hold the cloth tight while the leaf was sketched over top. Several passes with a FM zigzag were necessary to secure enough of the fibres in this gauzy material before I cut way the excess.



What's next?
There is definitely a call for thread painted leaves, but I don't want them yet.

Little Guild Quilt.

This was a pattern I hadn't quilted for awhile.
Puzzle pieces. Make them big or make them small.
Really fast and Easy.

Finishing The BLUE JAY

Now that the workshop is over I can return to finish the Blue Jay. ( Oct 7 )
This was a commission by a couple who purchased a Cardinal in 2013.
While I finished the Jay a few weeks ago, the hold up was finding a suitable backing. I did source one in the states and then found I could also purchase it here in Cambridge. So now I have lots for future winter Birds!

This was the fabric. Its a little dark and I really don't like the deer in the background, but its better than the others I had auditioned. By fussy cutting I was able to get a spot roughly 9 x 11 to match the size of the cardinal piece.

 The pesky little deer, top and bottom, will be cut off as this is finished. So on to the branches, just as I taught yesterday.

 I used 4 colours of green, the last one being glossy embroidery thread.

The blue jay was lightly "stuffed" and anchored by feathering the edges with the white, blue and black.

I used a white edge on the cardinal, so I added one here to make the binding a compliment.

And finally a black binding.
( See the deer are gone!)

Post Workshop Reflections

We  had a great time!
The day flew by and my friends sewed their little hearts out. The set up was marvelous. We rented space in a local quilt shop and they provided all the hard material, tables, chairs, cutting materials and YES, even COFFEE. They were great. Creative Sisters in Kitchener/Waterloo www.creativesisters.ca

Sew here we are, all working hard, nose to the job.

What a disciplinarian I was. NO ONE was talking....









And what we they working on so hard in the first hour...........exercises!
Practicing those minute movements necessary for the very small. And they did such a marvelous job..............I GRADED their WORK! ( once a teacher always a ..........)

LOL

Straight A Students

( Well I didn't expect any less!)






And of course, what we they all there for????? TREES.
Definitely the most beautiful trees ever stitched by humans!!! My goodness, some of my friends realized they had never really looked at trees. But that's true, I think for most of us and most things. To be a true artist you need to LOOK at things.

But I know you'll think they all did a marvelous job!

So my girls are all set, now to add thread painted trees to their next landscape.

Then we moved on, for the rest of the too short afternoon, to creating a friendly perch for their Chickadee!

Practice came first. ( I'm so mean! )

Then they FINALLY got started........
But alas for this blog installation, they didn't get finished.
So I will have to collect photos over the next little while as these fine sewers add their special touch to, what I know will be, a lovely keepsake of this great day!
We worked from 9 in the morning till after 3 in the afternoon, a day of tough concentration with a terrible taskmaster.
( ps. they all want to do it again! ) LOL

Liberal Majority Celebration

What better than to celebrate with a decadent Banana Apple Walnut Bundt Cake with Butterscotch Drizzle. Yumm

Election Day in Canada - Maple Leaf

Today is our National Election day and I think most of Canada would like to oust our current government. We won't know the results until the wee small hours so for most of us, that will be tomorrow.


To celebrate the occasion I decided to thread paint a Maple Leaf, our beloved symbol of Canada.

Where I had done the birds and bears on a thin poly, I thought I would try once again using the wash away stabilizer. This is a solid piece so I figured it would be fine. And it was.

I used three weights of thread with this, primarily because of colour choice. And as I broke a needle midway, two different sized needles. I started with a quilting needle and switched to a top stitching needle. It really didn't seems to make any difference for this .

After tracing a leaf onto the stabilizer, I stitched in the main veins.
First colour pass was yellow.

Second and third passes were two shades of orange.

The first red.

There is a second red here. They are different brands but appeared to be different shades. However the second doesn't seem to stand out very much at all. Oh well.

Notice on the right side of the leaf, the tip has torn away from the rest of the stabilizer. This was  the only problem I had using it. But the next picture shows how I fixed it.

By running the thread first at the corner, out about half an inch, it prevents the stabilzier from separating from the main hooped portion. This is not intrinsic to the leaf so these little tips can be cut away.

The last red, the third, finished this leaf. Start to finish it took about 2.5 hours.



There is no sheen to this, or any nuance of colour as these were not embroidery threads.
As the stabilizer is really nothing substantial, the whole thing is locked together only by the over lapping of the threads.

A nice bright red thread to anchor it on a background or on a piece of clothing, a few passes through the body of the leaf to secure it and  it will stand up just a well as the commercial patches.

( ps. I voted earlier, last weekend.)