I was needing a piece to work on by hand so I have started a "slow quilt" piece that I am not quite ready to share yet. I started it after having a conversation with my adult daughter regarding who is the center of the universe. (Our opinions did not match. LOL) This piece is coming along very slowly since it is all done by hand but I am finding it very peaceful to work on. I'll share more as I progress with it.
Here is my inspiration for the week.
1. I don't know why I don't care for meander quilting. I feel even stronger about machine quilting where you push a button and the Longarm cranks out cute little cowboy boots or christmas trees. But I do love just straight lines...ah.... almost straight lines. Jacquie at Tallgrass Prairie Studio gives a nice tutorial on how she quilts "organic" straight line on just a regular sewing machine.
2. Unless you count my attempt at dyeing fabric using bleeding tissue paper, I have not yet made paper fabric. It was on our list for Beth, Rosalita and me last Saturday but we had so much fun with the deconstructed silk screen that we didn't get to the paper fabric. Lana's paper cloth piece gives me some inspiration to try it on my own. She also explains a bit about using copyright free images in making your paper cloth.
3. The Quilt Rat offers a tutorial on graduated painted fabrics. You will need to buy popsicles and a store-made cake in order to have the professional tools she uses in her process (mixing sticks and a throw-away container). LOL I would think you could really use the dilution process for dyes too.
4. I love quilts where the blocks are set on-point. I can only manage setting my blocks on-point by accident or by following someone else's pattern (which I HATE to do). Now I have an easy formula I can apply offered by the editors at Creative Collaboration. There is even a clever jpg of a chart you can capture, enlarge, and print.
5. Last is a tutorial that I just discovered on A Stitch in Dye for "Clamping and dyeing: a basic Itajime primer" I don't know if the tutorial is new or whether I just noticed it for the first time. I got some clamps and plexiglass shapes for Christmas just to try this type of dyeing. I have only used them once and was not happy with the results. I will try it again this weekend using the recipes that Malka uses and see if my results turn out more satisfactorily.
Let me know if you try any of these techniques and what you thought of them.
I tried the clamping & dyeing method using the plexi shapes, but wasn't too thrilled either. But I might try again using a commercially printed fabric and then dyeing a dark color after clamping. There was a cover story in QA magazine about how Malka D. did it, have to find that again. And I totally agree with you on the almost-straight line quilting, I just love how it looks. Although I feel there is a time and place for other designs, even meandering.
ReplyDeleteWe all know the correct answer to "Who is the center of the universe?" is me.
ReplyDeleteWow, thanks for including me here! It is just so much fun to be able to see all the wonderful and inspirational things that are shared by quilt bloggers......now if only we can find the time to try it all
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