Eukalyptus Leaves Quilt - WALK OVER!

This time I have not been able to make the 4:th Eucalyptus Leaves Quilt. I really have tried hard and a lot, but all my ideas and samples were not good enough, so I have to make a "walk over" this time.
The other day I got round to reading this phrase "The iterative process - reworking, reworking and reworking again - learning something more each time, giving innovations a chance to emerge - and through failures, building resilience". I hope to be able to come back with my final Leaves Quilt another day! Instead of pushing myself to make the quilt in time I got hooked on something else. In October I viseted Ancient Messene in Peloponnesos in Greece.

(Wikepedia)
Most of the area of Ancient Messene contains the ruins of the large classical city-state of Messene refounded by Epaminondas in 369 BC. This Messene, is today´s Ancient Messene. Currently the substantial ruins are a major historical attraction. Much of it has been archaeologically excavated and partly restored or preserved for study and public viewing, as well as for various events. The site was never totally abandoned"

Below are some photos from this beautiful place.

 The Olympic Stadion. All seats are numbered and still visabel after thousands of years.

The theatre above is even used today playing old Greek Dramas and below is a detail from the ancient watering system.

Here on one of the stones at the old theatre I found some interesting patterns which I thought was absolutely lovely. 

I  loaded it up on my computer and printed it out on a  piece of white cotton and started to embroider on it. Lots of french knots, beads and buttenhole rings.

The rings  were made  by winding the thread several times  around one, two or three fingers in an anticlockwise direction and then work  buttonhole stitches with a tapestry needle  left to right (if you are right-handed) over the threads around the thread ring. This idea I got from the book "Stitch and Structure. Design Technique in two - and three-dimensional textiles"  by Jean Draper.

 I have also used rusted fabric to make the pebbles/stones - Timtex on the back as a stiffener, batting on top of it and over this the rusted fabric.  This technique is described in June/July 2014, Quilting Arts Magazine.

Close ups

Leaves á la Art Deco

The theme I have chosen for this year´s 4 quilts, is leaves. The challenge this time was Art Deco. After some research about Art Deco I have tried to interpret this challenge by using strong colors and stained-glass, which resulted in these 3 geometric, colorful, abstract, eucalyptus leaves and its seeds on a background with rectangular forms surrounded with black strips.

The black parts  in the leaves are kunin felt - under the circles, as well as under the red square shapes -   and black cotton fabrics.

The black lines in the background are bias strips. The background is pieced and the leaves are appliquéd as well as raw edge appliquéd. The piece is machine quilted and some hand quilting is made on the light grey background pieces to obtain some texture.

Size: 15 x 20 inches

Green Leaves

The theme for this quilt was GREEN. As an inspiration I have used a photo of mine with a foliage of Eucalyptus leaves. A section of the photo that I thought had some interest was cropped and enlarged which helped to simplify it. As a background a grey satin cotton fabric was chosen in order to make the green leaves and the magenta, purple and violet leaves veins  stand out.
The quilt is pieced and the leaves are raw-edge machine appliquéd and machine quilted. The perimeters of the leaves are hand stitched with gold thread and chain stitches and the background are hand quilted with seed stitches and gold threads in a kind of Kantha stitches.

Size 15 x 20 inches

Above are some close ups.

In order to get some differences in the texture I have machine quilted the leaves in different ways.

Masterclass for quiltmakers, an online class with Elizabeth Barton

I have admired Elizabeth Barton and her quilts for many years. I have attended two of her classes at the former Quilt University and when her books "Inspired to design. Seven Steps to Successful Art Quilts" and "Visual Guide to WORKING IN A SERIES"  were published, I was not late to buy them.

When she announced that she was going to start an online Master class for Art Quilters, I immediately signed up.

The class started in January this year and now in December it is going to finish. 

Every month there was a new exercise to work with.

For example one exercise was about "Lost and Found edges". This was about to create the illusion of a place or a person, an object etc. in a limited two dimensional space. One of the most magical illusions is that of lost edges. It is magical really!

 The planning for the work was the same for every month.

1 to the 10th of the month we were asked to make a lot of sketches and then choose the 3 best.

11th  to the 20th of the month.

When Elizabeth had received all the designs she put them together into a blog with a critique for each design. She numbered them and did not use our names, so we were just Student 1, Student 2 etc. So we could feel free to be wild.

We had then ten days to block out the design we had chosen i.e. cut out the pieces in fabric and pin them together so that she clearly could see how the piece looked, but that alterations were possible.

When she had received the images she put them on a blog with critique for each one. No names.

21st to the last day of the month.

The finished quilts were published on the blog with a short evaluation, basically her overall impression and some things for everyone of us to ponder for the next piece, which was published on the first of the next month, on her blog, where she described the next exercise.

Elizabeth writes "Don´t worry if you can´t manage to do this (or any other exercise) - as long as most of you do it, we´ll have plenty of designs to look at and critique.

Reading her critiques for all the students sketches, block outs and the finished quilts have been very instructive and useful. There were lots of valuable things to learn about how to think when you make a design.

Below are two of my sketches inspired by the Swedish painter Philip von Schantz (I just made two sketches this month)

After some critique from Elizabeth I made a lot of changes and below you can se my blocked out design after Elizabeth´s valuable and honest critique.

                                         The blocked out design where you can see how the piece looked and  
                                         alterations were possible.

                                   

                                         The finished piece.

                                          Close up

The background fabric is sunprinted with different paper shapes of bottles, which acts as masks, then outlined with machine stitching with a variegated thread. On top of the background fabric a piece of white organza  is placed. 

The foreground shapes of bottles are made of organza, schrims and Lutradur  backed with fusible web and fused on top of of the two layers (background sunprinted fabric and the layer of organza). Some of the bottle shapes are then mashine quilted round their perimeter. 

Measurement 16 x 10,5 inch

This was a fabulous class and I´ve come away from it feeling much more capable and confident in my work. 

The Master Class blog is private but Elizabeth has a public blog and a website if you wish to check her out further.

http://elizabethbarton.blogspot.com

http://www.elizabethbarton.com/

Scandinavian Runes & Greek Letters

During my 2 years as a member of this group, this theme "Lettering" was the most challenging for me, even if I earlier had made 2 quilts containing letters, Every Day and Marks.

The idea of letting the Scandinavian runes and the Greek letters come together in a quilt come to me
as I often pass a couple of  rune stones when out walking in Sweden (Mariefred) and in Greece (Messinia) where I often pass a small "Monument" with Greek text reminding of the war.

For the Greek theme I chose to use different shapes of urns and fig leaves together with Greek lettering.

For the Scandinavian runes I just embroidered letters by hand saying, Latitude Quilts November Two Thousand Fourteen and after that 3 extra letters (X,Y and M) just in order to fill up the piece.

The Greek background fabric is a Procion dyed linen whole cloth stamped and stenciled with gold and white textile colors, discharged paste and oil paint sticks. The urns and fig leaves are machine embroidered with Metallic and Rayon threads.

The runes are hand embroidered on a piece of sturdy cotton fabric painted with a gold acrylic paint.

The main colors of blue, white and gold was chosen with the colors of the Swedish and Greek flags in mind, even if they do not exactly correspond to the true blue and yellow colors of the Swedish flag and the blue color of the Greek flag.

ROOTS

ROOTS

For the July theme "Under the surface" I decided to look under the earth crust. I think that roots of trees and plants many times have very interesting forms and textures, so my choice to interpret the theme 

was roots.

As in my May quilt, Spaced Bottles, I have painted a white background cotton fabric with Dye-na-Flow, a thin flowing acrylic paint. Putting templates cut from newspapers with the shapes of roots on top of it when still wet and after that placing the whole thing out in the sun to dry. The shapes that developed into a lighter value after that the fabric has dried, were then machine quilted around the perimeter. The same newspaper templates were used when cutting the fabric pieces. The fabric "root pieces" are raw edged appliquéd. In order to get some stability among the curvy roots, there where some lines added. The piece is framed with a narrow binding.