How to make a Flour-paste crackle effect.

Last year I took an online course with Ineke Berlyn about making Journal Quilts, one piece for every month but with the same theme to explore, the same size and with a new technique every month. My choice of theme was "Urns" and one technique I learnt one month, was to make pattern with crackled flour paste and acrylic paint.

Above is my March JQ with a piece of flour crackled fabric. Size A4

Recipe: 
Prepare a 12" or 20 cm square of light or white cotton to make a piece of fabric with a crackle effect.
Gradually mix 100 grams of strong or ordinary white bread flour with about 150 ml of water with a whisk to make a smooth, medium thick pancake of batter.
Place the white fabric onto a some old newspaper and spread the batter in a thin layer over the fabric, using an old credit card or a squeegee. You can use any kind of flour. Whole wheat flour will give a coarser layer of batter and coarser crackle.
Leave to dry flat.
When totally dry you can crackle the flour crust.
Place it on a drop-cloth of plastic, flour- side up.
Mix a dark acrylic paint or fabric paint with a tiny bit of water.
Thoroughly rub it onto the fabric and into the crackles, use different colors if you like.
Leave it to dry again, overnight. Rinse out the flour and wash.

(This can also be done with a piece of dry soda-soaked cotton fabric and procion dye paste, left to cure and wash out. I have never tested this, but I think it would be wort a trial).

You will end up with an interesting textured piece of fabric.

Above are some of my flour crackled fabrics.
Good Luck with your crackling!

Ann-Mari

(Also this year I am making JQ ́s on-line with Ineke Berlyn. The theme is chosen by her and it is landscapes. It is really very challenging and much inspiering). 

Japan - An Artist's Dream

As many of you already know, I was in Japan in October of last year for 3 weeks and I thought this would be a good opportunity to post a couple of the highlights and details of some of the amazing art/sewing/haberdashery stores I found in Tokyo. What an artist's dream! There are so many visual treats all over Japan, from the modern to the extremely traditional, all an inspiration to me. My husband, Alan, was so very patient with me as I stopped, yet again, to take another burst of photos. I will give you the tip, don't ever have your camera too far away from you at any time while visiting Japan! (By the way, it's not as expensive as you think...it was 20 years ago, but highly affordable now).

The real highlight for me (apart from shopping in Tokyo) was visiting the Itchiku Kubota Kimono Museum on my birthday. He is the creator of some of the most amazing works of art I have ever seen; hand dyeing, stitching and embellishing his kimonos with passion and incredible creativity. Even my hubby was in awe of his work and we spent several hours in the museum.

 

 

Sadly, he passed away in 2003 at the age of 85 but his museum is a lasting reminder of his amazing work. The gardens around the museum are, in themselves, well worth the visit. Photography isn't allowed inside, only of the gardens, but if you are interested to see his work, here is one of many links you can visit: http://www.thekubotacollection.com/en

   

You may think it strange that I did all my shopping in Tokyo, but my hubby always insists on me doing my shopping at the end of a trip so we don't have to lug lots of stuff around. To me, and probably to all of you quilters reading this, this seems quite a ridiculous notion and highly improbable! I did in fact pick up some beautiful pieces of material and other lovely bits and pieces along the way from Osaka, Kyoto, Hiroshima & Mt. Fuji, stuffing them quickly in my handbag before hubby could see! In Tokyo, I found 3 great stores: Okadaya, Sekaido and Tokyu Hands.

Okadaya is the best store for all types of haberdashery and fabric.They have 6 or 7 floors of thread, needles, pins, buttons, ribbon,...I could go on and on. It really is a one-stop shop for us quilters. They also have an annexe filled with another 6 or 7 floors of fabric. I visited the one in Shinjuku which I think is the largest store. I was lucky as they had a 20 - 50% sale on and I could join up for their discount card on the spot.

Tokyu Hands describes itself as a 'creative life store' and it literally sells everything you could possibly imagine for any and all types of creative endeavor. Even hubby liked it and he stayed in the store much longer than his normal 10 minutes! 

The last store was Sekaido, another 6 glorious floors of art supplies, stationery and Japanese paper products. Heaven!

Here are a couple of links to a wonderful, website called 'blackcabbit' run by artist Dionnie Takahashi which revolves around everything Japanese. The first link is for craft stores in Tokyo (map included) and the second is about the Nippori fabric market in Tokyo which I unfortunately didn't get to see...oh well, there is always next time!

http://blackcabbit.wordpress.com/2012/03/10/craft-stores-shinjuku/

http://blackcabbit.wordpress.com/2012/03/02/craft-stores-nippori/

Enjoy your day & sayonara for now,

Amanda

 

If only I had seen this sooner!

I have just returned from a trip to Burma with my sister and brother-in-law who are visiting me in Thailand for three months to escape Canada's very cold winter.

While there we visited this very famous pagoda and I thought it might have been an interesting image for our balance challenge last month.

Janice

Olympic quilt project

Sochi Olympic Games are over and I would like to tell about quilt project of Russian quilters.

These games were the first where quilt was one of the symbols and quilters of Russia and some other countries have decided to use this fact for popularization of quilting.

The idea of the project was announced more than one year before Olympics. Each participant had to make a quilt 24 x 24 inches or 12 x 12 inches dedicated to Olympics and using fabrics from 80s (Moscow Olympic games).

Long before the Olympics this project started to travel along Russia and have been exhibited in Moscow, Saint-Petersburg and other cities.

Saint-Petersburg,  October 2012:

You can watch full project  here

And this is my quilt for this project.

Sunshine and Picnics

Many apologies to all the Latitude Quilters -- I am very late on my "Escape" reveal -- but many thanks to them for understanding my difficulties.  In November I suffered a fractured tailbone, making any sort of art-related work out of the question.  Family difficulties at the start of the year kept me away even longer.

I've finally been able to get back into the studio and, pressed for time, I changed course.  My original idea for "Escape" was very cool, but would have taken more time than I felt appropriate; I didn't want to continue to keep my fellow members waiting.

As a result, I decided to piece a small quilt to remind me of one of my favorite summer "escape" activities: picnics.  Piecing seems to reflect best those days when picnics are a special treat, with a homemade cloth spread out on the lawn.  I love picnics on gentle summer days with puffy clouds, so yellow and white became the color palette.

In my hope to get the quilt done quickly I didn't take as much care as I should have; I pieced one section backwards.  Rather than take the section apart and resew it, I chose to cover up the error.  Now there's grass peeking up along the edge of the quilt, just like it might at a picnic.  (I have to wonder if I was influenced by the bit of green I've spied alongside mounds of melting snow.)  As it turns out, I think the quilt has a bit more charm now.

Memories revised

When we did the Memories challenge, I was travelling in Europe and severely limited in supplies. My memory was of a castle near my house, which we could only glimpse occasionally for a second as we drove past. Now it is open to the public and very easy to see up close.

I have made an overlay on netting, which gives the impression we used to get back in the 1960s. You can lift the overlay to see the castle, as it is only attached at the top. The trees and grasses are on a layer of white bridal tulle, and there is a black layer over that, stitched to a hand-dyed cheesecloth ribbon that by chance I found at a local merchants' mall only 2 days ago.

Oops!

Balance has been a challenge just lately, which is probably why the image that came to mind was one showing what can go wrong when balance is not achieved.
The quilt gave me the opportunity to play with some new materials and use a variety of methods to construct it. It also provided a challenge as "good ideas" went wrong and had to be overcome.

 Materials used: textile paints, inktense pencils, misty fuse, bondaweb, hand dyed and commercial fabrics, and sequins from a very old bag of odds and ends

New month - new challenge

I have been pondering a lot on what to choose as our next theme. There were many suggestions on my pad, but I had to choose one. It is February, and soon Valentines day, and, this may seem rather trite, but our next theme is:

LOVE

Love can be so much more than a Valentin card or present:

- people we love, children, family, our loved ones...
- nature
- film or books
- history
- colour
- fabric and thread
- some beautiful lines and texture
-
-
-
The list can go on and on. Go in yourself, find what you love, and make something beautiful out of it.

Enjoy, Greta

The Three Musicians Unbalanced

For this challenge I decided that I would have a bit of fun playing on the work of Picasso, no less!
The Three Musicians is a painting which delights me in a number of ways including it's wonderful balance of warm and cool colours. In this quilt I attempted to proportion warm and cool in the same manner.
The quilt was made in a very free-form style. I had a wonderful time putting it together all the while learning much about the painting that it is based on.

quilted by Heidi Wulfraat

FRAILTY

I didn't have any idea right after announcing the next theme. As usual I‘ve checked “Wikipedia” for starting point. But nothing have touched my mind and again I postponed this quilt.

As most of us noticed, time runs really fast and one week ago I sat down and started looking for idea. Just one day before my husband came back from “eagle hunting” and brought me a very soft feather. It was laying on the table and caught my eye.

Any kind of balance is so frail and sometimes even such a soft and almost weightless feather can break it.

Is it Enough?

January 2014 Challenge Theme:  "Balance"

When I first thought of the challenge theme, my initial images centered around trying to balance my  everyday pressures of work, play and rest.  But, when we think about our art work, the principles of design play such a central role in the success of our piece, that balance came to mind.  I think the hardest thing when creating art is to know when to stop working on the piece and call it finished.  So, my quilt is called "Is it Enough?"

The fabric is demin.  I've used perle cotton thread for the embroidery stitches, each one being a different stitch and a variety of beads and sequins.

"Is it Enough?"

"Is it Enough?"_Detail

Equilibre

As soon as I read the title of our new theme many ideas came to my mind. As an ENT surgeon I often had patients with balnce disorders. On the other side, I also had to make sure that some persons I saw didn't have balance disorders. Last october I started taking yoga classes where some positions require a good balance. Yoga is also a mean to achieve a better inner balance.
I finally decided to use the tree position from yoga.
The right shape is cotton fabric fused to the background and stitched with satin stitch. The left shape is made of sheer polyester fabric and stitched also with a satin stitch and acts as a shadow to the first shape.
The quilting lines are horizontal as in perfect balancce.
I choose a light blue green background and almost tone in tone fabrics for the shapes to achieve a quiet, peaceful effect. The background is hand-quilted as I found the continious machine quilted lines to be too strong.

commercial hand-dyed cotton fabric
cotton and polyester thread
polyester batting

Sabine

Sur le cou-de-pied

I started by analyzing Balance, and several ideas sprang to life, but one settled. When I was younger, classical ballet was a great part of my life. And the most important part of ballet is balance. In every movement you have to find the balance of your body.
Next, I had to find how to express this, my first thought was to use an image of my old battered shoes hanging on the wall. But they did not express much balance. But this position, "Sur le cou-de-pied", pins the body to the ground when it is in balance.
I decided to go for stenciling this time, and made two stencils out of freezer-paper, one of the feet and one of the shoes. I used acrylic paint with textile medium. Then I added shadow with Paint-sticks, quilted the shoes and filled the background with ballet-terms. I finished it all with some hand-stitching to suggest the floor.

 And some close ups:

Balancing Act

I have always been interested in the functions of the left and right sides of the brain. The left side deals with logic, analysis, sequencing and time. It is the area for speech, mathematics, science and language. It deals with the details of every aspect of life and prefers structure and orderliness.

The right side of the brain deals with emotion and the big picture. It is the area for creativity, intuition, colour, shape and pattern. It has no sense of time or true language but rather uses a visual form of communication. Its connections are more random and spontaneous rather than sequencial. It is not bound by rules or regulations but is more free-wheeling in its processes.

While working on this quilt I tried to use both halves of my brain. The left side was the leader in planning the content of the quilt. It did the research, collected images and information, looked at colour palettes and set up a time line. The right brain was then asked to present a whole, complete image based on this information. Then it was back to the left brain to develop a work sequence, techniques and approaches. The right brain stepped in whenever there was an overall design decision to be made.

Being a very left brain dominant person, it was an interesting experience trying to work in this intuitive way.

In the quilt, the left brain is represented by the background while the right brain is represented by the areas of strong colour. The concept was to have both areas work together to create a sense of balance.

Hand printed and dyed fabric, surface design, appliqué, machine quilted, hand stitched

'Bird Brained Balance'

I had this image in my mind the minute the theme was announced! I set some parameters for myself that the piece would be whimsical, using bright pinks and oranges and fresh (i.e. not overworked).

I spent some time playing with bird forms in my sketchbook and came up with the shape of the birds- I’m sure I have been influenced by children’s’ picture books, having worked as a teacher librarian for many years. John Birmingham comes to mind.

I found a graduated pink and orange graduated fabric in my stash and fused on the birds with shimmery cotton that looked like silk in cool colours. I used some pastel Kaffe Fassett design for the see-saw. Then it was a matter of fusing and thread-sketching the pieces into place. It was finished off with a swirly free-motion quilting pattern.

It would be great to make a little series of these with the brainless birds doing other things with play equipment. I think they would be a nice addition a child’s room or nursery.

Bird Brained Balance

Detail 1

Detail 2

Balance?

When this theme "Balance" was announced I thought there were so many possibilities that it should not be too difficult to find a good idea to interpret the theme, but with many options to tackle, it was not so easy any longer. What to choose? The balance practice at the gym was my first thing to ponder about, building towers with lego and blocks were another one, but at the end I chosen to build something with stones. I like stones and organic forms so make something with stones were a good choice, a bit of a challenge though, to make a balanced pile of stones, perhaps impossible?
As I wanted to give the stones different textures I used a lot of different materials, which are raw appliquéd on top of a background fabric dyed with Procion MX Dye.

Materials used are: cotton fabrics, Evolon, wool, paper, Lutradur, textile paint, foil and silk, metallic and wool threads.

A balanced diet - celery and chocolate

The theme of balance has so many options. My first inspiration was to reproduce a 1930s poster of a beauty poised on a diving board. But even though I found many posters that I liked, I decided that applique was something I have used successfully many times before, so I went with a second choice. I wanted to try something more improvisational and abstract. I often admire Melody Johnson's work and  how she combines saturated colours with mixed piecing and applique, and machine and hand stitching.

I tried not to plan, sketch or be too literal. It was much harder than I imagined, but my trusty portable design wall helped me to add, take away, alter proportions etc. I felt happy when I got to the stage where the piece looked balanced whichever way up it was.

One of my aims was to use hand stitching and/or beading. I have a drawer full of threads and another of beads. I only managed to use a token amount of both. Even though I know of artists using them successfully all the time, for me they suddenly tip a work over into 'tea cosy' craftiness and away from the design elements I am more interested in.

If you look closely you can see the words Cadbury's and Celery stitched  into the quilting. Both foods
are high in antioxidants and therefore nutritionally sound!

November. Escape from grayness.

I could not cook up where or from whom to escape for a long time. I broke down my mind… So finally I decided to forget about this theme for a while. 

But time runs so quickly and suddenly I realized that there is only one week remains till reveal day. I haven’t started to sew yet… I even don’t have any idea… I can not postpone this any more!

So, I was sitting in my sewing room with a cup of coffee, the weather behind the window was hateful: rain, cold, everything is totally grey and black… I hate such weather! Such days in our sunny city usually happen in November so I don’t like this month.  

And in my sewing room was warm, a lot of bright patches around and a cup of coffee. WOW! This is an idea! 

“November. Escape from grayness.”

I have an idea and it’s time to sew! And it takes two days to make!

January 2014 Theme..... "Balance"

When I read everyone's weekly updates especially when deadlines are looming, there are some common themes that come out.  Usually they reference that time is running out and that projects are still unfinished. So, this challenge theme will be "Balance", something we all strive for, but is hard to do.

Enjoy, Katie

If Not Here, Then Where?

The theme of escape can bring many different things to mind, some pleasurable, some fanciful and some more dire. I think that it would be a rare individual who never wished for an escape from one thing or another.

In my quilt I wanted to ask the question “ Escape to where?” Simply put, if I were having a perfect day, where would I be? What would I be doing? Who would I be with?

The answers to these questions would probably vary depending on the situation that I wanted to escape. If it were the cold of winter, I might want to be on a tropical island. If it were from the tedium of everyday life, I might want some place exciting or stimulating. If it were from the noise and chaos of a big city, I might want to be in a tranquil and serene place. The possibilities, like the reasons, are infinite and personal.

In this quilt I have created a map of an imaginary place to represent all of the imaginary places that I might wish to be. My presence is represented by an abstract copper coloured symbol which symbolizes a compass for direction but with a central square which represents me. I am, therefore, the heart of this desire and the chooser of the destination.

The outlined compasses represent some of the possibilities of where I might want to be.