Design and Painting Process

I started this piece with the idea of making a Mexican tree of life quilt. I knew it should be bright, colorful and graphic in style.

For several weeks I carried my sketchbook with me as I went about our home schooling classes and activities and when I had some time I sat and drew as many different animals as I could think of.


Occasionally I would look in books or on the internet to find pictures of animals that I could not draw from memory, like an anteater.

I knew these would be stylized animals so I was not going to worry if things looked exactly like real animals, just close enough to get the idea. After I drew a leaf, pomegranate and tree that I was happy with, I scanned all these images into Photoshop. Using the rubberstamp tool I made several stamps of leafs and pomegranates at various angles that I could stamp into positions around the tree branches, all being exactly the same size. I placed the animals around the tree, sizing them up and down and tilting them into a pleasing composition.

Once this was complete I transferred the file to Adobe Illustrator and sized it up to 60 inches square. Then I printed it out on 8 1/2” x 11” paper and taped the sheets together with clear packing tape. Once it was full scale I made a few adjustments sizing up a couple animals and rotating another to a new position and then I realized I had forgotten to add a snake. How could I forget a snake? I have them in so many of my quilts. I grabbed the tracing paper, laid it over my drawing and drew a snake to fit in an open area in the bottom corner. I then copied this with a Sharpie onto the final drawing. I always use Sharpies on my drawings, because it is so easy to see it through the white fabric.

Next I taped the top edge of my fabric (regular bleached white PDF cotton) to my drawing and LIGHTLY traced the design onto the fabric with a thin lead mechanical pencil.

I use Jaquard and Pebeo Setacolor brand textile paints. I mostly used Jaquard opaque paints for this quilt. These paints do not spread on the fabric if you use them the consistency that they come out of the jar (thick creamy) on cotton fabric. Sometimes as the paint sits and starts to dry in the dish while painting I will add a little water, or moisten my brush but usually no extra water is needed.

I leave my large paper drawing underneath while painting to protect my table and if I want to make any changes or additions to the design it is easy to add it in as I go. I paint straight onto the fabric on the table. The paper sometimes sticks to the painted fabric so if you don't want to occasionally pick paper off the back of your fabric paint on a covered surface. I like to use dry cleaner bags because they are so thin they will not make bumps under the fabric. Painting over a textured surface will show up in the paint.

When it came to painting the black, I used a tiny brush and carefully painted around each animal about a quarter inch, then filled in the background.

My new Ipod played a key role in the making of this quilt. Because of the detail and precision this painting required I knew I needed something to keep my mind active and engaged while I painted endless hairs and dots.

I listened to 7 audio books while painting this quilt. Three of those books totaled 53 hours. Every hour of painting was wonderful.

experiments in trapunto

For the last few years quilts in shows have become more and more heavily quilted. This seems to impress judges. With this quilt I want to do less quilting. (I still want to impress the judges, but this time with painting. I know that may require a small miracle, quilt judges are often not impressed with the skill of a paintbrush).

This small version of Arbol de Vida (16 inches square) was done a couple months ago to try out the painting technique. I was pleased with the results except that the rabbit looked like it needed more quilting. Or needed to be fatter. I do not want to quilt the animals and obsure the painting. I only want to quilt them enough to give the body definition. I think trapunto may solve this problem.

Remember this old thing, this was my experimental sample I made when I was trying to figure out how I wanted to make this quilt. It was the perfect thing to try out some trapunto on. Although this fish is larger than any of my animals on the quilt, it will give me a good idea of what two layers of wool batting will do when it is layered under an animal.

I want the animals to be fat and stuffed on a quilted black background. The two layers of wool batting really puffed up this big fish nicely but then I was worried about what would happen when there were skinny legs and tentacles on an animal as well as a smaller body. So the odd shapes resembling animal parts were my trial for that. It seems that wool flattens down so nicely when it is quilted closely that it will not be a problem.

Painting Done!

This is going to be my next quilt "Arbol de Vida", (tree of life in spanish). I was inspired by those beautiful wood carved painted animals that come from Oaxaca Mexico. This quilt will be aproximately five feet square. it is whole cloth painted (white) cotton.

We interrupt this painting to bring you Pottery

When I lived in Austin TX I spent many years taking pottery classes. I love pottery, wheel throwing and hand building, almost as much as I love to make art quilts.
It was a battle of the art forms for many years. I love them both, but there are not enough hours in a day to do both and still have a life. Finally I had to choose between the two. My love of quilts did come first and I was not going to invest in a kiln so gave up the pottery.



I really liked carving my pots, giving the surface a texture. I realize this is also what I like about quilting. The quilted stitch also can carve out a surface texture in a quilt.

It was during these pottery years that I made my quilt Graven Images. This is a quilt based on the designs I found on gravestones in new England.

I wanted to make a quilt from fabric that looked like it was carved out of stone.

Arm warmers

After 4 starts and stops I have finally made a fingerless glove arm warmer I am happy with. This comes up over Nina's elbow to keep her arm nice and toasty. Now I need to finish the other one in time for her birthday in two weeks.

I have been busy painting my new quilt and coming closer to the end. I think I have about 15-20 more hours of painting to do. As soon as I'm done I will upload lots of pictures.

Sneak Peak

I have started my next big quilt. This one will be five feet square. I have been painting 8-10 hours a day for the last 5 days, half way through my third audio book. Now my schedule is getting a little busier and I am going to have less hours to paint for a while.

I am hesitant to show work in progress for a number of reasons, especially until I get pretty far along with it. I am about a third of the way through the painting, when I get done I will post a picture of the whole piece. I am having a lot of fun with this one so I thought I would share a sneak peak.

Skeletons

The quest for just the right skeleton pattern. My daughters birthday is coming up next month and I am going to make her some fingerless glove arm warmers wih a skeleton design on the hand. Growing up in a warm climate has made it very difficult for her to understand that you wear long sleeve shirts during the winter in Chicago. I did a google search for skeleton knitting patterns and came up with these. The one Nina liked most was from a cute beanie pattern "We call them pirates"

I am kind of winging it on the pattern for the arm warmers and am making them out of an elasticized cotton yarn (wool bothers her). I realized after I knit in the thumb gusset that the placement was not good. It needs to go on the palm side. I assumed sinced your thumb is on the side of your hand that is where the thumb should go on a glove, but it pulls the design off center. So I will rip out and try again.

One more skeleton pattern. This one I tried out by making a sock for my new ipod. I will be listening to The Historian today while I paint.

Felted Hat

I have had a pattern for a felted hat by Fiber Trends for several years. The other day when I was looking at Jeri Riggs blog I saw the felted hats that she had just made and decided I needed to try one myself.
I used Lambs Pride bulky yarn which felted up almost furry. It must be from the mohair in the yarn. I knit in some contrasting yarn for the band. Two sport weight wools, one olive and one multicolored. This is the before picture. Pen is for a sense of scale.I was amazed at how quickly it felted up and shaped into a recognizable hat, less than a full wash cycle.