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dyeing and printing large and graphic fabric

As I enjoy creating larger quilts, I need larger pieces of fabric.

This year for Lent I chose to create 16×16″ quilts (bigger than the 12×12″ quilts from last year). My goal was to lean into creating and not worry about finishing anything, but to explore printing expansive fabric. (Good thing … I’m just beginning to finish some of the quilt tops!) Interwoven with this I am using collage to create quilt tops, overprinting and discharging the tops at times.

flour resist layers

I used flour resist over existing fabric and to add texture. A challenge was to get bold enough without getting too bold.

Alternatively it is always useful to have low volume fabrics with just enough texture.

Wanting even bolder designs I’ve been using a paint brush for more graphic circles – a theme I’ve been exploring as part of my “infrastructure” thinking. It is amazing how much of what we take for granted runs through pipes and wires.

Many of these fabrics are still waiting for overprinting to create some additional texture and complexity to the designs.

Overprinting and dye removal together can also add interesting texture. This fabric is showing up in a couple of the quilts I’m working on.

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stuck

Summer has been about being outside, being with family, enjoying Lake Michigan, sailing, camping, and more. Fall has been about new rhythms in my volunteer work. Art quilts – on the back burner!

Partly, this is because I have been enjoying other things. Partly, I’m stuck. I started a series of 15″ quilts using this gorgeous color scheme that I love, but I simply got stuck. Nothing seemed to work right. Here’s where my 15’s are now.

The rhythm of these quilts feels like scratchy static. Love the fabrics. Love the ideas in my head about infrastructure, support, movement, life. Not showing up in my designs.

The fall colors have been beautiful in Michigan and I keep seeing beautiful juxtapositions in my head. With a little more time for sewing, I’ll get back into the swing of it. But, for now, I’m working at getting rid of the static and finding the images.

In the mean time, I planted these fall into winter planters which are working much better than my fiber art.

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lenten twelves #1

One of my goals for myself has been to enjoy my creative side as a gift from God that I should use well. In the season of Lent sometimes Christians talk about fasting from and feasting into. This Lent I’m feasting into creativity, hopefully with one 12″ Lenten reflection quilt every week. My daughter Kelsey is feasting into this same discipline of being creative within a 12″ square. You can see her first lenten twelve here. I picked my palette of fabrics and here is my first reflection.
lenten twelves #1

free motion quilting

stack for 12″ quilts in lent
lenten twelves #1
We are still buried in snow in Michigan, but I braved the 10 degree weather (windchill -6) to shoot this photo. The sunshine was sparkling off the snow.

Note: I don’t have a theme in mind for my Lenten Twelves, partially so I actually create something every week, instead of letting the negative voices in my head stop me! That being said, I decided to use as backgrounds a piece of fabric that I dyed with my mom several years back … it starts in the gentle grays and browns (above), but shades into deeper browns and reds. The base fabric has a winter feel, but this week’s reflection to me has a sense of renewal, hints of a seed, the cycle of growth, and almost the sense of a nest. One of the wonderful things about life is that we are never to old to change and grow. (Growth seems to go in cycles, and I’m finding myself in a spot right now where I am realizing just how much I have learned and grown. God has placed me in a spot where I am uniquely gifted to contribute, and I’m not only thankful but also finding the courage to use my growth.)

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Stash busting quilting

Our family is a sewing family. My grandma was a seamstress and excelled at upholstery. My mom sewed our clothes growing up. Me, well I avoided sewing class. I couldn’t be bothered with finicky sewing. When my daughter Kelsey wanted to learn how to sew, we found a class at the The Quilting Season and Kelsey enjoyed making this quilt. Her grandma became her expert sewing consultant.

Kelsey’s first quilt

Then I took a class in art quilting from Sue Holdaway-Heys and found a sewing niche that I could enjoy. Trekking to various fabric stores with me, my daughters enjoyed picking up their own fat quarters while mom was shopping for fabric. Fast forward ten years and they have impressive fabric stashes, but maybe not quite to their taste as young women. This summer both daughters were home and we started a quilt from their stashes. With the healthy infusion of more low volume fabrics, we sat down over Thanksgiving and I asked everyone to design one 12.5×12.5 block for me. A couple of hours later and some excellent conversation later we had this taped to our dining room wall. Wow!

Thanksgiving weekend designing

 More strips, more blocks, and voila!

the daughters with the finished quilt top
all wrapped up
ready to sandwich
We had a blast putting this together and I can’t wait to get it finished. It is destined for someone special who I’m sure will enjoy all these fabrics that Kelsey and Taylor picked out so long ago.
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Snippets around the world

Kelsey at Lovely and Enough tagged me last week in an around the world blog hop. Several years ago we challenged each other to blog. She prints her own fabric and creates lovely contemporary art quilts incorporating traditional patterns with layers of screen printing and fresh color palettes.  I’m a computer engineer by profession but my blog has become a spot to journal my fiber art. I’m going to be a final leaf on this blog tour (between a conference and busy several months I’ve not been keeping up with my favorite bloggers enough to be able to branch out).


What am I working on?

I enjoy creating art quilts with fabrics I have dyed and printed. I also enjoy creating modern functional quilts and smaller collaged art. In the works? a quilt top for my daughter ready to be quilted, a stash-busting quilt to donate, and collaging.

21 plus quilt with backing ready to sandwich

stash-busting strippy quilt
collages for cards in process

How does my work differ from others of its genre?
My style is a work in progress, but I love to work with rich colors, reflecting the dichotomy of the rich beauty life against the fragility and brokenness so close to the surface.

Why do I create?
Debugging computer code is a fun puzzle to unwrap, but I also revel in the chance to take bits of brightly colored fabric and create a tactile piece of art that both reflects my musings and challenges me. Art to me represents hope in a world too filled with despair.

How does my creative process work?
Scribbled pen sketches help transfer musings to paper, and then in my light-filled studio, I enjoy collaging fabric to represent my designs. I’m an inveterate doodler, so machine stitch painting lets me bring additional texture and color to my collages and art quilts.

stitch-painting on collaged paper

If you are interested in enjoying other creative quilters on this blog hop, you can trace branches back through Lovely and Enough. Blessings on the journey.

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Saying thank you

Hoping to do some relaxing sewing, I opened up several stash drawers to pick out fabric. As I began, I realized I had one last project to finish with some of these fabrics. My daughters attended a great elementary/middle school and when they moved into a new building we designed and quilted a lovely hanging for the wall of the gathering space. Since then we have made small wall-hanging quilts for staff to say thank you at different milestones. I’ve been getting low on the fabrics for these quilts, so I needed to make just a few more!

Here are the five I began to work on — everything is selected and cut out. Squares, hands, backing, sleeves, binding, and labels. And there is NOTHING left of these blue and green fabrics. Barely had enough to finish the backings and bindings! Still not sure about the two on the left, but now I can dive into my stash at will for other projects. (And I found out on Sunday that I only need 2-3 out of these five)

I had several of the quilts that I never finished because they didn’t quite gel. Here you see the versions with a little more color. Cheerful! And yet harder to lay out and get the balance to work. 

I am grateful for the wonderful teachers and staff at Ann Arbor Christian School who provide a wonderful learning community filled with creativity, grace, laughter, dedication, and love! Thank you.

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recapture

As 2014 began, I took a look back, trying to figure out what has made it so hard for me to try to work on larger projects. Its not that I’m not sewing! I’ve enjoyed many projects over the last several years. However, whenever I try to be creative on a larger scale, I’m finding myself challenged.

So, in the spirit of scientific research, lets look back to when things were working well on a small scale.

I took a class on creating art quilts with Sue Holdaway-Heys maybe 10 years ago now. Sue is a great encourager and I began to sew for fun, just for me! My mom and my grandma were both excellent seamstresses and I never really had the urge. My sister took sewing classes, but not me. The precision required for sewing clothing? Not me. (image my terror when my daughters both decided they enjoyed this kind of sewing and kept asking for help … needless to say, many phone calls to grandma were in order when things went awry).

I started doing “quilts of the week” in 2006 to give myself an excuse to try out all sorts of techniques. The beach scene at the lower center was one I did with my mom. Some of these are simply lovely – so why couldn’t I take these concepts are translate them?

One of my daughters said to me over Christmas “Your larger quilts have a lot going on.” She was right. I’m losing an elegant simplicity that I love as I change scale.

So, my challenge this spring is to start with basics. I’m going to focus on dyeing a set of fabrics with designs at a larger scale. Then I’m going to quilt. Simply. With bold swaths of fabric and color. Can’t wait!

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memories of summer

The studio is clean, and I’ve been enjoying creative warm ups with small projects. These are the cards I finished. I can almost hear the swish of Lake Michigan and seagulls squawking “mine, mine” “mine, mine.” Unfortunately the only water in Ann Arbor this weekend was the snow, then sleet, then rain, then flooded roads, then slush…

I’m making progress on Kelsey’s 21st birthday quilt – I’m aiming for the top done in time for her half-birthday. The good news is I didn’t ruin any of the fabric she brought back from Italy and all the plus blocks are done!

 Because we didn’t have quite enough fabric, I was able to include one plus of Kelsey’s hydrangea print from her summer printing class. The big question is “Where to put the hydrangea plus?” What do you think?

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Circles

I’m busy writing a paper, and it feels like my mind is going in circles (my paper editing certainly is!). For a short break I took out my collection of found papers to create a set of circles for making into celtic crosses for tags or cards. Was hoping for a casual sort of joyful – maybe nearly there, but definitely a bit scattered in terms of color theme!

However, the break was excellent.

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Wisdom waiting at the door

I’ve been quilting, but progress has been very slow as I get back into the rhythm of art quilting. I’ve been working on a couple of my wisdom quilts, the first isn’t worth posting because I am still seam-ripping out a bunch of free-motion quilting that just didn’t work. However, I’m starting to enjoy where this quilt it going, so I wanted to share the “work in progress.”

Finally decided to keep the lower portion simple, and just start to quilt. Turned out the be a little too simple, so I got to work with watercolor pastels. Definitely wasn’t where I was going, but I’m going to keep at it, and see where it takes me. Stay tuned.