D Days – Deadlines * Drawing * Done

It has been a busy time  here at EPQ central. 

There has been family stuff going on and lots of frantic work being done due to deadlines.  Thank goodness for those DEADLINES – it seems to motivate me to get things DONE.

The first thing done and finished was the art quilt for our exhibition in September.  The theme was ‘Botanica’.

Here is the reveal of my piece “From the Seed”.  Lately I have been fascinated with seeds and seed pods and the first thing that came to mind for botanica was this very subject. 

Readers may recall when Shirley and I experimented with dyeing fabrics from botanicals.  It was loads of fun with some success and some we won’t talk about.  Some of the fabrics I have used in this piece are from those experiments.

As you may know, I have been doing lots of collage both in fabric and paper this year, and after seeing Jane La Fazio’s work, I was inspired to lay down the foundation of the piece with fabric collage and use lots of hand stitching and other techniques to bind the components all together.  Make sure you visit Jane’s site HERE and go to her gallery to see her beautiful fabric collage pieces and other creative works.

The top of my commissioned quilt is DONE.  It is the Ferris Wheel pattern from Karen Griska and it was loads of fun to put together – albeit time consuming.

Now just for the quilting which I hope to achieve over this weekend.

I can DRAW! 

When Lilian and I were playing with painting over the school holidays, I refurbished some of my background pieces in my little repurposed diary art journal.

 

This background was too busy and there seemed to be nowhere to go with it, so I made up my mind that I could draw something really simple and I did.  The pear was drawn with a charcoal pencil and then I filled the background in with gesso.

Another busy background was painted over with this white urn which I splattered with dark grey paint.  If you say you can draw  - YOU CAN (so they say).  My next aim is to draw a face in one of my journals.

I am quite fond of this collage I did some time back incorporating some really cute selvedges given to me by a friend. The dressmaker model clip is from Karen at the Graphics Fairy. 

In the past two weeks we have celebrated a life and a marriage.

Our dear brother in law, Tony,  passed away suddenly and he will be sadly missed by all of his family and friends.  He was just 59 years and 11 months.  Tony was dealt quite a bit of rubbish in his life and he always faced things head on and got on with it and never complained.  A valuable lesson we have learned from him. RIP Tony

My DH’s nephew got married and we celebrated with them this past weekend. We thought we were going to their engagement party and they surprised us and got married.  It was a beautiful day.  Congratulations to Daniel and Elisha – a very handsome couple.

Lilian enjoyed herself at the wedding on the jumping castle. You can see around her mouth where she really enjoyed some orange slushies too  LOL.

Until next time – happy creating – Dianne.

Art Quilt Finish : Art Clean Up : Transfer Techniques

A finish at last!
A couple of months ago I did an online course with Deborah Boschert called “Branches Buds & Blossoms : a botanical fabric collage”.
This is the result and I will put it into our quilting exhibition display in September.  The theme for the display is “Botanica”, so this will fit perfectly.
I have called it “Branching Out” as I find my textile art is branching out into collage a lot lately.  It seems to be something I like doing.
Deborah had some great hints and tips, and it was a very enjoyable exercise.

Just recently I discovered a box marked ‘Art” which has been sitting in the bottom of the linen press for about 15 years unopened since we moved into this house. 

Embarrassingly, most of the stuff inside had to be chucked out as it had deteriorated somewhat.  This prompted a bit of an art clean out.  Looong time ago I was very into folk art painting and did such an awful lot of it.

A lot of the supplies from that era were put to the back of the cupboard and the back of mind until a couple of days ago.  Here is what I discovered ( & embarrassingly – again - I forgot I had some of these things).  I was very excited to find them, anyway. 

Brushes Galore - all shapes and sizes

A tube of oil paint in burnt umber which I used to love using for antiquing and giving the aged look.




An ink nib, a kemper tool (you fill the well with acrylic ink or watered down acrylic paint and draw with it), and my wonderful paint trowel.



The dining ??? table – plenty of paints.
Have you ever tried to transfer a quilting design onto a quilt which has already been layered.  Jeesh, it is no mean feat.  This often happens if the quilting idea comes at a late stage in the artistic development of the piece  LOL.
Firstly I tried using the pattern drawn onto tulle and this was very successful but I used a white pitt pen to transfer with.  By the time I had quilted one lot of scrolls all the other transfers on the fabric had rubbed away.  Grrr.

During a wakeful period in the night (you know how it is) I remembered I had purchased a clover product called Transfer Mesh.  Couldn’t wait to get out of bed next morning to give it a whirl.
I find Clover products very, very good on the whole.  This transfer mesh was quite troublesome though, as the pen and pencil wanted to get stuck in the wee holes, which is probably why they tell you to use blunt pencils.

I used a 2B pencil to draw the lines onto the mesh and then a Karisma pencil to transfer to the fabric (as per instruction on the video).  What I learned, with trial and error, was a light touch is better than going hard at it, and slow and steady is better than fast and impatient!!
If you have one of these sheets, do give it a try, it was the best solution to this awkward problem  You can see a video of how to use it HERE – but be aware the audio is terrible.
Until next time……………Dianne

Welcome

Hello, my name is Dianne, and I welcome you to my new blog :
Eat – Play – Quilt
It is a place where I will share with you all the things which I love and make me happy in life . 
Something which has made me really, really happy over the past couple of months has been travelling around this great, big, wonderful country with some very good friends.

(At the Bungle Bungles)
A  place which has become a favourite  of mine is Middle Lagoon, on the Dampier Peninsular in Western Australia.
Middle Lagoon is maintained and run magnificently by the local indigenous community of that region.  The scenery is awesome.
Photos of Middle Lagoon:



Heaven on Earth
This year we drove right into the Bungle Bungles in Purnululu National Park.  It involves driving through the station of “Mabel Downs” and the road is extremely rocky and rough.  4WD only.
It was the highlight of the trip for me.

Before we went away I worked on 2 small art quilts and finished them off in the past couple of days.
“Turkish Tea”

Turkish Tea was made for the display of ‘Time for Tea & Quilts’ at our annual Toowoomba Quilter’s exhibition in September.  The background is made up of recycled tea bags and some hand painted and stamped fabric.
Self Portrait “Daydreamer”


Our Art quilt group will be having a display of portraits at the exhibtion so I have made this self portrait for the display.
It is a photo image transfer from a digitized photo (done by my good friend Shirley) The clothing is done using fabric scraps sewn between two sheets of solvy.  The photo is a bit ‘wonky’ but, I assure you,  the sides and top and bottom are all the same width
Until next time….