And Now for Something Completely Different

This lady is not quilted yet.  She is a Wild and Crazy Experiment.  The only fabric is the background black fabric.  Her face and body and hair are completely made of paper napkins.

You may ask WHY would anyone to such a thing.  Well, I saw something on Joggles.com about using art paper napkins as collage material.  You split the napkin into three layers and just use the top layer and matte medium to attach it to paper.  It looked interesting and I wondered if I could apply the same concept to napkins and use them with fusible web instead of matte medium.

I just happened to have four patterns of paper napkins that I purchased (from Joggles) 4 or 5 years ago.  This is a photo of those napkins.

Since they have a variety of light and dark patterns I figured I would just give it a try.  After all what did I have to lose?  They were just paper napkins.

Well it was really hard.  First of all you have to be careful to not apply TOO much heat with the iron or you will singe the napkin.  And adding paint to accent the shadows and highlights is not reasonable with napkins like it is with fabric.

But - I like her so far.  There is still work to be done.  For instance how can I add shadows under her chin to make her neck recede visually?  And should I use black thread to add stitching accents TO her face or will that risk degrading the napkins with the needle holes.  I do need to sew along the outside border of her face..... but not real sure after that.

Stay tuned!!!

Using Collage to Inspire a Quilt

This quilt is entirely different from my other "portrait" quilts.  It shows a face surrounded by random shapes.  It is inspired by a collage that I did maybe 5 years ago.  Just fiddling around with paper and such.  It has lived on my Inspiration Wall for years.  Here is a photo of my current Inspiration Wall.  See if you can find the one that inspired this quilt.

Anyway - It was a challenge (which of course I love!) to make this because I didn't want to use my normal design technique for the face.  Instead of using many pieces of fabric to highlight the dark and light areas, I just used two areas of the same fabric and sliced the face down the middle.  But I think the simplicity works.

Here are some close ups of the detail work.....

Her eyes with the hand stitching and beads











The pointy things showing the gorgeous fabric with all those little circles and hand stitching and beads









The details below her face - I didn't even know that I had these lovely beads.  I guess I need to look at my stash of beads more often.

I think the power of this quilt is that the face isn't just sitting in the middle of the quilt doing nothing but is surrounded (and sort of hugged) by other objects.  I need to experiment with this idea.

The word Dream is cut with the Scan 'n Cut but it was before I knew some extra tricks to make it both easier and more secure and less frayed.  Always learning new stuff!

Cutting Tiny Circles and Words

So what other shapes do I play with for inspiration?
Furniture catalog shapes.  Uh huh.  I look through the catalogs and find interesting shapes and then try to form them into an interesting character.

This guy is a lot bigger.  And yes he is from a bunch of furniture shapes.  AND (this is really exciting) I used my Scan 'n Cut to cut ALL those tiny little circles on the left.

If you have ever tried to cut tiny circles (or even larger ones) from fabric - well you know how time-consuming and difficult it is.





Here is a picture showing the circles and the beads that are around his antenna.













But this is the really (!!!) exciting part.  Check out these letters.  Yup.  Scan 'n Cut!  Perfect.  No frayed edges.  Marvelous.

Where Do Those Ideas Come From???

The last two quilts that I posted were inspired by little critters that I drew based on a coloring book called Ernst Haeckel, Art Forms in Nature.  The company that sells it is Pomegranate.  The drawings in the book are "exquisitely rendered depictions of flora and fauna" made between 1899 and 1904.
Isn't that awesome?


Here are a couple of photos of pages from the book.

Every one of the drawings are beautiful and there are hundreds of them.  I have no interest in coloring any of them.

BUT I could see the possibility of using the SHAPES and putting them together to make little critters.  And it worked.  I ended up with little guys and gals in shapes that I NEVER would have thought of myself.

So how would a person go about turning these beautiful drawings into little critters?   Here is an example of the original shapes from the book and the critter those two shapes inspired.








And here are some of the other little critters who were created.  I had SO MUCH fun not only drawing them, but then using watercolors to paint them.  I am exploring the idea of making a story book using them as the characters.

The two little guys in the middle are based on the exact same shape.  But they have very different personalities.  Maybe they are brothers.....

 Now go back (or forward?) to the other post and see if you can see which drawings became a quilt.  You didn't know I would give you work did you???

New Way to Design Little Critters

I'm always looking for new ways to design imaginative little critters.  Partly to just stretch my brain.

But also to develop new ways to teach folks to be creative.  I am convinced that all people are creative - but I am very aware of the fear of a plain white page and the command to "Be Creative".

I teach several design techniques and I think this one may work its way into a class.  We'll see.

This quilt is the first of the series.  No name yet.  I'll post a photo of the drawings that inspired this group in just a bit.

This is the second of this group.  The tentative name is "Diversity is Strength".  I was thinking about how scared people are of other people who just look (or think or talk) in a different way.
And I figured my little critters might feel the same way - check out the look they are giving each other!

This is a detail showing wonderful sparkly material that can be cut with my Scan 'n Cut.
Yup.  I got it and am learning how to use it for MY purposes.  This sparkly stuff fuses so well that I don't have to sew it down at all.

And here is another detail.  I have always been great inventing little critters but positively lousy at inventing flowers.  I am working on it.  I like these.

Maybe I should make a garden quilt!!!

Already MAY!

It has been a busy year already.  But I am having a lot of fun just playing around with New Ideas.

One idea is looking at some collage journal pages that I did a few years ago and interpreting them in fabric.  Each one of the quilts is small of course - around 12 x 15 inches.  I am calling them "Fast and Furious Quilts".

Although they aren't all that fast..... because I need to find the perfect fabric for each of the small areas in the quilt - to balance and enhance the design.  If you are reading this blog, you know what I mean!

So here are some examples ---

Sparkle is pretty fun.  I am fond of her eyes. 

I am not fond of the letters in the word.  It is incredibly hard to cut out small letters like that and fusing them.  This is the quilt that convinced me to get a Scan 'n Cut machine to do precision cutting.  More on that later.

WILD was the next one in the series.  The letters in this word are done with thread.  Better but still not what I want.

But I like the overall look.  I added a bunch of Fancy Stitches that just sit there on my machine (a Bernina) itching to be used .  And they really added a lot of detail. 

And this is Adventure.  Live Life Out Loud.

For this one I printed the words on cardstock and then fused it right to the fabric.

Lots of fancy stitching again.

Some interesting tidbits for you to check out and think about..... I used a black background on all of these quilts.  Mostly because I like the way the colors stand out against the dark background. 

But the other reason is that the common color of background gives the group a cohesive look if they are displayed together.  Do you agree?