A Tapestry turned into a Quilt

Last fall, when I went to New Mexico to learn tapestry weaving, I drew a very complex pattern. Then when I got home, I decided that I had enough hobbies, and decided not to follow up on the tapestry weaving. But I kept looking at that picture that I had drawn, and decided that it would make a great quilt.

So I ordered almost all of Jennifer Sampou’s sky fabric, and turned it into this quilt. After I did all the circles, I decided that I would put outlines of leaves in the square spaces. Here is the quilt:

And here are a few close-ups:

This was a fun quilt to work on. I decided that I would kantha stitch all the backgrounds, using thread that was similar to the color of the fabric.

Two More Rugs

I finished two rugs in two days. Of course, one of them was almost finished. I just had to put the finishing touches in the cave. I started the other one at the beginning of February.  Anyway, I am going to take a little break from rug hooking, since I am coughing so much. Its embarrassing, especially since everybody is thinking about the coronavirus. I already went to the doctor to check it out. My lungs are fine. I’m just allergic to the wool dust.

Anyway, here are the rugs:

My advanced quilted embroidery class will be held at The Cotton Patch in Lafayette on May 8 and 9. See previous entry to see the quilts I will be teaching. 

A New Class

Hopefully I will be teaching a new class at the Cotton Patch in Lafayette. Its Advanced Embroidered Quilting, and I am offering four different styles of quilting. Here are the four types of embroidered quilting I am offering to teach:

I’ll let you know when the classes will be as soon as I know. All of these projects were so much fun to do. Hopefully, other people will think the same thing!

A New Art Form?

Recently I took a trip to New Mexico to take tapestry weaving lessons. I found this woman on the internet a few years ago and loved her work. So I decided that I would go to learn how to do tapestry weaving. She teaches one on one.

Okay, I’m not going to lie about it. It was HARD!! This little sampler looks so simple, but on the diagonals, I had to have the teacher check me on EVERY line. I’m still thinking about whether or not I want to continue. On the same trip, my brother and sister-in-law came over from the Texas panhandle, and we had a few days of fun just exploring the town and visiting.

Today I just finished another rug “The Parable of the Lost Sheep.” I am enjoying doing these small rugs. I have four parables and about 10 of Jesus’ ministry. So far I’ve done three. There are a few things I want to fix on the rug (the hat on the shepherd’s head is too similar to the background color.) And of course it needs to be steamed and finished.

I looked up Sycamore-Fig trees on the internet (that’s what they are called in the Bible) and found some interesting trees to put in my rug. Interestingly, the figs on these trees are golden and grow everywhere–right out of the trunks. But the golden color did not work because it was too similar to the background color, so I made them American purple figs 🙂

And I don’t think I showed this yet. I finished this small quilted embroidery. It was very fun to do. And time consuming.

And one last thing. I entered three rugs into Quilting in the Garden, and I was very pleased with where my big PEACE rug was placed. My little Kantha quilt was in the front but the wind was whipping the quilts around so much I didn’t even try to get a picture of it.

Its All About Rug Hooking

This time of year, everything switches from quilting to rug hooking. I love going to Cambria Pines Rug Camp! So I work hard to finish my current rug so I can enter it in the rug show. And then, of course, I have to draw my new pattern so I will be ready to work once I get there. My new rug is “the Parable of the Seeds” from the Bible. I had fun drawing it, and I looked up “Israeli birds” and found these brilliant green, black and white birds. I worked on all the different areas of the rug while at camp, and got this much accomplished.

This is the first time I’ve come back from camp and worked so much on a rug. This is just a fun one to work on. For those small green leaves on the mustard seed flowers, I cut each one at a taper to get more of a leaf shape.

Here are the rugs I shared in the rug show:

Jesus Feeding the 5000:

And now, I’m afraid, its back to quilting. (haha, not that I mind it at all!) I will be teaching my Quilted Embroidery class at The Cotton Patch in Lafayette on Saturday, June 29. So its off to prepare kits and prep some new demo projects for that class today.

 

New and Old Things

Let’s start with the old. Do you even remember when I started this project? I don’t. But the other day I was cleaning out my closet and I remembered this very large project. I was going to make panels with front and back, and then do that “quilt as you go thing” to put them all together into a very big quilt. The front has 7 inch squares with a one inch border, and my idea was to embroider in all the borders. So I got one out and started embroidering on it again. It takes a long time to embroider each border. So I went back into the closet to see how many panels I had left to do. When I finish this panel, there will be four panels done. AND EIGHT PANELS LEFT TO GO! I was kind of complaining about this to my BF, and she said, why not just put the four panels together into a smaller quilt? Brilliant!! There are other things I’d rather be embroidering.

I finished this next quilt in time for the Intersection of Faith and Arts Conference. It was actually a lot of work to piece together the background, and to embroider all that writing on it. I had thought about doing a series of these, with Biblical blocks in the background, and important (to me) verses on the front. But I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to do that again. Well, I had three people comment that they would like to buy this quilt, and so that encouraged me to make the next one. Its always nice to hear that people appreciate your work. (This verse is Matt. 11:28-29 from Eugene Peterson’s The Message.)

I really like making these improv cris-cross blocks. No ruler or rotary cutter necessary! So I made a bunch of samples in case anyone wanted me to teach this. Very fun to make. (And yes, I did square them up at the end so I could easily put borders on them.)

And lastly, I am always so very happy when I get a picture from a workshop participant telling me that she finished her class project! Because, to be honest, I seldom finish workshop projects. I especially love the colorful border that she put on this project. Thank you so much for sharing!

I’m back in the studio finally. I spent half a day cleaning up (yes, still more needs to be done but there’s at least room to move around in there!)

A Finish and a Flub

Remember that very sparkly piece I was working on? The fabric from Joann’s? Well, yes, I finally finished it, and I decided to wash it because the darn black attracts so much lint and dog hair. I should have just worked on brushing that dog hair off. Because, the GOLD washed away in the washing machine!!!

Here’s one close-up. You can see where the steel color is showing through.

There were a few places, like this one, where the gold stayed on better. Anyway, that was a lot of work for all the gold to wash off!

I started this piece a few weeks before Christmas. I saw something like it on the screen at church. French knots, I thought! So all those dots in the sky are french knots. I used quite a few different colored pale threads in 4 sizes–perle cotton size 3, 5, 8, and 12. What I really liked was that I had a dark blue for the sky, and then I also had a piece of dark blue with a lot of little squares on it, which would work for the town. As I neared the end, I decided that I wanted to include the shepherds and  sheep and the angel with her words of good tidings! I used some wool thread that I had bought recently to outline the town and the angel and the shepherds.

To be fair, I googled “french knot sheep” and of course, there were plenty of examples! I was trying to make them too complicated.

The back was a mess, since I went all the way through to quilt the french knots down. So I put a second back on, and quilted a bit to stabilize the whole thing (four layers.) It makes it quite sturdy. I do like this piece a lot.

I forgot to mention that I was teaching Quilted Embroidery again at The Cotton Patch this past Saturday. It was such a nice class of women. They all seemed to enjoy working on their sample piece to learn some simple embroidery stitches. It was a lot of driving in the rain, but I do like driving over to Lafayette–it takes me through the Delta, and it is a very pretty drive.

Christmas is a Time to Finish Things!

I notice I have this pattern at Christmas. I like to finish things. So far I have knit four scarves from my handspun yarn for gifts. Not just knit them, but I blocked them too! And then I decided I had delayed finishing this Christmas quilt for too long. so I just went out there and finished the quilting. I put a binding on it, and then it needed a lot of blocking because of the embroidery in the middle. I’m not 100% sure that I accomplished what I was trying to achieve with this quilt.

If you remember, the embroidery was done with the Cottage Threads perle cotton from Australia.

Here are some close-ups:

The lettering:

Embroidered motifs:

I added a little embroidery to the trees and “rocks”:

And, I finished my Kantha blanket! The running stitches are about 1/2 inch apart. I also put two lines of turquoise thread 1/4 inch apart about every six inches, just to add some interest. The rest of the quilt was stitched with some variegated silk thread that I bought at a weaver’s convention!

Oh, and most importantly, at Christmas time I always feel pressured to try to finish my rug that I started this past February. I would like to share it FINISHED when I go to my rug hooking thing this February, but I’m afraid there is a lot that is still unfinished. I wrote “make a cow” for three or four weeks on my weekly to-do list. Somehow I get afraid of rug hooking when I don’t do it consistently. But finally, I DID make a cow :))

I also hooked the entire hillside behind her. It took several mornings to finish that.

If I don’t write again before Christmas, I hope everyone has a very merry and blessed Christmas.

 

Black and Batting

Black fabric and batting. These two things do not belong together. They shouldn’t even be in the same room! And I’m not even going to talk about black fabric and TWO PUGS  THAT NEVER STOP SHEDDING. Anyway, for some reason I seem drawn to black recently, and its been a trial. I do have a large stockpile of those sticky rollers to remove lint from black fabric, and I’ve gone through quite a few of them in the past month or so.

Anyway, here’s what I did with that “garage photo” that I liked so much.  (scroll down for the description of the garage photo) First of all, I realized after the fact that I liked mine upside down from what the original artist did. Second of all, I gathered a nice collection of neutral threads and I planned to embroider all the marks and scars on the original garage doors. I kept staring at the picture, and that did not sound very fun to me at all. So I drew a little sketch filling it up with circles, and that appealed to me (of course.) The colors of the cloth were so bright that the neutral threads looked great on them. It was hard for me to stick with the neutral threads through the whole thing. And I did try to explore as many ways of embroidering circles as I could think of. Here’s the end result.

Then, I found this very sparkly gold fabric at Joann’s. I had seen it several times but passed it up because what was I going to do with it? Then, on my last visit, I thought, hey, what if I embroidered on it? So then I drew another sketch and made a grid. I put a few white squares in my sketch, but when I went looking for fabric, I found this bird print that I really like, so that’s what I included in the grid. I’m taking a trip soon, so this will be my travel project. I’m pretty excited about it.

Choosing the thread colors is the best part of any project:

I am going to Ohio for Sauder Village Rug Week. My rug, “He Holds All Creation Together” was chosen to be one of the Celebration rugs. I have wanted to go to Sauder for several years, so this was as good an excuse as any to go. Maybe when I come back I’ll get back to my rug hooking projects!

Teaching and Catching Up

I will be teaching Quilted Embroidery in a couple of places in the next few weeks. I will be teaching a 3 hour Intro to Quilted Embroidery at Oak Hills Church (scroll down for Art Immersion Week) on Thursday July 26. And I will be teaching a 6 hour class at The Cotton Patch on Saturday August 4, also on Quilted Embroidery.

I got an email from one of my students in a previous class. I am always thrilled to see that some students enjoyed the class and finish their project! Jackie got creative and added a small panel to the bottom of her piece so it would fit in her wire frame. I love it!

Jackie’s work:

And catching up on what I’ve been working on–I finished this kantha blanket. I used all 12 gauge perle cotton (and a few Sulky blendables in 12 weight) to embroider this blanket.

I went to Convergence (Spinners and Weavers Guild) in Reno last weekend. I can’t stop spinning some of the fiber I got there!

And finally, sometimes things don’t work out quite the way you want them to. This is the word PEACE on my big PEACE quilt. Those letters are about 8-10 inches high. It took a long time to embroider the uprights on each letter. But because I used white thread on white fabric to outline the letters, it is basically unreadable. I will use the ecru thread to outline stitch along the white thread. I do mean for the writing on this quilt to be subtle. But I still want it to be readable 🙂

There are 12 verses scattered around this quilt, all about PEACE. I have started the quilting, and hope to finish it in the next month or so.

More is happening here in the woods, but that will have to wait for another post!