Tuesday's Tiles and Tiles and Tiles

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Quilter's Tile - Dragons and Frogs

8" x 32"

©2011 - Sharon V. Rotz

Hi, Sharon here. I am still enjoying making my Quilter's Tiles and thought I would post one of my favorites here today.

Sometimes you can become so engrossed in a project, that you find it difficult to stop. Time flies by and you just keep sewing on and on.

I had so much fun making this Quilter's Tile that it became two, then three, then four. The fabrics were scraps that I had left from making a quilt for my granddaughter. As I stitched away, I was thinking of her and the fun we always have together. I enjoy working with bright and colorful fabrics and did a bit of improvisational piecing to combine the different sizes and shapes of my scraps.

Since I now had four tiles, I chose to join them into a one long wall hanging and when I look up from my sewing machine I think of Emily. 

The tiles were joined with a row of black beads hand stitched between each tile.

You can stop by my blog for more Quilter's Tiles.

Who Inspires Your Creativity?

"New Dawn" by Carol Bryer Fallert 2000

Picture published with permission from the artist.

When I was a new to quilting my mother sent me an e-mail that featured Caryl Bryer Fallert's quilt "New Dawn".  I had never seen anything like Caryl's work.  Her use of vibrant color, mixtures of fabrics types, intricate quilting and hand dyed fabrics spoke to me on so many levels.  I spent hours exploring her website.  I knew that I had to learn more. 

I had a chance to visit her Bryerpatch Studio in Paducah during the AQS show in 2009.  She had many of her quilts on display.  It was such a treat to see her work up close.  Her newest work that year was a quilt called "On The Wings of a Dream".  The quilting and workmanship on this piece is exquisite.  I love the way she blends warm and cool colors in this quilt to add a sense of dimension.  The images seem to be flying off the quilt.

  

 I credit Caryl's work with giving me permission to explore my own creativity. I am pretty sure that she (and Ricky Tims) are responsible for spurring my love of fabric dyeing too.  

Who inspires you?  I encourage you to write a post about where you find your inspiration. 

Have a wonderful weekend!  Chris

P.S. Thank you Caryl for letting me share your work.

(Please remember to ask permission from the artist when using an image of their work.)

O - Water Lilies

22" x 32"

©2012 Sharon V. Rotz

You are invited to an exhibition of floral inspired art with live orchids in bloom. 

Winter's Garden

at the Riverfront Arts Center

1200 Crosby Ave.

Stevens Point, WI

January 20 - February 19, 2010

I am pleased that my art quilt "O- Water Lilies" will be part of this beautiful juried exhibit of art and flowers. You have been watching the progress of the background of this piece and now you can see the finished quilt.

(More details on making this quilt can be seen on my blog.) http://sharonrotz.blogspot.com/2012/01/winters-garden.html

Trout fishing in America - freestyle Friday

Rainbow trout in the weeds

15" x 17"

$45.00

Go to my etsy shop here

Yes, the elusive rainbow trout. One of the most beautiful fresh water fish there is, sought after by anglers far and wide and also very delicious especially when fresh from the stream. 

The fish is put together first, fused together using parchment paper over my pattern for placement. The fabrics are important for the fish, batiks with dots make it more realistic. Had to buy more fabric, darn :-)

The weeds are made on their own separately and then seen on later so you can twist, turn and bend them.

I took pictures along the process road, so I made a downloadable PDF pattern and tutorial for this quilt and put it up for sale in my etsy shop for only 5 bucks if anyone wants to try it. The fish pattern pieces are already reversed for you so all you have to do is print and play:-) there is also a detailed tutorial. The link for the pattern is here.

Happy Quilting!

Tuesday's Tile

Quilter's Tile - "Looking at a New Age"

8" x 8"

©2012 - Sharon V. Rotz

Some Quilter's Tiles happen quickly. An idea may come and I jump on it and it is finished before I know it. Other Quilter's Tiles are the product of several adventures with different techniques.

The background of this tile was painted with Dye-Na-Flow paints some time ago. Later, I bought some Lumiere Metallic paints and another bit was added.

The borders are added using Kaufman Radiance silk fabric. They have a wonderful reflective quality that adds highlights to your quilt. The fabric blended beautifully with the shine of the metallic paint. 

I especially liked the contrast of the olive borders with the hand-dyed turquoise (lovely fabric dyed by Frieda Anderson). 

I machine quilted some areas of the quilt and then had quiet moments while I relaxed and added hand embroidery stitches. Love making those cute little french knots.

Not all finished in a flash, but a slow process as I meandered from technique to technique. 

Creating a background

Hi, Sharon here.

I was digging in my stash looking for a blue fabric to use for a background of a new quilt. I came upon these pieces that I had cut out for a double wedding ring quilt. The approximately 2" pieces were all cut on a curve ready to be stitched into the wedding ring arcs. Since I no longer feel the desire to make a double wedding ring quilt, I put my imagination to work to find a new use for the pieces. Was it a wise idea to re-cut them all or could I find a way to use them as they were?

I ended up stitching them together as they were, alternating the wide and narrow ends and sewing them together into rows. This seemed to work although the edges of the rows did seem to wobble a bit (probably, way too much to quilt piecing perfectionists). I could trim the rows to straighten them out or......... I could stitch the rows together and see what happened.

I liked what happened. It turned into an improvisational looking piece with a bit of hand-dyed fabric tucked between the rows. Now that I have a dappled blue background, I searched my photos for inspiration.

What do you see? Where would you go from here?

Check back to see what happens next.

Freestyle Fridays! Busty cup

What is going on here! This is an art quilt blog! 

Busty cup sleeves to promote breast cancer awareness is what :-)

I saw this on sewcalgal's blog and always one for the the unusual, I just had to try one.

This one is mine - I didn't really use any pattern, just took the cup - made a simple sleeve with Velcro and then went to town with embellishments. The boobs I used cotton balls and covered them with a light pink sheer fabric. Some of it done on machine, some by hand.

This one is from the website. Click here to go to the loose fiber site to see tutorials and ideas to make your own busty cups. You could donate these to your local breast cancer fund raising org to put in gift bags, or sell them and donate the money to breast cancer groups or just give to a friend that needs to smile.

I hope you make one of our own, 

if you do please post a picture somewhere and let me know where it is. I know you have a creative spirit or you wouldn't be reading this blog and I know you could really make a cool and unique busty cup. 

Sunflower III

For the past few years I have made a Sunflower Art Quilt for the Contra Costa Sunflower Art Show in Davis, CA. Money earned from sales goes to help Mental Health needs in that community.

This is my third such Sunflower art quilt.

The first two sold! And the second one won First Prize!

I think I used every technique and tool I knew in this making of this one. It incorporates the photos I took of sunflowers in the fields outside our town, which I transferred to silk; three dimensional components in the flower heads, stalks and leaves; stamping; poetry iron transferred on; beading, hand stitching, embroidery, free motion machine top sewing; couching, stuffing and more!

 I used both old and new fabrics; garage sale and thrift store finds in embellishments, and many hours of sitting and standing up work!

I would have put it up for sale, but my 21 yr old grand son offered to buy it from me "because I'd like to support your art, grandma"; but who can take money from a grandchild? Not I. So after it appears in the Sunflower Art Show next May it will be his to keep. I told him to think of it as an early "inheritance!" ;-)

This most recently hung at the Vacaville Art Gallery Members Show. It's time to go pick it up!

Freestyle Fridays. - Vermont farmland

Vermont farmland with cows

13"x18"

$40.00

http://www.landscapelady.net

(my etsy shop)

This is my favorite kind of quilt to make - which is why I call myself landscapelady :-)

The inspiration for this quilt was taken from a view from route 7 going towards vergennes Vermont.

The freestyle part of this? I felt it needed something at the bottom for balance, so I took a piece of rug netting ( not sure of the term for it, but it's the base used for rug hooking)

And I used locker hooking to add fabric strips and yarn to "the fence"

Happy Quilting!

Tuesday's Tiles -

Quilter's Tile - Flower, I Felt
8" x 8"
©2012 Sharon V. Rotz

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Sharon, here.

All week long I've had second thoughts about continuing my quilted tiles. It seems even after all these years, my mom's comments still hit me. As I was showing my niece some of the tiles I had done, my mom asked "Why are you taking the time to make all of these? What are they, potholders?"

Can you really justify yourself to your mother without feelings of guilt?

Why am I making these? It did make me stop and think.

I see them as little pieces of art. And why do we make art? Today my answer is ...........To release our creativity by having fun, showing our spirit, and exploring new ideas.

Sorry, mom, potholders or not, there will be another quilted tile.

(Details about making "Flower, I Felt" can be seen on my blog.)

The BIG question is "Why Do We Make Art?" (Or should we spend our time doing other things?)

What are your thoughts?

Dragon Reflections in Another Place

Dragon Reflections

Chris Daly 2011 created for 

Art Quilts Around the World "Another Place" Challenge

I am an avid reader of fantasy fiction.  As a child I was immersed in the Land of OZ series by LF Baum. Not only did I love the stories but I marveled at the fantastic illustrations of John R. Neill.  Later I traveled with Ursula Le Guin to Earthsea and Anne McCaffrey to meet the Dragon Riders of Pern.

This quilt was created for the Art Quilts Around the World "Another Place" challenge. We were to create a quilt using a technique we had not used before.  We also had to use plastic and paper in our quilts.

The idea of a dragon theme quilt came to me immediately.  Trying to figure out how to incorporate plastic and paper into this project kept me from starting my quilt top for quite a while. I tried thinking in an abstract mixed media sense but kept coming back to my original theme.  Once I had the idea of a reflecting pool it all came together. 

The dragon reflection in the pool is drawn on card stock using colored pencils.  I quilted the batik fabric then covered the dragon image with the plastic from a Ziploc Freezer Bag.  I tried a cellophane type of bag first but the stitching perforated the plastic.  The plastic in the freezer bag is very pliable and stands up well to the machine quilting.

I worked on the quilted dragon head separately.  I drew the quilting details on the top fabric first using a pencil.  Next I layered the top with batting and a muslin backing.  I machine quilted the scales on the dragon head and neck.  Once that was complete I applied Daler Rowney acrylic inks over the top of the quilting, a technique I have wanted to try for a long time.  The inks covered the pencil lines, toned down the turquoise blue quilting thread and added a vibrant shimmer to the dragon.  I added 2 more layers of batting under the dragon's head to give it more dimension.  The head is appliqued it in place using a straight stitch.  

The Daler Rowney acrylic inks were a gift from my mom this Christmas. I love these inks. The inks have more substance to them than some of the other fabric paints on the market.  They were easy to mix and apply. I love the subtle shimmer they add to my fabrics.