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Cilenia Curtis Designs

Quilt Artist while living a Simple Sustainable Lifestyle

Finish it Friday

Art Quilt Challenge Week 2 – Art Dolls

November 13, 2016 by Cilenia Leave a Comment

For my Art Quilt Week 2 I actually did two small art doll quilts.  The whole point of these was to awaken my muse and try new techniques.  I decided to use one of my Art Dolls I had created in digital and bring her to life in fabric.  I needed some Studio  inspirations and two sayings were ringing in my head.  “Be True” and “Just Breathe”.  One for my muse and one for my health. LOL  If you remember, I’ve been dealing with high blood pressure for months now and have taken back up meditation and yoga when I’ve feeling stressed. I thought a little reminder to breathe was a good thing. 🙂

Just Breathe Art Doll
Be True Art Doll

First thing I wanted to try was changing up that collage background I had tried with the previous art quilt.  I took a bunch of my scraps of one material and cut them into squared up pieces.  I laid a  piece of my fusible fleece batting cut to 10″x14″ on my ironing board with fusing side up and then proceeded to lay out all the pieces taking care to make sure to overlap each so none of the fusible glue was exposed.  Just for good measure, I used my pressing sheet over it to make sure I didn’t get any of that glue on my iron.  Some of the edges overlapped were still loose and I didn’t like that so I used a few tiny dots of washable glue, that has a Fineline Applicator Tip for a top, to hold them in place. Ironed again. I liked it better than my previous background, but didn’t like how the edges showed through so much. It was a cheaper thinner fabric from my scraps than I use now.  The only fabrics I buy now are batiks and a high thread count of 100% cottons for dyeing.  I am now totally spoiled by the quality of fabric. 🙂 But hey, one of my 2016 goals is to use up all these older scraps from my stash so it’s ok. If I did this again, I think I would do this on a piece of white cotton fabric using fusible web instead of fusible fleece and that may have avoided this issue.

At this point, I decided that I wanted to make this borderless and added a backing on top and sewed 1/4″ all around the edges, leaving about 3″ or so to turn, to make my quilt sandwich and just did a pillow case enclosure.  Then I turned right side out and folded in the unsewn edge 1/4″, ironed, and sewed around the entire piece about a 1/4″ in from the edge.

Steps how I did the base quilt.

Front side of Collage Background
Backside of collage background showing the fusible fleece.
Washable school glue is my best friend!

just a few tiny dots on edges and ironed dry holds better than pins IMO.
Right sides together layered
Sew edges, leave an opening to turn.

Cut corners to avoid bulk in corners. Trim extra material also.
After turning right side out, sew all the way around entire piece 1/4″ inch in from edge.

I quilted the base at this point just an all over freeform swirls. Then the fun began!

Choose scraps of coordinating fabrics
Printed out my Art Doll and wings for my templates on regular paper and then traced onto Heat’n Bond paper to make my appliqué pieces.
Cut apart all the pieces

Placed my uncut template under my pressing mat for a guide. Cut out my fused pieces (cut come edges a little larger to overlap).
Arranged all my pieces on top of pressing sheet so it was fused as a whole.
Gathered some of my Mixed Media trinkets

Tried different arrangements of trinkets to get to what I liked, hand wrote Just Breathe with a Sharpie Marker on fabric for my tag
Played around with different arrangements till I liked it. This was easier with the girl as one pieces.

From here, all that was left to do was iron on my girl, tag and sew on my buttons and trinkets.  She now sits above my work area to remind me to just breathe. 🙂 Because she took me all about an hour or two to make, I made another one that day also. I did decide to use fabric letters on the 2nd one and cut them out quickly and easily using my Brother Scan N Cut.  All I did was iron a piece of fusible interfacing to a piece of fabric, chose a preloaded font, then sized and arranged to fit the fabric piece.  Boom! Perfectly cut letters I then ironed onto my background. I could have used this for my Doll parts too if I had thought of it.  Need to find it a better home than under my cutting table.  Not a big hassle to pull out to use, but also not sitting out to remind me to use more.   OH  New project for the Studio!  Find better homes for my wide format printer and the Scan N Cut. LOL  If only this room was a foot wider, many of my problems would be solved….  Sorry, I digress.

I have always loved making my art dolls in mixed media and digi and they just make me happy to look up and see them on my wall. Now I have some lovely reminders each and every day to look up at. 🙂  I hand sewed a couple paper clips onto the backs to use as hangers and I was done.  Was a good afternoon.  Just love when I have an idea and can actually start and finish all in one day. RARE, but was nice.

Wonder how I make my Art Dolls in Photoshop? Check out my Art Dolls class if you are interested in making your own.

Supplies Used for this Project for those with inquiring minds.  These links are my Amazon affiliate links, so  I do receive a small income if you use them.  It doesn’t cost you any more, just helps me offset the cost of keeping up my site. I only recommend what I have tried and like and has the best prices also.

Scraps of various fabrics from my Stash

Fusible Fleece Batting

Washable School Glue

Fineline Applicator Tip

100% Cotton Connecting Threads brand of various colors

Heat’n Bond fusible interfacing

 

 

Filed Under: Art Quilting, Finish it Friday, Mixed Media, Scrap Stash Projects Tagged With: Art Quilt Challenge

Art Quilt Challenge Week 1 and the Backstory

November 12, 2016 by Cilenia Leave a Comment

As promised, I’m posting my first 4 weeks of my self imposed weekly challenge.  I can say at this point this little exercise has made my creativity BOOM!  Here  I am 7 weeks later and I have so many ideas I had to start making lists of future projects so I could get them out of my head and focus at my tasks at hand.

I’ve also made a decision to open the dreaded UFO (Unfinished Objects) Boxes.  For those who don’t quilt, this may be a new term to you.  But for us obsessive compulsive quilters, we have MANY of these items.  Patterns we’ve tried and didn’t like or got stuck on.  New techniques we wanted to try and learn and have basically a sample of an item. Even items that life got in the way of or a lack of a certain supply we needed to finish and it got put on the back burner.  End result, I have pulled them out, ok, I’ve pulled out SOME of them, and have made another self imposed challenge to finish them up or incorporate into something useful.  If I really find something that I don’t even want to deal with, I will offer it to my fellow quilters in my Quilt Guild.

Back to week 1.  This was how it all started.  I had seen the AWESOME portrait art quilter, Tammie Bowser, on Quilting Arts TV Episode 1607-2 while I was catching up on my 1600 series of shows, and was fascinated with her technique.  I wanted to create one of these of my little Miss Bailey, but knew I had to learn and master the technique before taking on a portrait.  Now they do have a free Gerber Daisy Pattern, which had disappeared being uploaded, and when they did finally get it up, I had to finish some quilts with deadlines in process so it became one of my UFOs… see where this is going? LOL  Eight months later I got back to this one.  It’s another reason why I’m doing the self imposed challenge.

I never did do the Gerber Daisy from Tammie. I chose to use one of my own flowers.  I was also really overwhelmed looking at pixel boxes of her pattern and decided I needed to modify the technique of how to make the pattern that made sense to me and was a little easier on my eyes.  She used a free program to turn the photo into ‘boxes’ of value pixels.  I don’t have the program and it’s no longer available anyways.  So being a Digital Artist, I felt I could wing this on my own.

Choosing the flower was easy, a coneflower.  One of my favorite flowers in the garden.  For this first one, I simply had the photo blown up and printed at my local Staples store.  They ‘accidentally’ printed on a thicker poster paper instead of the thinner Engineering paper I had requested. They thought they were doing me a favor. LOL   A lot more difficult to see through as I was tracing my pattern.  Now they understand why I’m printing these photos and their purpose.

I also had it printed in color this first one.  Next time, need to do a black and white only.  Easier to see also.  Then I could just deal with values and not worry about color.  I found when I printed this in color, I became obsessed in trying to match up the colors and even dyed a few swatches of fabrics to fit in.  NOT what I wanted this exercise to be.

Lesson 1:  Use my Photoshop to convert to a black and white photo for my pattern.  Will be less inhibitive to my creative flow.

Lesson 2: More of a hind sight, but next one I will use Photoshop filters to set my values and maybe even the cut lines for the pattern added.

Lesson 3: Decide the number of values and colors in the beginning.  Saves some aggravation later.

Onto the technique I wanted to learn.

Tammie uses a different kind of fusible web than I had always used.  Hmmm a little more money, but might be worth it.  She uses Steam a Seam 2.  The advantage is that it is a little sticky after removing the paper unlike regular fusible web.  I could see how handy this was while assembling.  Ok, broke down and bought some at Amazon, even though I had a ROLL of Head N Bond Light sitting on my shelf.  It comes in 9″x12″ sheets for the printer and needs to be cut down to print if you don’t have a wide format printer like I do.

She prints out the image onto these sheets of Steam a Seam.  I chose just to trace by hand. I numbered by values as I traced and put a big X in the background areas.  Wasn’t sure at this point how I wanted to handle the background other than I wanted a graduated color from dark to light as a sun ray might look.

Lesson 4: Make sure to print or trace onto the paper side that is less sticky.  If Tammie knew this, she neglected to mention it on the show.  Learned since I made this that Steam a Seam has a lightly sticky and a heavier sticky side.  You want the lighter sticky on top where your pattern is so that while cutting out the template pieces it sticks more to the foundation fabric than the template pattern.

Next step was to use a cheap muslin fabric for a foundation background and peal the paper backing off one side of the fusible web and adhere it to the muslin.

Next step for Tammie was to use an exacto knife and small scissors to cut away that top paper (being careful not to cut through the web and fabric below.  Ok, THIS was NOT working for me.  I had way to many times during this first one where I cut completely through and made a mess of it. Sure, practice made it better, but I did NOT like this at all. Had to be a better way…. for me at least.

She then used the cut away paper top as her pattern to cut the fabric. Adding a scant 1/8″ border around so that the pieces overlapped just slightly to avoid any background showing.  Hmmmm it doesn’t stick like a freezer paper template would while cutting.  Slipping all over.  Made for too much of an inaccurate cut for my liking.  But, keep going.  Don’t give up on this technique yet.

Then you simply take your cut fabrics and place them in the exact spot you cut the top paper template from.  Because Steam A Seam is sticky, you can remove and adjust easily.  Nothing is permanent until you iron it down.  I LOVED THIS!  OK, sold on the product at this point, just not the process.

Some of the ‘In Process’ photos.  Click to enlarge if you like.

Process of cutting out template pieces from dark to light values and adhering to foundation.
Shows how my printed photo was taped under a piece of plexiglass I had laying around. I ended up putting this on my lightbox to trace the pattern.
Move pieces added. Decided it was better to work across image than to do the values in order. Painted a corner of the background during… decided I didn’t like it.

More pieces added
Flower portion completed.
Decided to take cut up scraps of fabric and make a collage background. Came out ok, but won’t do again. Just not my style.

Next step was to quilt.  I made my quilt sandwich and mostly just did as Tammie did by quilting the edges and “doodle quilted”, (her term of an all over small quilting random pattern), over the background areas.  I wanted a sketchy artsy look and did thread sketching with black thread like it had been drawn onto the fabric.  Was not so easy to do…. Can not tell you how many thread breaks I had… nor will I tell you how many times I had to walk away so I didn’t throw my sewing machine out the window. LOL

Lesson 5: This Steam a Seam 2 was too heavy or thick for any detailed thread sketching.  Made for a lot of frustrations during the quilting.  Might have to stick to my feather weight or light weight Heat N Bond fusible web next one.  I understand this product is great if you don’t want to sew down all the edges, but it just was not the end result that wanted and had in my head.

 

Added a black binding to finish and look like a framing of the art.

The Finished Piece

The Finished Piece

I kind of lost the excitement of this art piece at this point.  I didn’t like the process, I didn’t like the end result as much as I thought I would.  The number of values was too little for my liking, the collage background was so not my style and it looked more like an abstract art to me than I wanted.  Everyone else liked it… just not me.

I take notes while I’m learning a new technique.  So it was off to the web in search of how some other quilt artist’s techniques worked and to pick some brains of fellow art quilters I know.   Come back for the next few weeks challenges to see how I started combining processes, changing up some techniques and products to better get to where I wanted to go.  I will just chalk this one up to bunch of lessons learned. 🙂 What works for others does not always work for me.  I still LOVE Tammie’s work, but need to find a way to make it easier for myself and to make it my own also.

Filed Under: Art Quilting, Finish it Friday Tagged With: Art Quilt Challenge, Lessons Learned

Art Quilt Week 5

October 28, 2016 by Cilenia 4 Comments

I know… starting with Week 5?  I will get the first 4 up and back date.  Promise!

YES! Finished up my 5th art quilt for my self inflicted challenge to complete an art quilt each week!  Almost thought I wasn’t going to be able to finish this one on time as I ran out of the colored thread I wanted to use. But thank goodness for Amazon Prime and had new thread in 2 days. LOL  It measures 18″x24″ and most of the fabrics, except for the solids, I had hand dyed previously.  I also added just a little bit of some watercolor inks to give a few areas a little more depth.  What I also did different on this one was add a little extra shredded up batting to certain areas so that it had even more depth.  Very hard to see in the photos, but in real life, it turned out just like I had hoped.

Purple Passion Art Quilt

Purple Passion Art Quilt

Some Detail Images



This one was made from a small 8×10  water color ink quilt I had made last year. I really loved it, but wanted to do a bigger one… In fabrics, not painted.   I scanned in the small one.  Changed it to a black and white format and played a little with the contrast and levels to get good contrasting values to use as a template for a larger one.  I then uploaded to my trusty nearby Staples for printing on a large 18×24 Engineering print. They are starting to wonder about me and printing these florals. LOL But after I explained what I was doing it made more sense to them. Now they made me promise to bring in one to show them. LOL

So here’s the original one I did last year. Painted on whole cloth piece of cotton fabric and then did thread sketching and quilting.

Inked Water Color Art Quilt

MY PROCESS BRIEFLY

I promise to take photos of my ENTIRE process next one! This has been an evolving process the past month and I have tried MANY techniques to get here.

img_3362

Creating my template pieces on freezer paper.

After I received my Engineering print, I used a black permanent  marker to outline my values to create a template and numbered them  Then I taped it to a window (my south facing sliding doors), and laid freezer paper over and traced and numbered again.  Smaller ones I can use my light box but it’s only 12″x18″. Doing this served two purposes.  I will have my original print to refer to as I assemble the quilt, and doing it on freezer paper I would then cut up the pieces and be able to iron them temporarily to the front side of the fabric as my template pieces for cutting.

At the same time I traced it completely again onto a piece of Fusible Mid-Heavy Weight Stabilizer webbing. No numbers, just the basic outlines using a Frixion Pen that would iron away later.  (Won’t do that again, will do on muslin like I did the last one.  That fusing caused me a lot of issues while thread sketching and also the weight was just too stiff for my liking.  Does make for a very nice finished stiff art quilt though as I thought it would. LOL Maybe add after the thread sketching is completed.  Will test out and let you know.

Anyways…. Then I take all those numbered pieces, iron to the front side of my fabric swatches, added my fusible web to the back of the fabric and spent the afternoon cutting them all up and kept each value organized in little trays. Then it was puzzle time!  Actually, this is my favorite part next to the thread painting. lol  Yes, I’m a puzzle freak!  I don’t iron it down until every is there completely.  I use a very tiny smear of Tacky Glue in the center or ends of each piece to temporarily hold them or pins.  Why? because I have put one together that I ironed and as I worked around the piece, I decided to change it up a bit.  Can’t take it back off or move things slightly to fit better if it is already ironed down, but using just that tiny drop of glue I can lift it off and move easily.

Here’s one photo are it partially going together.  See the  freezer paper on top.  I LOVE when I get to take it off and reveal the colors below.  It’s kinda like opening a Christmas present. LOL  After I have this portion done, I hang it up on the design wall and decide if I want any more detail added.  Little bits here and there sometimes make a huge difference in the overall piece I think.  img_3366

All put together here and ready for the thread sketching and quilting.  What a difference the thread sketching makes in my humble opinion. Looks so plain and simple at this point.  I don’t square it up until after all the sewing is completed. It will get a bit wonky during the process depending on how densely I sew different areas.

img_3368

Took me a few days (had sewing machine issues and had to do a total clean out again.)  Sorry, I know one person for sure is going to wish I had taken photos of that and how to do. LOL  I will next time. But with as much thread that has gone thru that poor little 30 year old machine this past month, no wonder she needed it! LOL

 

So here is an overall photo of my October Quilts besides my small Art Girl I did as my first one. WHEW!  Onto the next!  Going to do a Magnolia Tree branch. Got all my fabrics dyed the other day waiting for that thread to arrive. LOL

October 2017

Hope you enjoyed seeing into my Studio and if you have any questions on anything, please feel free to ask. I’ll do my best to answer.  Do you art quilt? I’d love to see what you are up to also!

Filed Under: Art Quilting, Finish it Friday, Sewing and Quilting

Finish it Friday – Solar Flares Eclipsed

October 2, 2015 by Cilenia Leave a Comment

Woot Woot!  I finished my Art Quilt project this week in plenty of time for ‘Finish it Friday’ with a group of Quilting buddies that challenge themselves each week to finish a project quilting, sewing or otherwise!

If you missed the process I did for this art quilt here are the two other posts:

     WIP – Work in Progress – Solar Flares            

     Solar Flare Eclipse – The Process: Appli-piecing            

I spent two whole days thread sketching the quilting designs. Mostly because of deciding on how I wanted it quilted. I decided to make the dark space have a little flare and whimsey like I see in actual astro images with far off galaxies and gas clouds.  I am really tempted to paint some tiny stars too but haven’t decided yet. LOL

Then I put on a 1/2″ wide black binding to frame the whole thing in.  I am really happy how this came out! I learned a LOT during the entire process.

Solar Flares Eclipse

A few close ups… IMG_2779IMG_2759

And an additional surprise?!  The back!  Never planned on this, but loving it too! But I already put hanger squares into the binding so this will never be seen really…. may have to do another one! LOL

Back of quilt

So I’m ready to tackle another one.  I want to do the Orion Nebula.  Have images from my brother, just need to decide how detailed I want to go and the final size. I think this is going to turn into a series. 🙂 I’m in love with this!

Another bonus… usually I wet and block my quilt when it’s completed… I haven’t done it to this one yet… why? Well, because when I held this up to show my other half, we noticed that all the teeny tiny holes from thread sketching showed dots of sunlight through them as I had held it up in front of a window. LOL  Hmmm maybe this need to be hung in a window! LOL  No, living in Nevada, the sun would surely destroy the color quickly. But it was kewl to see. LOL

So, do have a project you finished up this week?  Share away and give us a link in the comments and I’ll be sure to visit. 🙂  It’s always a rewarding experience to finish something… or in my case, it’s permission to start another one! LOL

 

Filed Under: Art Quilting, Finish it Friday, Sewing and Quilting Tagged With: Solar Flares Quilt

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