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Cilenia Curtis Designs

Quilt Artist while living a Simple Sustainable Lifestyle

Scrap Stash Projects

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

Scrap Stash Project: Modern Crib Quilt

October 25, 2016 by Cilenia 3 Comments

 

Modern Crib Quilt

I had seen a  modern quilt on Pinterest that I just loved! I thought I had saved the pin, but it doesn’t seem to be there.  Wasn’t a pattern, just an image so when I do find it, I will put the credits here.  But…  I thought, “Hey! I have all these scraps left over from making Kara’s quilt, I should make something from them like this!”  It’s a very basic construction using a log cabin block technique.    So I gathered up that basket of scraps and went to work.

EDIT:  Finally found the quilt artist I got my inspiration from! Her name is Pasqualina. She was on Instagram, not Pinterest like I thought. No wonder I couldn’t find it when I was desperately trying to find it again. LOL  Here is her instagram https://www.instagram.com/ergo_ago_pasqualina/  I LOVE her work.

I cut strips of white and a red fabric in 2-1/2″ strips and sewed together.  Then using one of my fab cutting templates, my Quarter  Cut by June Tailor, I cut the strips into 2-1/2″ sets.  This tool makes cutting so fast and easy! I use it a lot.

Cutting strips using my Quarter Cut

Cutting strips using my Quarter Cut

Cut up strips

Cut up strips

Chain piecing those cut strips onto another long 2-1/2" cut strip of background fabric all at once.

Chain piecing those cut strips onto another long 2-1/2″ cut strip of background fabric all at once. Cut sets apart, iron seams open.

Then taking the previous strip pieces and chain piecing again onto another background strip onto opposite side.

Then taking the previous sets and chain pieced again onto another 2-1/2″ wide background strip onto opposite side.  This makes for very fast piecing and I use this chain piecing technique whenever I can.

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Iron open the squares while still in a chain. Another speed tip I’ve learned over the years of quilting. img_3183

Snip apart the squares.img_3184

Square up the squares.

img_3186

Then I cut various widths of the white background fabric from 1″ to 2-1/2″ and inserted same size color strips. I used these to continue to make my log cabin blocks being mindful of color placements.  When you have a ton of scraps, it’s easy to do this.  Some of them I actually sewed into long strips first and then sliced the widths.  Even faster!

img_3187

I first placed the red centered squares on my Design Wall.  Then I took each one and added the strips to get to this point.

img_3189

The I used various sizes of white squares and added the “logs” around them so that I got a shattered color effect moving outwards towards the edge of the quilt.  Took a little thought, but with having a design wall it was easy to see what colors I wanted to add where.  Added batting and backing, quilted in straight lines moving outward from the main center design. Added the binding and DONE!  Took me a few days, but this was really a fast way to make this quilt and using no pattern!

The Design Wall white area is 4′ x 6′ to give you an idea how big this ended up being. 🙂  I LOVE my design wall! Made it myself using 1-1/2″ foam board and covered it will a heat reflecting batting and then a white and a black fleece fabric.  Many pins on Pinterest on how to make.  I used duct tape on the back to attach the batting and fabrics and then hung it on the wall using heavy duty Command Strips.  I’ve since cut this into two (the white and black areas). It was just leaning on the wall propped up on my shelves here.  But, there’s a light switch under there! LOL This shorty couldn’t reach the top if I had hung it above the switch plate.  Oops! LOL  But worked out perfect in the end. 🙂

img_3222

Now Baby Aiden has a matching fun colored scrap quilt like his Mama and Daddy.  🙂 OH!  See the drawer under the crib here?  That’s another one of those left over drawers from that broken down dresser that has a new life as a shelf unit in the garage.  Need to paint it to match the crib yet, but it gives some extra storage space that would normally be unused under the crib.  It holds all his cloth diapers and onesies. I plan on putting caster wheels on it also.  Time… never enough time. 😉 I had 5 days to get this room cleaned out and painted for when they would be arriving.  Not bad huh? LOL

 

Filed Under: Modern-Improv Quilting, Scrap Stash Projects, Sewing and Quilting Tagged With: Improv-Modern Quilting, scrap happy

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