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 Finished Quilts

Here is a quilt that I worked on for a very long time. It is basically one piece of fabric with a large pattern. I decided to use the kantha stitching for the motifs, and then use cross stitch to fill in the blank spaces.

Close-ups:

And here is the finished wool appliqué quilt that I worked on during the Covid 19.

All the little pink squares are cut out of the big print around the border. On purpose I did not quilt it heavily. I did that on one quilt and it wasn’t that pleasant to sleep under. I will look forward to sleeping under this quilt next winter!

Close-ups. I made this daffodil myself.

What I’ve been doing during the Coronavirus stay-at-home

A friend showed me this quilt and I was really struck with it. So pretty, and it had wool appliqué on it. But the picture was pretty fuzzy. So I just sat and drew the pictures as well as I could. When I cut them out, I didn’t use a pattern. I just cut them out as good as I could. It has been very fun sitting and putting these together. I usually can only do two in one day. I started out using clear Elmer’s glue, but it didn’t work that well, so I ordered some fabric glue on Ebay.  I only have three left to do, and then the center has a large appliqué in it, so that will take a day or two. Here’s what I’ve done so far.

I see that I took a couple of the pictures before they were finished, but they are all finished now. I used a lot of blanket stitch, but I didn’t always use that, depending on how big the pieces were.

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!

Two More Finishes

Do you remember the series that I did about God’s characteristics that man could also try to emulate? (Gentle and Humble, Loving, etc?) Anyway, I made another quilt with just God’s characteristics on it.

And a close-up of the embroidery:

And then one day I was bored, and I remembered that I had this picture of a bird on my computer, and decided to embroider it.

Right now I am working on a large quilt that has very large flowers, etc. on it. I am doing kantha stitching and some cross-stitch in the background colors. Its going to take forever! And I am knitting 🙂

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.

Something New

I spent a little time on Pinterest exploring Kantha Embroidery. I saw several things that were interesting. I saw some raw edge simple kantha embroidery that interested me. It looked like the strips had been torn. I didn’t want to do that, because when you tear cotton, it can get really distorted. Talking with my BF, she suggested cutting the strips and then washing them. So that’s what I did. I free-cut a lot of strips of mostly neutral fabrics. And then I put them in lingerie bags and washed them. I was surprised at how frayed they got even in the lingerie bags! Then I prepared a quilt sandwich with muslin on both sides and a cotton batting in the middle. I hand basted it, and then started. And here is the finished product. It was very fun to do.

When I looked back on Pinterest, I noticed that something like this was called Japanese Boro quilting…

Here’s a close-up so you can see how I did it. On each piece, I quilted all the way through on each side so it would be quilted. On the stitching in between, I just went through the top and batting.

Then I saw on Pinterest a very complex Kantha Embroidery. I kept that on my iPad for a long time. It was more complex than I really wanted to do, but it intrigued me. So finally I drew something and put that on cloth with the blue marker and started my own embroidery. I am enjoying working on this.

Here’s the blue drawing. As usual, I will add more as I go along:

And here is what I’ve done so far:

Close-up:

Also, I finished that “Parable of the Seeds” rug. It is about 24″ X 26″. This is the fastest I’ve ever finished a rug. It was simple and very fun to work on.

And here is a shot of my garden for those of you who don’t read my other blog:

Its time to clean up the studio! And organize my rug wool. Its getting out of hand!

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.

 

A New Old Quilt

This is a quilt I started I think before the “modern quilt movement” started! I started out making Ricky Tim’s folded flying geese. Here, I found a video for you if you’re interested! The video was made in 2009, so that’s how long ago I started this quilt.

I made a lot of those flying geese blocks and then thought, what else am I going to do? So I made some fancy blocks, and then I filled in with some simple 9 patch blocks of one patch and four patch.

Here are the extra blocks I made:

I enjoyed quilting it. I think I found something like this image on Pinterest, and I quilted all the big blocks that way.

I like this quilt a lot. I love the colors that I chose, and so I will keep it. Its just the right size for a lap quilt or to top my double bed.