Quilt Art: Uncle Ray's Place

My husband, Ernie, has a big family reunion every year in far southern Ilinois.  It's held on an acreage that has been in his family for generations.  Uncle Ray built a pavillion, enclosed on 3 sides and landscaped the area with beautiful flowers.  He works really hard each summer getting everything in top shape for the September get-together.  One year, as a thank-you, I created this wall-hanging from panoramic photos I had taken.

 This wall hanging is done in raw-edge applique, embellished with thread painting and decorative yarns/threads.  I didn't use any pattern for this---I just eye-balled it, as they say.  Doing it this way gives it more of a folk-art look, which I like. What I really wanted to do was experiment with texture.  Texture draws people into the piece, and touching is allowed on my quilts.

The pavillion is has cedar siding, so I used a scrap of wide-wale corduroy to make mine.  I used a satin stitch around the roof line and on the appliqued windows.  For the flag, I had some flag-print fabric from which I cut a little flag and folded it as it hung from the flag pole (no breeze down there on that hot summer day!)

The trees on the hillside are done in a variety of batiks, commercial prints, and maybe a hand-dyed cotton or 2.  I cut basic blob shapes similar to what I saw in the picture, then did various free-form stitching around the edges---trying to soften them a bit.  Then I thread painted (a machine technique I've posted a tutorial for) the trunks and branches with various shades of brown embroidery thread.  I also thread painted some of the flowers in the garden, as well s the 2 bushes behind the fence.

 The other, very textured flowers and greenery are made by couching decorative threads.  I used long tweezers  (like what come with a serger, or what you use in surgery if you, dear reader, happen to be a surgeon) to hold the threads/yarns in place as I free-motion stitch them into place with clear nylon thread.  Bunching and scrunching the yarns give a very full look, which also screams "feel me"----so you may not want to do this if you don't want people touching your wall hangings!

A Couple of my Landscapes

Here are a couple of my landscape quilts/wall hangings.

The one of the left was a commission. A gal sent me 3 pictures she wanted combined into 1 picture.  The 3 are shown together above the wallhanging.  One is a picture (taken through a glass window) of a sunset.  Below it is a painting of 3 horses running through water.  The 3rd is a photo of her friend's view from his house.

The job was to combine the 3 pictures into a single landscape, which I think I did successfully.  (She was quite thrilled with the result!)  The wall hanging is all fabric.  I used a combination of commercial prints and batiks and hand-dyed cottons.  I also painted (with water color pencils) the sunset, as I couldn't find a fabric that looked like what I needed.  "When in need, make it yourself!"

The landscape on the right is also created completely in fabric and thread (as that is what I do!)  I made this for my cousin's 50th birthday.  He lives in Phoenix and I found a photo on Google Earth of Camel Back Mountain there.  I used the photo as inspiration for my artwork.  I have to say, this was the hardest landscape I have ever done.  I will also admit that I like how it came out!

Batiks and hand-dyes were a great source for most of the fabrics. I also did a lot of thread painting for details like grasses. (See the detailed photo)  And, once again, I painted the sunset with my water color pencils.  I love the challenge of finding just the right textures and colors in various fabrics to create pieces of my pictures, but the skies, if I want them to look somewhat realistic, have been too much of a challenge to find!

I had scraps of fabric from my experiments with the sky and decided to use a piece for my label on the back, which is also pictured.

Creating a Portrait in Fabric

Dad's 85th birthday is coming up in a few days. I wanted to create something really special for him, something that he wouldn't expect. I've had this photo of him at age 9 on my bookshelf for a long time. A couple of days ago I was finally inspired----to create this photo as an art quilt!

I have begun the project and will chronicle it here. My first consideration was color. The photo is in black and white. I could copy this, but aside from not being very inspired, I don't think it would reflect what I want it to. I want the piece to be interesting and reflect his long life. I

thought about doing it in life-like color, but I don't know what color Dad's hat and coat actually were. I have been looking at challenging myself by doing a monochromatic quilt, focusing on shade and tint, texture and line. I have decided to do the picture in sepia tones. This will give it an old-fashioned look, yet being a very contemporary style of art.

Next I had to enlarge this photo to a size I could manage. The original (something like 4X6") is too small to replicate. I used my photocopier to enlarge it (in sections) 200%. The main figure itself is now about 24" X 14", so it will finish to

about 30" tall. This will be manageable (I can finish it in 10 days) and large enough to be substantial (otherwise, why bother, right?)

The next step is to create a pattern. I have laid tracing paper on top of the enlargement and traced areas from

which to create fabric pieces. I kept in mind that I can't have pieces too small to cut and place successfully. I also know that I will thread-paint details, so that will take care of some of the small issues.

Now......fabrics! I keep my fabric sorted by color, so it wasn't too hard to pull out lots of shades of brown. I didn't bother to research "sepia" to authenticate my color choices, instead I'm choosing shades and tints of yellow-orange. I've learned something about the importance of contrast to add interest to a piece, so I tried to find my very palest and very darkest pieces. I did discover that I have some browns that are more green-brown, and some are more gray-brown, so I tried to keep with the yellow and red-browns. I also got out a bit of solid black. There are a few prints with other colors in my piles....you never know, they might be interesting somewhere in the picture!

More to come.................