Monday, March 14, 2011

More Small Work

I have been experimenting with some different finishing techniques with this latest group of small quilts.

This rockfish is, once again from a printing workshop I took last Spring.  I fused the purple organza before printing the fish.
I wish I had used a darker and heavier thread for the branch quilting on the outer part of the piece.  I got good texture, which I attribute to the wool batting.  I also thought the spray of beads across the piece is effective.
The fabric in this quilt is one of the first pieces of fabric that I dyed.  The mountains were printed.  I really fell in love with my Bernina quilting the sky.  My Viking ate metallic threads like this.  I was so happt with the way the machine was reacting, that I forgot to stop and change color of threads where I had intended. The image in the sky comes from petroglyphs of drawing by Kodiak Island's earliest residents.
Another Northern Lights quilt from the same piece of dyed fabric in the quilt shown above.  I quilted differently and followed the quilting motifs with beads.
One more very small Northern Lights quilt.
I did the same quilting on the outer border of this quilt as I used on thea bird quilt shown above.  Once again, a heavier thread with more contrast would have been more effective.  I am scared to use threads with high contrast.  I grabbed a piece of cotton batting when I layered this quilt and I think that the difference in loft is amzing.  I prefer the look of the wool batting to the cotton.  This quilt I sewed on rickrack to the quilt before I faced the entire quilt with a piece of backing prepared for fusing.  I am not entirely happy with the way the corners turned out, but with more experimentation, this will improve.  All of these pieces have fused backs, and with the exception of the final quilt, have fused bindings, which i have decided are great for very small pieces, but in the future, I will put a traditional binding on pieces that are 6" x 6" or more, like the larger Northern Lights pieces and the bird pieces. 


Thursday, March 3, 2011

More Fun!

I finished the hanging structure for this piece last night.  I am having a blast using some of the less than perfect prints that I have done and trying out some different techniques.  I made the web out of blue perle cotton and secured it with size 8 beads.  Kindof went crazy on the beaded border.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Proofs




I am not nearly as happy as I was earlier today before I printed proofs of the new blocks that I carved.  As I said, I carved the background much too deeply.  I am going to eliminate the background on the fish immediately.  I trimmed them up a bit, but at this point I am afraid of doing more harm than good.  The chickadee was carved from linoleum; the others from some kind of rubbery stuff that I got from Daniel Smith. Although the linoleum is a bit harder to carve, I seem to have a better success rate with it. I am printing with Daniel Smith oil based water soluble ink.  The bottom right shows some wine corks that I carved.  I would normally print those with paint but the ink was there.

It is a good thing that being a printmaker is not my goal, because I know my prints are far from perfect.  But once I add some stitching, maybe some beads, it will be fine.

Ready to Print!

I have been carving the past few days.  The idea was to get some new pieces ready before I set up to print.  So I have 5 blocks that are ready to proof.  I finally figure out that I have been carving the background much too deeply.  The Arctic tern block is the only one that I completed after making this discovery.  Of course, eventually I will cut away all of the background, but I like to print an edition with the background, first.
Chickadee


Arctic Terns

Alutiiq Petroglyph


Mirror Image King Salmon


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