Silk Screening

This was the most difficult challenge yet for me. I decided on silk screening since I had purchased the supplies, but never got around to trying it.

First attempt was disastrous. Ink seemed bad (it didn't even come out the color on the label) so I tossed it and started again.

Here is the results of the second attempt. The strong turquoise leaves are a result of the stencil method of silk screening. I wasn't particularly happy since some of the area didn't print at all and other parts glopped a bit. So I decided to try a prepared silk screen on top of that, after drying of course. The result is the green feathered quilting design. Again not all of the image printed clearly, although at least there were no globs this time.

To salvage the piece I grabbed 3 stamps from my collection and stamped "flowers" in pink and purple. I added fused crystals to the centers of the 3 largest flowers.

It has very simple quilting with clear blue iridescent thread (Superior thread) and I trimmed away the outer 1/4" of batting before stitching 1/4" from the edge for the finish.

Quick and relatively painless although it took me ages to work up the nerve to even try. At least I tried a variety of techniques and am working on my layering (a goal this year).

Lisa

Bet You Can't Use Just One!

Remember the old potato chip ads: Bet you can't eat just one... This week's challenge is to use just one fabric for your quiltlet. Interested? Here are the guidelines:

This week's art quilt challenge is to make a whole cloth quiltlet using only one piece of solid-colored fabric. Your design may be quilted, painted, dyed, discharged, whatever your fertile imagination comes up with. DO NOT start with printed fabric! That's cheating! Due date: one week

Have fun!
Lisa

Bed Quilt

I finally finished the queen-sized quilt for our bed. I'm quite pleased with the way it looks. Joy Deussen did the quilting for me since I couldn't possibly man-handle the monster through my home sewing machine :-)

Lisa

My Treasured Trash

I collected quite a few things from our recycling bin as well as the trash, but I discovered I had too much, LOL! I wanted a totally pieced background so I started out by piecing different colored gum wrappers together. Then I played around with the oatmeal packages until I found something familiar, a quilt block! My original plan was to piece the background then add all the 3-D stuff on top, but I found that it was too busy. So I settled for adding the quarter circles and a bottle cap. Quilting it worried me, but it went fine. I broke one needle, but I was trying to go too fast considering I was quilting through paper on the front aluminum foil on the back and an old washcloth for batting!

Here's a picture of the back. It was fun to play with new materials!

Lisa

Kathy's Treasured Trash

Kathy chose canvas as her base and used newspaper, a mesh bag, candy wrappers (I wonder who ate the candy?) and a wine cork to make this wonderfully dimensional piece for her treasured trash challenge.

Lisa

Joan's Treasured Trash

Joan created something very sweet and pretty from her trash. Items she included are: twisty ties, screws and (my personal favorite) hearing aid batteries for the flower centers. Way to go Joan!

Lisa

Anne's Treasured Trash

Here's a picture of Anne's Treasured Trash from this week's challenge. Goodness she has a lot of trash, LOL! There are photographs and leaves and yarns and scraps of fabric and who knows what else!

Lisa

Be Brave

I haven't had time to download the photos of last week's challenge yet, so here is next week's challenge so you can get started.

This art quilt challenge is very simple: make a quiltlet using at least one technique that is new to you. It can be something you read about in a magazine, something you saw demonstrated at a quilt show, something you bought supplies for but never got around to trying (gosh that sounds familiar!) or even something you made up yourself! Due next week, May 12.

Have fun!

Lisa

Tuba Concert

We're going to a tuba concert this morning. Matt Reese is performing in his Senior Recital. My daughter says we should attend "so we can hear what a real tuba sounds like". She's been playing for nine years and she doesn't think she sounds like a real tuba, LOL.

My queen sized bed quilt is back from the quilters. As soon as it's bound and on the bed I'll take a picture for you to see :-)

Lisa