Fruit Frieze Art Quilt, Step-by-Step

This space above the kitchen windows has been calling for artwork ever since we moved here...has it really been almost 11 years?!?

The vintage 70s-era stained glass chandelier provided the fruit theme so next I made a sketch

The fruit is big and cropped along the top and bottom to fill the art with a variety of colors. The original concept was to make several individual pieces mounted on canvas. After thinking about it, one wide, continuous banner made more sense. I taped together pieces of tracing paper along a long hallway and drew the fruit freehand.

Next the background pieces in medium and light tones of cyan blues were overlapped about a 1/4 inch and sewed onto the batting and backing. All of the fabric except the binding is left raw-edged, by the way. I transferred the tracing paper sketch using white Saral paper and blue removable pen, then painted the black outlines with acrylic paint. Painting directly is a tad nerve-wracking, as you can imagine. Then I washed on the basic colors of the fruit, often thin enough to allow some of the blue background fabrics to come through.

Because the piece was so wide (over 8 feet), it had to be rolled up and worked on in segments, starting on the left edge. There actually is a countertop in the room that would have been long enough but for reasons that escape me now, I didn't use it. Too much clutter, no doubt.

This middle section shows the red apple, bananas, and a peek of the strawberries after being painted then additional fabric added. To keep the fabric pieces in place I use thin basting glue, not fusible. Fusible is good on occasion but can be overkill and kind of a pain, what with the accidental ironing on the wrong side, etc.

Here is the apple close up. Hope these photos are okay...they were taken with my iPad, which is not very high-res. Some machine quilting is visible plus some hand-stitching with perle cotton.

The binding is made with various black on black fabrics. It was tough to photograph the whole frieze in place because of the lighting but this should give a reasonable idea. The vivid colors are a big improvement for the decor. The quilt has two sleeves on back with a break in the middle to leave space for a third nail. I used a piece of wood molding for hanging but it's not quite thin enough and causes a minor bulge. The plan is to replace the wood with aluminum bars which have been sitting in the garage for a month or two or three...

Here's another, rather extreme angle.

I'm happy with it and particularly like the plaid and checked fabrics. One thing that slipped my mind was the shrinkage caused by machine quilting. The width is about a half inch less on each end than I had planned, but nobody would know that. Except you, so please don't tell.

Some of my longtime readers may have wondered what happened to me since there have been no posts on this blog for three years. The main reason has been too many things to do and not enough time and energy to keep up with everything. So no worries, and I hope your artistic endeavors are going well. 

If you have any fruit-themed art you'd like to share, please feel free to post a link in the comments.

Loreen

My web site

Goodies... in the mail and made in the studio

One of the perks of being accepted into the Quilting Arts calendar is that they send you stuff. Last year, they gave a gift certificate to be used in the Interweave store, which made for some happy online browsing (and buying!) This year, along with the printed calendars came this pile of DVDs, two magazines, some Angelina fiber, a fat quarter, some batting, and what appears to be a very nice book about surface design on fabric, Art Cloth by Jane Dunnewold.

At first I was thinking I’d rather have made the choices, but though I haven’t looked at anything other than the mags yet, these all look great to me. When I get a chance to read/watch/use these goodies, I’ll pass along my 2¢ worth of opinion. The Cloth Paper Scissors Studios issue is very nice, full of inspirational photos of fab studios. If anyone wants to buy the 2011 “Flavor of the Month” Quilting Arts Calendar or any of these other goodies, click here.

What is that image at the top of this post, you may be wondering? It’s a close-up of the paper in the bottom row, second from the left (below). In a couple of different sessions, I cranked out loads of collage papers with the help of my artist friend Joyce and my 2 nieces. These were plain white cardstock, layered with regular and metallic acrylic paint and iridescent/metallic watercolors (from Daniel Smith.) Hmmm...except the one on the top right, which was painted on a restaurant napkin that was similar to interfacing, more substantial than the usual paper napkin.

The paper on the lower right was scribbled on with crayons, then painted with black paint, others were pressed together, stamped on, etc. It’s such fun to splash away without worrying about anything. One thing to remember when building up a stash of papers is to make plenty of light toned papers for contrast, and not just stick to the bright and dramatic colors. The plan is to use these in some upcoming collage work, along the line of these previous pieces. I also want to try these techniques on fabric, just am pressed for time at the moment.

Have a creative week!

My apple collage is finished... yay!

I’ve been busy finishing up the apple from the workshop (see previous post.) My friend Joyce and I took a day to paint a bunch of papers, including some disintegrating sheet music. It’s great fun to splash paint, rubber stamps, metallic paints, etc. on papers without the usual worries (is it the right color/shape/value?) 


This photo doesn’t seem to show all the colors... oh well. Without further ado, here it is:

I was a little worried about how to make the transition from the greens to the reds, so I painted some papers with blue-green lightly brushed over red, then used them along the color shift. It helped to connect those disparate colors into one form, don’t you think? Here it is in black and white:

I've been reorganizing my studio to accommodate the collage papers so it's easier to find them. Previously they were in file folders, but now they’re in those plastic drawers from the office supply store in spectrum order. Hope this works, I can’t have layers of painted papers added into my usual piles in the studio!

An apple today for artists at play

Things have been very hectic around here because we’re replacing our kitchen countertops, which naturally leads to many other related projects such as changing the lighting, refinishing the sides of the island, cutting precise miters on trim molding, and on and on. It might be easier to just tear the house down and start over. But the art must go on, right?


Since I’ve been doing quite a bit of collage lately, it seemed like it would be fun to take a mini-workshop with a local Orlando area artist, Elizabeth St. Hilaire Nelson. She calls her work paper paintings, an apt description. Fellow artist and friend Joyce Shelton and I will be there today for four hours, tearing and pasting away. Since time is limited, we have prepared our underpainted panels ahead of time and are bringing our painted collage papers along. The subject: an apple. Below is a cropped photo taken at a farmer’s market with nice greens and reds to play off of each other.

We’re working on a 12" X 12" wooden panel primed with clear gesso. The idea is to perhaps allow some of the wood grain to show through in the final image. I sketched the composition onto tracing paper, then taped it along the top edge of the panel. I don't really transfer the sketch directly, but sort of redraw the image underneath the tracing paper, using it as a guide.

I painted over the lines with a gold metallic acrylic then started splashing on color with Golden OPEN acrylics. They’re nice to work with because they don’t dry as quickly as regular acrylics which allows time for blending. The colors are intensified a little or a lot.

It has proved invaluable to take photos along the way with my little point-and-shoot Sony in black and white to see how the values are working (or not!) 

Here is the completed underpainting which has a lot of nice colors already. I don’t expect to finish it at the workshop, but it’s easy to add more collage and/or paint later. As you can see, I couldn’t seem to stop brushing on paint which would’ve allowed the wood panel to show through...oh well!

One glitch that I can see already is that the apple in the lower left is too large compared to the others, so that’ll have to be tweaked. No worries, it’ll take just a stroke of paint or a shred of paper. Wish me luck!

Repaint a barn in Photoshop

We recently visited Calloway Gardens in Georgia, and I spent a couple of mornings practicing my plein air painting. This little barn is in the vegetable garden area. The bright light hitting the lime green coleus plants caught my eye plus this vantage point was in the shade, so this was the spot. The photo below was taken very early before the light hit the front of the building. One of the tricky things about outdoor painting is that the light changes quickly. You can read my previous plein air posts here.After about 4 hours of painting over two mornings, this is what I was able to finish (below). I left off some of the more complex details of the building, but at least it’s fairly straight. It seems to have lost some of the width of the actual structure... oh well! Anyway, what bugs me about it at this point is the overall brown look between the taupe color of the barn and fence plus the reddish-brown mulch. Before putting more actual paint on this, I’m going to test some tweaks in Photoshop first. One way to change color is to select a section with the magic wand and use Hue/Saturation to try different colors. But today I’ll use the Replace Color feature. First I used the Lasso tool to make a loose selection around just the barn. Then under Image>Adjustments>Replace Color a dialog box will open up. Click in the image window to select the front of the barn. To add to the selection, hold down the Shift key. Slide the Fuzziness lever to increase or decrease the selection amount. Once the front of the barn was completely selected (it appears white in the preview window), I increased the Saturation and Lightness. Below the barn looks lighter and more yellow.The same procedure was used below to make the fence a light gray. Testing out color changes digitally like this can save time and paint! While this doesn’t look exactly like the actual barn now, the issue is making the painting look good. To me this has a better overall value and color harmony. The shadows on the mulch should probably be darker, actually. My favorite part is the trees.It’s fun to push an image even more by playing around with Curves instead, which posterizes it somewhat and inserts some odd colors. There’s no real consistent procedure to follow other than to go to Image>Adjustments>Curves and start drawing little bumps above and below the diagonal line, then see what happens. Give it a try, it’s fun to play with.Have a great 4th of July!

Follow the black and white road

There will be a patchwork path running through the LIQ project (a series of related whimsical wall hangings) so I’ve been trying out some possibilities. I considered various options, but was attracted to the myriad of black and white prints available. The first few images below are rough mock-ups of raw pieces of fabric glue-basted together to see the effect. The first one has a touch of violet...... while the one below has some added red. While I like these, it seemed like the maximum contrast would be obtained if the main image had the color while the road/path was only black and white.The one below has some sections with gray tones that lend an elegant touch.However, the more stark black and white one below looked best against the land and sky sample seen in this previous post. It helped to show it to some artist friends... they all liked the bold effect of this one.Today I pieced the first official path, which will run along the bottom, about 22" wide. It’ll probably be wrapped around some fusible stabilizer to give a firm outline. Will test the technique first though, to make sure it looks good.By some odd coincidence, I painted this a couple of days ago. I’ve been fooling around for some months with a painting of one of my nieces. It probably looks like she has a bathing cap on, but I just feel like experimenting so it may end up being a picture of a girl that doesn't look anything like my niece. I might paint patterns all over her face, for example. Poor kid!

The yellow house is finally stitched. To see the previous posts about this project, click here and here. My objective was to paint on fabric with acrylics, add some chunks of patterned fabric, quilt it, then evaluate. The acrylics make the surface a little stiff, but it isn’t a problem. (Except that it tends to retain needle holes.) The stitching seems a little overbearing in places, but really enhances the image in other areas, such as the sky. The stitching might be more in scale with a larger image... this is only about 9" X 12".
While this isn’t exactly a masterpiece, it worked out well enough that I want to do some more work along this line.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

A Homemade Pochade Box for a Few Bucks

Plein air painting is a wonderful option that I’ve been exploring in the last couple of months. This previous post describes our Larry Moore workshop. While he was kind enough to lend pochade boxes to us, I wanted to get my own set up. The boxes are fairly expensive at a hundred and half dollars or more, so here is what I came up with. It’s approximately 10" X 12.5" X 2.5" and weighs about 6 pounds, including the tripod shown here. Not counting the tripod, it cost about $25 in materials.

Though my woodworking skills are rudimentary at best, I took The Box on a test run yesterday and it worked fine for me. It started with the lids from two unfinished “decoupage memory boxes” from Michael’s. Since they’re made from basswood, they aren’t as rugged as a hardwood box would be, but that also makes for a lighter box. The short sides were reinforced with strips of maple to make them thick enough to screw the hinges into. The maple wood was bought at Woodcraft and was 3/8" X 3" X 15".

The photo below shows it opened up ready for painting. The mixing area in the middle is a sheet of 3/16" plywood that conveniently rests on the maple strips. The little side trays attach onto the sides with clips made from aluminum strip. By the way, before attaching any hardware the wood components were varnished twice with clear satin waterbased poly. Three coats would have been better, but I had to finish it for a painting trip.
A vital component of a pochade box are the hinges. The commercial ones can be locked open at any angle. After a long, fruitless online search as well as stopping by assorted hardware stores turned up zilch, I cobbled hinges together with mending plates (bought at Lowe’s but widely available), 1/4" bolts, locking nuts, and wing nuts. The side view (below left) and rear view (right) show how they work, hopefully. The lower bolt has a nut with a teflon interior that locks onto it. The wing nut assembly on top includes a locking washer. I brought along a screw driver just in case, but didn’t have any trouble with them loosening up.

One other little glitch... the wood screws that came with the mending plates were 3/4" long and would have punched through the maple strip. But the next size down was 1/2", which was too short. At my husband Andy’s suggestion, I filed off about 1/16" from the screws with a metal file, which did the trick. Pilot holes were a must or the maple strips would split. The other important feature is the tripod attachment. It is a thing called a tee nut, that is easily available. This is a 1/4" X 5/16 one with prongs. I drilled a hole in what was left of the maple wood, banged in the tee nut, and glued it about 1/3 of the way from the back of the box.The canvas is held in place by an elastic band with more aluminum clips. When ready to go, the trays fit into the bottom lid. There isn’t a latch at this point, but since the hinge wing nuts can be tightened up, it’s not a big deal. I have seen some cool latches for cigar purses online that would work. So there it is... hope this info is useful for somebody.

From paint rag to fiber art

Instead of wasting acrylic paint when cleaning brushes or palettes, why not recycle it into fodder for fabric collage? I came across this idea months ago somewhere in the blogosphere... can’t recall where now (sorry!) Since that day I stopped using paper towels and instead use rectangles of white cotton fabric to sop up excess paint in whatever form. In addition to wiping brushes, unused paint left on the palette at the end of a painting session can be stroked on either randomly... ...or in a more purposeful arrangement (below left.) The resulting fabric has interesting marks and color combinations that are great to work with. Depending on the colors, the rag could be transformed into fallen leaves, swirls of water, tree bark, stones... the possibilities are endless!
Happy painting and collaging!

The yellow house again, in progress

I’m working on another version of the little yellow house from Avon park that has appeared all week. Many of my favorite paintings have strong linear elements such as this 1890 Vincent van Gogh painting, Thatched Cottages at Cordeville.Another example is Woman in a Purple Coat (1937) by Henri Matisse.So I added strong calligraphic lines with black in this version. It’s still in progress, but it’s more along the line (pun intended) of the style I’m going for, as opposed to the pretty stiff version in Monday’s post.
The funny thing is that I’m working like a dog to finish up the illustrations for a book project and theoretically should not be taking time to create other artwork... can’t stop myself, apparently!