Pumpkin Art Quilt Demo

© 2014 Loreen Leedy

While browsing for produce in my favorite store in early October, I rounded a corner and found heaps of bright orange pumpkins. It was a striking display and later I couldn't resist making one with fabric. In addition to using paint, the idea was to render the pumpkin without laboriously cutting fabric shapes to create the image...but how?

A orangy yellowy batik with leaves seemed like a good starting point. This is actually the reverse with some of the paint showing through but it gives the general idea. Some reference photos helped with making a same-size sketch on tracing paper. I lightly drew it on the fabric with a white chalk pencil (or possibly regular school chalk, can't recall.)

The scribbly pencil lines on the the right side of the sketch are where the darker values will go. 

Rectangular chunks of fabric were arranged either randomly or with some values placed with the light source from the upper left. The rectangles were glue-basted in place. Then the lines were painted with black acrylic using a pointed round brush. The acrylic bled a bit on some of the fabrics but it was in keeping with the casual look. 

In order to separate the pumpkin from the background, acrylic paint was applied. First the black lines were masked off with torn-edged paper tape. It's a low-tack white paper tape, no idea if it's still being sold (this stuff has been rattling around in my studio for YEARS.) In any case, it worked well to protect the line work. The paint was applied with a scrunched up piece of waxed paper, which gives a nice random texture. The pumpkin gained a cream-colored "glow" and a plum shadow. It looks good but another time I may skip that step.

With the mask removed, the emerging pumpkin requested a few more chunks of fabric. The edge of striped fabric at the bottom was tinted orange and the stem got some brown lines. Love the stripes. Stripes make me happy!

It's always helpful to desaturate a photo to look at the art in grayscale to determine if there is enough contrast. Looked good to me.

Batting and a backing were pinned to the top for the quilting stage. In order to preserve the irregular blocky edges, the stitches stop about a half inch from the edges. The stitching consists of free-motion straight and zigzag stitches, mostly. I haven't decided how to mount this yet...on a stretched canvas? On a plain quilted support?

The balance of realism and abstraction works as I had hoped in this piece, which is nice. One minor complaint is that the style of the line work is somewhat old-fashioned...perhaps "retro" is a more positive way to look at it. Being hypercritical of lines is an occupational hazard of being an illustrator, alas. Also, the bluish chunks look a little out of place. There are some blue tones in the thread but from a distance that doesn't show. Then again, maybe it would be boring without the blue. If I really wanted to it would be fairly easy to cover up the blue with different fabric, but it's not bothering me enough at this point.

© 2014 Loreen Leedy

So that's the story of this pumpkin, hope you enjoyed it!

Loreen

my web site

Painting faux granite

Why would anyone want to do that, you ask? The photos below should make it clear...feast your eyes upon the hideous green formica countertop that we lived with for seven long years. Before anyone gets too excited about the prospect of transforming laminate countertops, let me make it clear that we ripped out that green monstrosity.


However, note the strange bulge behind this backsplash, and the feeble attempt to cover up the top of it with a random strip of green trim. Apparently the first builder made a half-wall, then later someone added the rest of the wall but since the lower part was not plumb, they decided to fudge it this way, leaving a bizarre wedge of drywall behind the backsplash. Basically, the wall is a mess and a professional contractor friend of ours had never seen anything quite like it.

Anyway, after our gorgeous shivakashi granite counters were installed, I had to figure out how to cover up this little glitch. First I used drywall compound to fill in the gap to make it as level as possible with the granite. You can really see how off kilter the wall is here, because the granite top is actually level to the floor while the green monster wasn’t.

The drywall compound was sealed with latex paint. Then the fun began. I used Golden OPEN acrylics to paint with because they don’t dry nearly as quickly as regular acrylics, which leaves more time for blending. I mostly used the stiff stencil brush on the left because I didn’t need fussy details, just needed to smear some paint around.

I applied a base coat of sort of a pinkish gray.

Next came some patches of the various colors from the granite. These acrylics dry a little darker, but don’t shift as much as regular acrylics. If you click on the photos, you can really see what’s going on. It doesn’t matter if the colors aren’t exactly right at first, they’ll be blended into each other.

The darker streaks that follow the flow of the granite really make it happen. The painted area isn't as smooth as the granite, of course, but I put some glossy sealer over it and it's very hard to tell it isn’t the real thing with a casual glance. My husband was flabbergasted at how well this turned out...so was I, frankly. I asked several people who came over to see if they could spot anything that looked faux painted to match something else, and no one could figure out what it was.

Here’s the other end. The wall wasn’t as crooked, but there was still about 3/8" that had to be faked. The actual width of the granite is the same on both the backsplash and the counter, three centimeters, I think.

In case anyone is wondering about the gap along the top edge, well there was no way I was going to paint all that, plus it would get too much wear to hold up over the long term. We’re still looking for the right trim piece of tile to cover it up, or possible wood molding. And we still have the lighting, some cabinets, and a few other things to do. No worries, I have my new faucet, undermount sink, and much lighter, glam countertops, so who cares about a few little details?


Hope you enjoyed this little detour from my usual artistic pursuits. You just never know when mixing some colors may come in handy!

The rest of the flock

The third sheep has been completed... since I forget to show it previously, above is the sketch for this project. Pretty impressive, no? It’s not much more than a scribble done in Photoshop, but all I wanted was the size and basic placement of the critters. Sometimes I do a very precise pencil sketch on tracing paper and line up the fabric pieces exactly, but for this project a looser approach seemed possible and more fun.


Here’s how #3 turned out...she’s looking up at something up in the sky. I wasn’t necessarily going to hand stitch all the quilting, but it just seems to have the right whimsical feel.

As you can see below, I ended up ripping out the quilting shown in this previous post on the darker green fabric. Now there are yellow beads scattered around. Dandelions, probably. (Non-Floridians may not know this, but dandelions don’t grow down here.) I’m tempted to add a lamb, which for some reason didn’t occur to me until just this second. The funny thing is, this little flock of sheep is just a sideshow in a much bigger image. 

Hope you’re having a nice weekend. We hiked around most of the day looking at the new spring leaves.

Feeling sheepish

Need some sheep for a grassy field? Here is one way to make them, using a punch needle with embroidery floss or other threads to make the fleece. If you’re not familiar with punch needle work, here is a nice tutorial on Planet June by June Gilbank. I tried 2 strands of white floss with metallic silver on the upper left, but it looked too gray. On the upper right is plain white floss, which seemed a tad dull. The lower left one is white floss with one strand of variegated thread... it’s pretty, but not a good sheep color for this project. On the lower right is the winner, one strand of perle cotton in a cream color. 

The backing is white Kona quilting cotton. After taking the fabric out of the embroidery hoop, it’s trimmed to about 1/8" away from the loops. Then it's glued around back with tacky white glue. (A bamboo skewer comes in very handy to press down the raw edges.) The black parts are ultrasuede, their eyes are a gold bead held with a knot of black thread, while the ears have a stitch of brown floss. 

Here they are in place with seed stitch quilting, consisting of 2 strands of variegated floss. It’s pretty hard to tell, but in a few places I colored over the dark green pattern where it seemed too prominent next to the sheep, using a light green wax colored pencil. Might need do some more. I’m not 100% sure that I like the quilting stitches... may try some beads instead and see how that looks.


These remind me of sheep pins I made eons ago out of polymer clay. Actually, these guys could be pins with a little pin back sewed on. Their face and legs might need stiffening, though. You could fuse two layers of ultrasuede together, maybe.
Hope you’re having a creative week!

#3 is designed, I think

I liked the idea of adding more lime green to this (see previous post comments), but couldn’t find the right color/pattern in my stash. A splotchy batik was not going to mesh with these fabrics and every other chunk of fabric was a little off color-wise AND there were not going to be any shopping trips(!) So I added more hot pink, black, and white.

As I’ve mentioned previously, these 4 tops aren’t supposed to be masterpieces. Yet, if something really nags at me, I have to change it. Do you see anything that looks funny in the photo below?

Those two pink and white pieces with the vertical stripes running through them seemed to break up the design in a weird way. Below the stripes are horizontal, which looks much better (to me, anyway.)

Time to sew. I might break down and buy some lime green for the binding, we shall see. One step at a time!

Top #3... needs what?

Here are the fabrics for the third top ironed and tossed up on the design wall just to see how they’re looking. The other related posts in this series are here. I’m thinking it might need some more mostly black fabric, or mostly white, or both to punch it up a bit. Any opinions?

Here is a close-up of the cute retro fashionistas on several of them.

The next step is to start chopping up these chunks into similar widths and making big stripes out of them. Have a nice weekend, everybody!

Top #2 is sewn together

I took out the dreaded purple polka dot fabric (shown here on the design wall.) This definitely looks better. The pink, white, and black certainly is a cheery color scheme. The other related posts are here.

The dots now live on the back of this pillow, which goes with the quilt.

Only two more tops to go!

Top #2 on the design wall

To make it easier to arrange the pieces for this second quilt top from the estate sale fabric, I decided to clear all the “stuff” off of my design wall and actually use it for its intended purpose. Here is a close-up of some of the fabrics in this batch. Love the Eiffel tower prints!

Below is the entire top. I don’t know about you, but it looks to me as if those purple dots aren’t fitting in very well. Can you say “sore thumb?” There is enough fabric to insert something else instead. The other option in this kind of situation is to cut up the purple dots into smaller pieces and have it appear more than once, but I doubt that would work in this case.

This basic arrangement of big chunks is similar to top #1, but using the design wall instead of winging it is definitely making it easier already.

Happy Monday!

1st estate sale fabric top completed!

Do you remember the estate sale fabric I was fortunate enough to to find? It was already cut into medium-sized pieces and I was going to chop it up even smaller. However, since this is for a utilitarian project (a lap quilt) it seemed unnecessary. Besides, the prospect of lil ol‘ me sewing together four sets of fabric into quilts is chancy enough, so why make it that much harder? Below is a close up of some of the diverse fabrics.

Below is the whole top. While I did have to iron and straighten out the various pieces, I didn’t chop them up much at all. Because they‘re big prints, the pieces couldn’t have been much smaller anyway. If you look at the smallest pieces on the right side, they start to look a little muddled. But maybe that’s due to what’s next to them. I did put the prints with the dark brown backgrounds next to lighter pieces, mostly. Hey, whatever, this isn’t trying to be a masterpiece.

Another detail. The next step is to figure out the quilting. I’ll probably stitch in the ditch, then do large geometric shapes like zig-zags, wiggles, and in some areas follow the design.

My only complaint is that someone had the bright idea of spraying some perfumed stuff on the fabrics, which billows up when they’re ironed. Hate that stuff.

Anyway, one top done, on to the next one. By the way, I have never actually made a utilitarian quilt before, only wall hangings(!)

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.

The Quilted Apple Clock That Gave Me a Hard Time

The post that describes how the apple was made is here. Basically, it consists of a 1/8" piece of hardboard covered with quilted fabric. How hard could it be to make it into a clock?

Clock parts are readily available in craft stores. While they come with a plain set of hands, this fork and knife pair was irresistible for a kitchen clock. The only hard part would be to drill a hole in the hardboard large enough to fit the gold threaded shaft through. This one is 1/4" long.
So, after marking a good position for the hands and making an entry hole in the fabric with an Xacto knife, I started to drill. In nanoseconds something strange gripped the bit. I switched the drill into reverse and backed it out.



It appeared to be a batting volcano. It’s hard to see in the photo how big it was, but it was a large, hard lump that bulged up under the fabric at least an inch. Where did this thing come from? It was too huge to be a few wisps of the stitched quilt batting. Slowly a memory surfaced... wasn’t there an an extra layer or two of loose batting under there, meant to plump up the apple? Oops. Clearly, it had to be removed somehow. Tweezers? Too wimpy. Only pliers had the gripping power to perform the needed surgery. 1,2,3, pull!


This is what came out. It was some fluffy synthetic batting that I wouldn’t normally quilt with, so had been trying to use up. Oh well!






As you can see, the battingectomy left quite a large tear in the fabric. Hey, at least the shaft fit through the hole in the hardboard (after putting a larger bit in the drill.) Now I only had to figure out a way to patch this mess.




The patch is a donut of fusible-backed fabric. It seems to blend in well enough; nobody’s going to look that closely. After attaching various pieces I could fit the very delicate clock hands on it and finish this project.

Oops, again. Because the shaft is only 1/4" long, the clock hands were hitting the puffy quilted surface. What to do...? Delicate being the operative word, I gently bent the clock hands upwards so they wouldn’t hit the clock or each other.
It’s about time this thing was operational! Any lessons?
• Drill the hole in the wood first.
• Don’t drill loose batting.
• Buy a longer clock shaft in the future.
• Even though this project ticked me off at times, it was worth it in the end.
• Time flies when you’re crafting puns.