Book reviews: art quilts, bead embroidery, making glass beads

It’s long past time to catch up on some book reviews, so without further ado:

Twelve by twelve is a beautifully designed book that arose from a challenge group of a dozen artists who created one 12" X 12" art quilt every two months over a two year period (Thanks to Gerrie Congdon for straightening me out on the time factor). The themes varied from Water to Shelter to Mathematics.

There are comments from each artist, detailed photographs, works in progress, studios to see, discussions of techniques, and much more in this 176-page book. As you can see by the cover image, some of the quilts have non-objective imagery, many are abstract, some are more realistic.

I’ve made a few quilts this size for the Quilting Arts calendar contests and for auctions to benefit SAQA and it is a good size to work with. However, making the commitment to creating so many so consistently is way beyond me... hats off to these artists for getting it done!

My only complaint about Sherry Serafini’s Sensational Bead Embroidery is that the cover image doesn’t begin to do justice to this artist’s glorious work. It's an odd view of a bracelet and all that darkness looks gloomy, while her beaded pieces are a delight to the eye. Check out her web site to get an idea. And don't miss her handbags, they are amazing.

I’ve been a fan of Sherry’s (along with a zillion other beaders) for years, mostly from seeing her work in Bead & Button magazine. Have only attempted some small pieces, but love the technique. It allows you to turn humble seed beads along with a few stones, jewels, or Scrabble tiles into gorgeous one-of-a-kind colorful, textured jewelry.

There are 25 projects in this book with clear directions and supply lists and good closeups of the beaded earrings, brooches, rings, bracelets, and necklaces that show the details. There are projects for all levels of experience.

Creating Glass Beads by Jeri L. Warhaftig is designed as an intermediate level workshop, so beginners should probably start elsewhere. However, the tools and materials for the craft are well covered. Each “session” takes the reader through the process of making a project such as a pendant with gold leaf, an eye bead, and an intriguing combo of glass and silver “clay.” At the end of each session are numerous examples made by students plus a gallery of other professional artists’ beads made with similar techniques.

Making glass beads is a craft I admire but have avoided due to the use of actual *fire*...but if I ever dare to try it this book will be an excellent guide to exploring different techniques. After learning the basics from a very patient teacher, first.

It’s been fun being on Lark Crafts reviewer list, they publish some very inspiring books!

What is my 2012 calendar animal, you ask?

My entry was accepted into the 2012 Quilting Arts calendar, so WOOHOO! There has been a hilarious debate on my Facebook page about what animal it is based on only a section of the face. It’s been a good example of the power of the human mind to extrapolate on available information. Guesses for the image shown at left have ranged from lion to bloodhound to monkey to horse to bunny to goat to llama to emu to owl, and even pig or elephant! Then there was prairie dog, but that was a joke (I think!)

The closest guess (without hints) was wolf. But it’s not a wolf.

Without any further ado, here is Cautious:

It’s an animal that I’ve never seen before in person, but one day this little gray fox was investigating our bird-feeding station, and by sheer chance I happened to look out the window. The fox’s coat was beautifully glossy, and it had a full, bushy tail. The neck and ears were reddish, the rest was silvery gray. After grabbing my camera and snapping a few photos, I tapped on the glass and got this view. One of the fun characteristics I found out while doing research about gray foxes (but not red foxes) is that they like to climb trees!

Here is my post about making this artwork. And this Wikipedia page has some nice photos of gray foxes and more info.

2012 Calendar

Woohoo, I'm happy to say that my entry has made it to the finalist stage. Showed my critter’s right eye last time, so here’s the left. Guess I’d better sew that sleeve on now...

Update February 14: It’s in the calendar...so yay!

Watercolor pencils on fabric

My first completed project this year is for the 2012 Quilting Arts Calendar... might as well try for three years in a row! The theme is Feeling Pet-ty, in other words animals, a lifelong favorite subject of mine. The previous entries had fairly bright colors but the subject this time called for a much more subdued palette. I had not used watercolor pencils on fabric before, but because they are transparent and the idea was to allow the patterning on the fabric to show through, wc pencils had potential.

First, a little organizing was in order. These pencils date from a book project eons ago and were scattered about in various nooks and crannies of my studio. After corraling them into a semblance of order, a coloring chart became essential because of the nature of wc pencils. It’s very hard to tell just looking at the pencil what color it really is.

As you can see on the left, the colors change drastically when water is added.

Because I was not going to use plain white fabric, the pencils would be interacting with the underlying color and/or pattern. The fabric needed to represent the fur of my critter, without getting literal, necessarily. Below are the four contenders:

The one on the left was a possibility, the next one was too spotty, the next one too contrasty... the one on the right with it’s pattern of leafy, woodsy imagery seemed most promising. So, I scribbled on some colors (below) and brushed over them over with water. So good so far, time to jump right in.

The sketch was done in Photoshop, won’t get into the details of that now. Once it was printed out, I redrew it onto tracing paper. Someone had asked me awhile ago about my unusual method of transferring sketches, so here are some photos. The tracing paper sketch is on top, and I just draw directly on the fabric underneath. The pencil point is visible through the tracing paper.

I roll back the tracing paper often to see how it’s looking.

Also, it’s easy to see through the tracing paper where the pencil is because it is darker.

This method isn’t suitable in every situation, but because I was using a dark wc pencil and a thick line, it worked fine. Why not use transfer paper such as Saral? I do on many occasions, but this works just as well for me and there are no worries about a Saral line ending up in the wrong place and being tough to remove. How about a light box? That’s a good option if the base material is see-through enough. But, if you’re transferring a sketch to primed canvas (for example), a light box won’t work.

Below is the colored line before and after being washed over with water. Quite a difference! You can always add additional layers of the pencil, if needed, after the fabric is dry. Or, you can use the pencil on wet fabric, which really lays down pigment but may be a tad less controlled. By the way, in this case the amount of water being added is just sufficient to melt the wc pencil, not saturate the surrounding area.

How about setting the wc pencil? I tried ironing it, which didn't seem to do anything much. A wet tissue dabbed onto the pencil work is an easy test of whether the pigment is set or not. Painting on thinned acrylic gel, textile medium, or Jacquard colorless extender (tutorial with wax pencils here) probably would have worked but since quite a bit of the image was involved, there was too much territory to cover. Instead, it was sprayed with two coats of Claybord matte fixative. This is the main fixative I use, because it has a relatively low odor that dissipates quickly. As you can see from the eye detail at the top of this post, there was another whole layer of stitching to add, so I didn’t want pigment from the pencils to get all over the threads or have to keep smelling a noxious odor. The other advantage is that is doesn’t stiffen the fabric much, if at all.

The watercolor pencils gave me the soft look I wanted, so that was the main thing. Wondering what this animal is? If it doesn’t get into the calendar, I’ll reveal all in a couple of months. If it does get in, I’ll post more about this project closer to the calendar’s release date.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Inspired Ideas: The Christmas Issue

Inspired Ideas is an online ezine I just found out about via Elizabeth Dulemba’s blog. It has 168 pages plus an appendix... click here to check it out:

It’s full of creative and unusual craft projects such as a Christmas village made of recycled cereal boxes, a yarn ball wreath, cookie cutter jewelry designed by a gallery of crafters, artists, and bloggers including Mary Engelbreit. The brainchild of Amy Powers, it is an impressive example of innovative publishing... and it’s free!

Happy browsing!

Whimsical bird in progress

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted about the LIQ project but never fear, progress is being made ever so slowwwwly. Above is the rough sketch of the bird drawn in Photoshop for size and placement in the larger scene... the plan is to refine her when the bird is actually constructed. Sometimes I make a very precise sketch but in this case it seemed reasonable to wing it (pun intended.)

My original theory was that the bird would be some shade of blue with a red belly, but a dotted violet, orange paisley, and black on black fabrics ended up working out best. You have to keep an open mind! I first tried matching orange and violet points on the wings and tail, but didn’t quite look right.

The striped fabric seen above right had the violet and orange in it plus some other colors that added interest. For the legs (below), I wrapped gold ribbon around black rickrack. The feet are made of interfacing painted with gold metallic acrylic paint. This photo shows more of a bronze color, but the gold ended up working better.

After gluing on the points, I machine embroidered the wings and tail. They are attached at their bases, but left free on the tips to give more dimension. I had sewn the body to the quilted background with a machine zigzag stitch, then remembered there was supposed to be a “swish” behind the bird...oops!

So I ripped out part of the stitching, put the light blue swish under the body, then restitched it. Some simple free-motion-quilting was done on the body, a beak and bead eyeball was added, plus some beads along her belly.

She’s carrying a piece of fabric back to her nest, in case anyone is wondering.

Home at last

Here is how A Free Spirit (on the right) looks in his new home in New Zealand:

Love the two images together...many thanks to Julia Arden for sending this photo!

The previous posts about how this mini-quilt was made are here and here.