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

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.

Tag Galaxy... a fabulous way to find images

Do you need reference photos and/or inspiration? The Tag Galaxy image search system has been around for a year or two, but I just heard about it. You enter a tag (i.e. search term) such as quilts and a solar system appears:

The main term quilt is on the Sun, while related terms such as fabric, sewing, and patchwork orbit around it. When you click on the Sun, images start flying in from all sides:

 

The images are photographs coming from Flicker that have been tagged with the word quilt, apparently. Once they have arranged themselves into a sphere...

 you can rotate it up, down, and around to see the images on all sides. If you want to zoom in on one photo, just click on it...

 ...and it enlarges. The web site is animated with Flash, so this post gives just a hint of how cool it is. Try it and be mesmerized!

I almost forgot to mention where I heard about this, on the Teach Science and Math blog...many thanks to David Wetzel. There are several other image search engines mentioned in his post, so you may want to check those out, too.

Take two on the oak branches

Actually this is the third painting/collage I’ve done of this subject, but this one is based on the same photograph (cropped down) as this first version so it seems like #2, even if it isn’t really. It’s engrossing to test out various ways to depict these trees. While not 100% satisfied yet, I don’t hate these tryouts, which is a refreshing experience. Often In the past when painting, my reaction after a few hours of labor has been a strong desire to throw the canvas in a nice hot bonfire.

This version is less stylized than the first one and incorporates more paper than fabric in the collage part. Also, it has something ripped out of an old National Geographic. It’s current title is Splendorous, based on one of the torn-out words. I can’t recall seeing that word in print before, love it. Who knew how fun it would be to add some text to the image? Here’s a detail shot:

So here’s the question, dear readers... Is it finished? The in-process photo below shows the Spanish moss I was originally thinking of adding. 

The clumps of moss aren’t all in the exact spots where they would go, but hopefully this gives you an idea. Yes, no, doesn’t matter? Thanks for any opinions!

Ta-dah...the finished wolf

After glue-basting the patches down and cutting out the wolf, I tried some possible background fabrics. The idea was to vaguely suggest a landscape while keeping it very simple. I considered introducing some subdued greens, but they looked hideous, so forget that!

The above colors were pretty good, but overall it was too blah. The fabrics below were almost what the artist ordered, but the gray “mountain range” seemed too similar to the wolf’s underlying fur color. I also fixed his mouth...above it looks like he has an overbite and his lower jaw was too rigid, so below it’s a tad more wrinkled.

So, after some free-motion machine stitching and a fabric binding, here’s how he turned out:

I’m pretty happy with this piece, all things considered. There were some glitches with the eye... next time I’ll probably paint the entire eye instead of fooling with teensy pieces of fabric. I’m not crazy about this “typical” binding and need to come up with a more interesting option. Maybe painting a more irregular “frame” that is rigid because of the acrylic paint and stitching it on would do the trick. (Will have to try that idea, probably doesn’t make too much sense!)


Last but not least, any ideas for a title? Other than Ta-dah, that is.

Wild times in the studio

Recently, I was working on a writing project that involved describing how it feels to be a wolf, so that seems to be what inspired this project. After working out a sketch of a profile of canis lupus, I transferred it to a grayish blue fabric with some texture. The lines are painted with black gesso to get a matte finish. The photo below makes the gray look neutral, but it’s fairly blue as seen above.

The fabric is pinned to 1/2 inch thick foam core, by the way. It makes a wonderful portable work surface that can be put on an easel, laid flat, pinned up on the design wall, whatever. I put a paper cutout around the silhouette of the wolf because the plan was for the background to be a light value. Then I started pinning on patches of fabric in somewhat realistic, but intensified colors.

Some of these fabrics had to be switched out later, but the only way to know is to try them out. One of the big questions was how much of the line work to cover up vs. cutting the patches so that it showed. I tried not to get too hung up on it. The first black fabric I tried was too busy, but this one has just a suggestion of dark gray swishes, which worked well.

The finished piece will be in my next post, hope you like him so far.

Top #4... last but not least!

These are the fabrics for the last of The 4 Tops. Do you agree with me that this group has a distinctly masculine vibe? The piece in the center left has tiny dots on black... it had too much visual vibration and looked muddy, so that fabric was deleted. Also, it seemed to me that more red and black would be beneficial to add more dark notes.

Fortunately, I had some red and black checked fabric plus some black with gold dots that fit in. (It’s somewhat amazing to me that despite having a ton of fabric, very little of my stash melds with this group.) Below is the first “draft” of the arrangement. Do you see any issues with it so far?

Maybe the black and white photo will make it clearer what bothered me with this design... the various rectangles were merging together too much, especially the lighter tones. I wanted more separation in the values.

Below is what it looks like pieced together. I didn’t have quite enough regular cotton fabric, so had to sneak in a couple of pieces of flannel on the edges. No biggie.

It has been interesting to work with such large pieces of fabric with large motifs, compared to the little scraps with more subdued patterns I usually am assembling. Oops, just noticed a glitch in the final top... the large guitar piece got vertically flipped with the piece below it. Hmmm... do I care enough to rip them out and restitch them?!?!

Stitching Jenny

It’s been awhile since I last posted about Jenny but progress is being made slowly but surely. The background is mostly completed, and gold beads were added for the flower centers. I was very concerned about how to stitch her down, but after making samples decided to go for a low key approach. I used my sewing machine’s faux blanket stitch in a matching thread on the plum parts of the body, and hand stitched her hooves and belly. The ears, tail tip, and the gold part of her nose are not stitched down to create a little more dimension.

The blank green area on the left will be getting more “stuff,” so it hasn’t been quilted yet. I might add more decorative details to her, but want to see how the whole thing looks once everything is actually on. This is only about half of the total picture, the rest of it is still in pieces.

Below is a close up of her head. For some reason, her ears are my favorite part.

My hubby Andy and I are going to the World Quilt Show in West Palm Beach this weekend... should be fab!

#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!