Material Maven's 'Comfort' Quilt

"Connoisseurs of Comfort" by Judy Wedemeyer - 2013 (12"square)

Today was November's quilt reveal on the Material Maven's blog.  Here is the link to my post  "Connoisseurs of Comfort" where you can read the full story and construction methods.  Be sure to check out all of the Comfort themed quilts.

January theme is:  STRONG

Addendum:
November's 'COMFORT' theme was my final challenge piece as a Material Maven (although I didn't realize it at the time).  My creative focus will be directed toward producing art quilts for our Anchorage Centennial Celebration on behalf of Anchorage Log Cabin Quilter's, Inc.

Material Maven Theme Challenge: Interwoven

"Interwoven: Through The Ages" by Judy Wedemeyer  (12" sq)

My latest Material Maven challenge piece is now completed.  You can read about it's construction here, along with the other Maven's posts.  After much deliberation, I have chosen the next challenge theme to be 'communication' with the results to be revealed March 15th, 2013.  Be sure to check back then and thanks for tuning in.

"Zentipede"

Some projects mature with age, and this one in particular traveled the love/hate highway before morphing into one of my favorite art quilts.  Oddly, the few people who saw this piece during the beading phase definitely liked it while I remained less than thrilled with it.

The journey began four or five years ago during my first experimentation with hand dyeing fabrics.  Later I doodled a freestyle design on the surface using colored fabric markers.  Recently I dug into my stash of surface designed fabrics and decided to make an art quilt with this piece.

Some of the markers showed rather pale so I layered the top with batting and a backing and began free motion quilting all of the design elements with black thread to help define the shapes.  Using a machine button hole stitch to secure the raw edges helped keep the quilt squared and less inclined to warp with handling.

The resulting thread work contrast improved the look but remained somewhat lifeless to me.  Since beading was one of the reasons I took up art quilting, I thought this was a perfect surface to showcase beads for interest, texture and added pizazz.  This is truly one of the rare times in art where 'more was better'!  Every time I thought I was finished with the beading, it called for more, more!  Even now I wonder if I should have added beads to the center of the 'zentipede', but held off, knowing I can later if it really bothers me.

 "Zentipede" by Judy Wedemeyer (24" x 17")

The design is interesting regardless of the direction it is hung, so with that in mind I chose not to sign the front of the quilt.  With so many beads attached I didn't want the weight to pull on the fabric when on display, therefore I created a sturdy fabric backing to attach the art quilt to.  I applied a contrasting wine colored accent fabric to both sides of a fusible stiff stabilizer (like Tim Tex), and then satin stitched the edges with black thread.  Not wishing to detract from the button hole stitch around the quilt edge, I straight stitched the quilt to the backing using a smoke colored mono filament thread.  If it shows any sign of sagging once it is hung, I will free motion quilt a few areas to stabilize it sufficiently.

The doodles I created on this fabric brought to mind my recent discovery of the term 'zen doodle' (aka zentangle), which further confirmed my idea that I, along with many artists, have always doodled long before the zen aspect was applied to it.  My daughter and I instantly recognized a centipede in my quilt design, so with that in mind a title was born!  Zentipede.

Wild Flowers Quilt

 "Wild Flowers"  (12" square)

My two most recent little flower quilts were such a joy to make that I found myself smiling often while playing around with construction possibilities.  No doubt about it,  I love bright cheerful colors, a bit of whimsy, dashes of the unexpected, and of course exploring my favorite recurring floral theme.

Surprisingly, I noticed that having a 'workbook' mentality loosened my approach and expectations.  Perhaps having two similar foundations contributed to my explorations?  A new finishing technique surfaced with this project.  After hand sewing the conventional binding on "Spring Fling", I purposely opted for a machine zig-zag stitched edge on "Wild Flowers".
   

Heavy machine embroidery without extra stabilization causes the background to pucker, which I then had to heavily machine quilt out later on my first flower quilt.  Therefore, I hand embroidered the stems and leaf outlines on the second quilt.  Let me emphasize how tough poking a big eyed needle with 6 strands of embroidery floss through heavily quilted fabric is!  My finger joints ached for two days.  I fabric fused the green fabric inside the leaf outlines and machine stitched the edges to secure it.

Most enjoyable was inventing new flowers from jelly-roll selvages.  If you read my blog posts here and here, you will notice how my creativity just sort of evolves over time in a serendipitous progression. Look closely at the flowers ~

I folded the 'jelly-roll jiggle' in half lengthwise onto itself, then sewed along the fold, anchoring the fold permanently.  From there, I cut a small, medium and large strip for each flower, sewing the ends to form circles with donut hole centers.  Flowers were machine stitched to the quilted foundation and gluing the centers was my final step.

Floral centers are all different.  Buttons with the plastic shanks removed so they would lay flat are on the two smaller flowers.  The largest flower center holds an art clay (FIMO) cabochon I made nine years ago.  (Some things take time you know).  :)   My remedy for filling a concave area inside the flower center before gluing the buttons/cabochon in was to glue a piece of pellon down first, then glue the center on top of that.  

Final treatment is applying the kumihimo braid (I made 5 years ago) just inside the quilt edge, using a straight machine stitch to tack it down every inch or so.  I pulled the tiny ladybug sticker off mail that arrived yesterday and stuck it on the leaf.  I like how it looks but I don't think it will stay long term.  If it falls off I'll replace it with a more permanent alternative. 

Fabric Embellishing Workbook 2011

Since January I've been knocking out unfinished projects (UFO's) as rapidly as possible with three major goals in mind.  (1) Make space in my studio by using up supplies,  (2) complete this years donation items before gardening season revs up in May, and (3) learn new art quilt techniques using one of the many books within my personal library.  Here's the book I decided upon.  I'm thoroughly impressed with the format, style, layout and clear directions  compiled by four extremely talented artists. The clear photos and helpful tips assist in the learning process.  I recommend this resource without any hesitation.

The authors have created Workbook Journals from the 'pages' of various art quilt techniques they have experimented with.  Rather than the page sized rectangle they chose to work from, I set my page size to a 12" block because I knew auction donations would look best at least that large.  Starting from page one is not necessary but it made sense to follow the chapters as written since the first section is on creating different foundations for the 'pages'.  Best of all, there are options based on your interest and skill level.  My goal is to challenge myself more creatively ... as you will see below.

First lesson was to weave two pieces of fabric into one foundation, to be used as a mini art quilt page in my workbook.  I chose two pieces of cotton fabric I'd hand dyed a few years ago.  I wanted a subtle background with curvy lines instead of straight weaving.  My fabric pieces are larger than the 12" square because I planned to cut it in half after the foundation was complete

 

I took my time, followed the directions explicitly and was quite pleased with the results.  My light green rayon embroidery thread used in a narrow zigzag machine stitch, blends yet defines the weaving. 

I didn't have a plan when I started so it took a few days playing around.  Here's one possibility using the selvage ends of my jelly roll fabrics but I'm not convinced yet...  

but here's what happened to the other half of my fabric foundation...

"Spring Fling"  (11.5" square)

Longer daylight, warm sunshine, and my much anticipated desire for Spring's arrival is clearly expressed in this quilt. Gardening is definitely on my mind.  Micro machine quilting using clear nylon thread, and metallic thread accents in the purple squares prepped the foundation.

My design was drawn on tracing paper, pinned right side up on the foundation, then outline stitched with white bobbin thread.  I removed the tracing paper, then outlined the flower, leaves and grass with appropriate colored tatting thread wound on the bobbin and stitched from the backside of the quilt foundation, following the white thread outline I'd previously sewn.  Final step was to free motion thread paint the flower, leaves and grass with embroidery thread.  This quilt may be an auction donation, depending on what the other half of the fabric turns out to be?  One of them is for my workbook.