Monthly Archives: October 2010

Everyday Inspiration

October 30th, 2010 in Inspiration
By Diane Pedersen

A creative life is filled with challenges and rewards, puzzles and curiosities. This ongoing series of poems attempts to express the “Aha”s and “What if”s, the deep ponderings and casual observations of an inquiring mind trying to make sense of reality. May it serve, for you, as a bit of “Everyday Inspiration” along your own creative path.

It finally

Occurred to me

After

My whole life,

Searching for

The one perfect path,

That it might be

Better

To follow

Many paths:

To be multi-dimensional

Instead of

One-dimensional

Author Interview with Roberta Cardew

October 29th, 2010 in Behind the Scenes
By Elise Hubbard

…. Roberta Cardew

While flipping through Roberta Cardew’s new book From Spain with Love, the brilliant photography and fantastic quilts got me hooked immediately. But I started to wonder, how did Spain change a woman from Arkansas so quickly?

Music of the Dawn

Roberta became tired of the hustle and bustle of every day life. She and her husband, Seth, decided to take up an offer proposed to her by a friend: A house available for purchase in Spain! At first, she hadn’t planned on actually buying a house in Spain, but after a week of the bright and vibrant colors of the sea, the plant life, and the food, how could she not take up her friends offer? She bought the house and instantly Spain became her muse. She fell in love with quilts and never looked back. She now lives in Masia Abaldas, Spain part time, and Fort Smith, Arkansas part time, where she owns a quilt shop. Her website is: http://www.jfffabrics.com

Every day things now prompt her to create beautiful quilts. In Roberta’s book From Spain with Love, she shows how the beauty of grass and flowers, or sailboats in the jeweled sea can be captured into a quilt—she even includes yummy Mediterranean recipes! And, of course, all her projects are done with love. Roberta talks more about her journey in this interview…

Searching for Sailboats

What and when was your first experience as an artist?

Actually, too much spare time in Spain nudged me into the subject of quilting. There had long been a fascination with quilt making and the colors of Spain, I found very inspiring. I also carry a lot of fabric around with me (much more fabric that clothes) and wherever I happen to be, I make sure I have good sewing machines. So, making quilts just happened naturally and it stuck!

What was your career prior to being an artist?

I’ve done a lot, but then I’m older than most of your authors. I majored in mathematics at university, then studied music/piano at the conservatory in Paris after that. I have pulled upon both of those experiences, career wise. Also I’ve taught French. I was very involved in English smocking and heirloom sewing for quite a while, had a shop, designed European style children’s clothing, and exhibited at the American Museum in Bath. While living in England, I owned, operated, and developed recipes and cooked for a Mediterranean Restaurant in Cornwall which was fantastically successful. I still am interested in children’s clothing to a degree and have designed a line of what I call “designer casual” clothes for kids under the trade name of “THUMBPRINTS.”

Colors of Spain

What inspired you to make a career of your art?

Just being old makes you realize, if you’re going to do anything with your life, you’d jolly well better get started! I chose quilting as I discovered something particularly inspirational in the Spanish red and yellow…”The Colors of Spain”

Do you have a process or ritual for starting new projects?

Just walking through the shop is the biggest turn on for me. I do the buying, at least the fabric choices, so I should like the fabric in the shop. Nonetheless, the bolts never cease to be new, exciting, inspiring and actually spine tingling as I walk among the shelves. Ideas for quilts jump out, begging to be made because the idea is inspirational.

Magenta Magic

What happens when you finish a project – do you celebrate?

Smile, from ear to ear, and play a piece on a fairly newly acquired Yamaha Conservatory Grand Piano. It is a jewel of an instrument and I rarely have time to play.

What would you like to create that you have not tried yet?

Cooking is also a passion of mine and I’m getting interested in ways to create great, taste exploding food. In a nutshell, cooking in ways which achieve a “taste explosion”, to me, is like achieving “inspirational value” in quilting.

What memorable moments can you share about your travels or teaching experience?

The most memorable moment was in “being taught”, when I was able to switch from math to music. (Being in Paris didn’t hurt anything!)

Through the Music Room Window

Quilting Tips: For Beginners—Anatomy of a Quilt

October 28th, 2010 in Quilting Tips Series
By The Tech Editors

As with any first-time venture, it is important that you recognize and understand the key components of your new undertaking.

A quilt is basically a three-layer fabric “sandwich.” The finished quilt top is layered with filler—called batting—and a backing fabric, and the three layers are then secured together with stitching. This stitching may be decorative or strictly utilitarian; in either case, it is called quilting. Finally, the edges of the stitched quilt sandwich are finished with fabric strips, called binding.

A block is a section of the quilt that forms a self-contained design. Some designs are literal, such as stars or pinwheels. Others are more abstract. A block is usually square but it may also be rectangular or any other geometric shape.

Blocks can be separated by lattice strips. (You may also see these strips referred to as sashing.) Lattice strips are especially effective in sampler quilts: they act as a frame to highglight each block.

Corner stones are little squares that appear at the corner of the blocks where the vertical and horizontal lattice strips meet. While they are not essential—the vertical or horizontal lattice can be cut from a single long strip—these squares make a lovely design element and sometimes even create secondary designs with the corners of adjacent blocks. Cornerstones are also referred to as corner posts.

Many quilts have borders that surround the quilt top on all four sides, much like a frame surrounds a painting. Our example has a narrow inner border (think of a mat in a picture frame) and a wider outer border that completes the overall design. Borders are typically made from fabrics already in the quilt top.

This information is excerpted from Make Your First Quilt with M’Liss Rae Hawley.

International Quilt Festival – Houston

October 27th, 2010 in News & Events
By Rebekah Meier

Next week I will be traveling to Houston where I will be teaching classes at the International Quilt Festival. My class techniques are from my book, Fabric Art Collage, 40+ Mixed Media Techniques.

For those that are not familiar with Quilt Festival, it’s a mecca for those of us that love anything related to traditional quilting, art quilting, and mixed media. The shopping and exhibits are fabulous with all things related to quilting all in one place. Below are my class descriptions – they’re going to be so fun!

Embossed Batting: Students will learn how to emboss quilt batting. Yes, batting! It is super easy and a very versatile technique that can be used as a background, embellishment, or in this case a book cover.

Fabric Art Collage Tote: This technique incorporates tissue paper and fusible web, which when combined together with paint and ink, creates a very unique material that can be fused onto almost anything. In this class it will be used to create a tote bag.

Paint Paper Transfer Fabric: This class incorporates cool techniques using TAP^®Transfer Artist Paper, Lutradur^® and other materials creating a piece of wall art.

I hope to see you at Festival – I still have a few openings in my classes! Click here for the times and registration details.

Road Trip to PIQF

October 26th, 2010 in News & Events
By Lynn Koolish

We love going to Pacific International Quilt Festival (PIQF) in Santa Clara. It’s a bit of a drive, but close enough to visit in a day. We know we didn’t see everyone and everything, but here’s a taste of what we did see.

First up was Wendy Hill and the fabulous Color Cascade Special Exhibit. Wendy and her quilt group made quilts using the 3-in-1 Color Tool. Wendy explained it in a previous post, and it was great to see it in person. More is coming in a future post.

Wendy HIll

And right across the aisle were Lura Schwarz-Smith & Kerby Smith, authors of The Secrets of Digital Quilting: From Camera to Quilt, with their special exhibit of digitally printed work. (Kerby is never without his camera.)

Lura Schwarz-Smith & Kerby Smith

As we wandered the vendor aisles, we ran across first-time C&T author Colleen Granger, who has a book, Circle Quilts, coming out in January. She had just recieved the postcards to publicize her books and she was ecstatic.

Happy new author Colleen Ganger

When we finally got to the quilts, we saw that Jean Wells had won a Blue Ribbon for the Best Use of Color-Innovative for her quilt done in the improvisational style that she teaches in her latest book Intuitive Color & Design.

Hidden Stone by Jean Wells

And Judy Mathieson won an Honorable Mention in the Innovative Category for her quilt Cinnabar and Indigo.

Cinnabar and Indigo by Judy Mathieson

We saw Lorraine Torrence who had a great booth selling clothing, clothing patterns, and her latest book, Fearless Design for Every Quilter. We also saw Chris Porter and Gloria Loughman who were teaching. And, Marcia Stein was in the Cotton Patch booth autographing her new book, Picture This!

Apologies to anyone we missed, it was such a whirlwind day, we know we didn’t see it all.

October Creative Troupe Round-Up

October 25th, 2010 in Inspiration
By Alyice Edrich

Are you ready for Halloween? We’ve got three quick and easy projects that are sure to put the finishing touches on your Halloween décor. Then our Creative Troupe members have a few ideas to help you with your gift-giving.

Short on cash but don’t want to skimp on Christmas? Take a cue from Rose Waterrose and turn something used into something stunning and new! Can you believe this designer jacket was created with a used jean jacket found at a thrift store and embroidery thread? Just think of all the design possibilities: family trees, favorite poems, and even phrases from your favorite songs.

Have an out-of-focus photo with distracting background noise you just can’t part with? Let April Derrick of Live 2 Create help you take it out of your junk drawer and put it into your scrapbook. Heck with her tutorial, you can turn that photo into a focal point for a lovely framed art piece. Stop by her blog for details on how she created this lovely scrapbook page.

Are you afraid of resin? Thanks to Belinda Spiwak’s quick tutorial, you don’t have to be! Isn’t her shadow box amazing? And that spoon? Who would’ve thought that filling a spoon with little embellishments would make a great accent!

Tired of spooky male skulls? Want to put a little chic into your décor? Julie Ann Shahin shares a detailed tutorial for creating this fabulous skull! Can’t you just see it sitting on your mantel?

Follow in Melony Bradley, of Mel’s Designs’, footsteps and create stuffed, paper bag Halloween characters. Not only will they make cute decorations for your home, but they’re so quick and easy to make that you can give them out to your favorite ghouls and goblins!

As part of the Creative Troupe, myself, I thought I’d share my tutorial for helping your kids create this cute mummy couple. Can you believe they are made out of old food jars? Talk about a great way to teach your kids about upcycling while you bond as a family.

These are just a few of the amazing projects our Creative Troupe members have been creating.

Have you joined the Creative Troup yet? It’s free. It’s fun. And it only takes a moment to sign up!

Click here for all the details about Creative Troupe membership. Then check out the Creative Troupe’s blog links here for a little more artsy inspiration.

Everyday Inspiration

October 23rd, 2010 in Inspiration
By Diane Pedersen

A good photo

Has all these

Ingredients:

Planning

Precision

And

Randomness

PPR…

“Babies On The Way” TAP™ Fiber Art Project

October 22nd, 2010 in Free Projects, Quiltmaking, Sewing, Surface Design & Mixed Media
By Tristan Gallagher

As a momma bird gathers scraps to build her nest, this piece too is made from scraps! Creative Troupe member Jeanelle McCall has combined a little free-motion embroidery, hand embroidery and a photo transfer using TAP™ Transfer Artist Paper to complete this project. For fiber art and mixed media inspiration be sure to check out Jeanelle’s website fivespoongallery.com

“Babies On The Way” TAP™ Project

Materials:

TAP™ Transfer Artist Paper
Image of nest with eggs
embroidery thread – off-white, pale blue, pale pink, dark brown
free-motion thread for sewing machine – dark blue
Fabric scraps:

- 8″ x 10″ off-white cotton
- 7.25″ x 5.5″ canvas (I used blue)
- 4″ x 6″ off white cotton
- 3.5″ x 5.5″ batting
- 3.5″ x 3.5″ off white linen
- small piece of fabric approx. 6.5″ x .75″ for the limb

Instructions:

Although not necessary, I like to fray all the edges of the fabric I use for this project.
Print image of nest with eggs on to a sheet of TAP,according to manufacturer’s instructions. Trim around and as close to the image as possible.
Position the TAP “nest with egg” image on the 3.5″ x 3.5″ off white linen – centered and towards the bottom. You will need space above the image for the limb. Transfer the image according to the TAP instructions.
Now the layering begins. Place your linen piece with the nest – centered and towards the bottom – on the white 4″ x 6″ piece of fabric. Layer these two pieces on the batting.
Place your “limb” fabric in a slight arch above the nest and let the ends extend beyond your layered work. Hand stitch the limb in position with pale blue embroidery thread.
With a sewing machine, free-motion stitch the momma bird to the layered work. Make sure her feet are resting on the limb. You may wish to sketch the bird lightly with a pencil on the fabric and use this as a guide for the stitching.
Now layer your work, centered on the 7.25″ x 5.5″ (blue) canvas.
Then layer all this over the final piece of 8″ x 10″ off-white cotton.
With a simple running stitch, use the pale blue and pink embroidery thread to hand-embroider on the bird. Stitch highlights and shadows to enhance the TAP nest image with the pale pink and dark brown embroidery thread.
French knots, straight lines and “x”‘s are embroidered with off-white thread to secure all the layers together.

Staff Pick: Crazy with Cotton by Diana Leone

October 21st, 2010 in Staff Pick
By Carolyn Aune

What on earth do you do with a collection of Hawaiian shirts? My small quilting group had promised a young man we had known for years to make a quilt using his beloved Hawaiian shirts. He had lost a lot of weight, but he couldn’t bear to part with the shirts that were now way too big for him.

Like most non-quilters, he thought that his quilting friends could easily make a quilt from the shirts. In his mind all quilters knew how to turn any scraps of fabric into beautiful quilts. We wanted to reward this young man for his hard work of losing all the weight, so we said “Yes” before we actually saw the shirts. He had not told us that most of the shirts were made of rayon. Nor did we know that the colors and prints did not really coordinate. Now what?

Rather than despairing, we did what all quilters do and started searching for inspiration in the many quilting books we had acquired over the years. The rayon fabrics were what befuddled us the most, but we decided that sewing the fabric on a muslin foundation would solve that problem, so we hit upon using the method described in Crazy with Cotton, by Diana Leone to make the shirts into a crazy quilt.

Having found a workable solution, we had great fun fussy-cutting motifs to be the centers of the crazy quilt blocks and then cutting the remainder of the each shirt into strips for the outer rings of the blocks. We added some of our own batiks and other tonal fabrics to calm everything down a bit and add additional color.

Hula Girl block

Center Quilt block

Paradise Alley block

Diana’s clear instructions helped us sew these crazy strips into fun, bright 16″ blocks. Then we sashed the blocks with orange and black. The crazy quilt turned out to be the perfect project for a group to work on together because no perfect piecing is necessary. And it was an excellent way to use fabrics that are not 100% cotton. We had created a gift filled with love for our friend and filled with the joy we experienced in doing the project together. What fun it was!

The finished quilt

The print-on-demand edition of Crazy with Cotton by Diana Leone is now available.

Meet Grendel, the cloth Halloween witch doll

October 19th, 2010 in Inspiration
By Sue Astroth

I love Halloween! Pumpkins, brooms, ghosts and goblins, I love it all. So when a friend said “why don’t you make one of the dolls from our Make Cloth Dolls book by Terese Cato,” followed by, “you could make a witch,” that was all she had to say. I was hooked!

Before the day was out, I had collected my fabric, and read through the instructions several times so I had a good understanding of how the doll was to be sewn together. Then it was time to get started.

Terese’s instructions were easy to follow and I was able to put together the basic doll shape in no time and on the first try…even her hands! When it came time to sculpt her face I kept it very simple and added the pre-requisite wart and simple button eyes. Being a witch, any imperfections simply added to her personality!

Encouraged by my success, I started to dress the doll. There isn’t a specific “witch” pattern in the book so I modified the clothing patterns to make them work for my purposes. I highly suggest you follow Terese’s note to dress the doll prior to adding the head, hair and arms. It really does make it easier! Here is a breakdown of her wardrobe and accessories……

I lengthened the skirt pattern and made it a bit fuller so there would be room to add a couple of tulle petticoats. So you can see the petticoats, I used a small black safty pin to gather up the skirt a bit.

I found the cape pattern online but I needed to lengthen it so it was about the same as the skirt. A small piece of chain was used to keep it in place. Her apron is a scrap of some fishnet style fabric popular at this time of year and her shoes are made from leather scraps. Her stockings are from a rummage sale t-shirt—totally a lucky find!

The necklace, wand, birdcage and even her shoe buckles are all from my paper crafting supplies. The shawl, is actually a hand-knit doily I purchased a number of years ago in a collectibles shop. Her hat was from a big box craft store that I simply embellished with scraps left over from her clothes. Her pet spiders, Larry and Harry, and her pet crow, Max, are all from various craft stores.

Since I had not used all the treasures I originally collected for the doll, whose name is Grendel by the way, I decided to make her a carpet bag. Doesn’t every witch need a carpet bag? I created the pattern as I went along and filled it with all the things she would need to cast spells and make potions.

I really had fun making Grendel and creating her personality. I have a feeling she will be a permanent fixture in my studio….maybe she can work a little magic for me when I need it.

C&T Publishing is a group of quilters and crafters dedicated to publishing products tailored to our audience. This blog is where we break away from book schedules and marketing campaigns to focus on what drives us to be creative and how this creativity manifests itself in our every day lives.