On Pointe

I must say, I could picture this piece in my eye before I ever put pencil to paper. I could see the quilting, the crystals... The whole quilt.  Then of course, I had to figure it out and execute...lol. Isn't it a pain when reality, gets in the way!

But I must say, having the vision so clear in my minds eye, make it easier to do... All except for the skirt.  I didn't know the best way to give it the 3D effect I seem to be going for I my pieces lately.  But I figure it out...  What do you think?

The piece is made from Robert Kaifman's Radiance fabric line, all except for the legs.  Radiance is a silk, cotton blend.  It is so easy to work with and such a joy to quilt, that I love working with it. Plus, how often do you get to work with washable silk?  I used Derwent Inktense pencils, to add the coloring/shading on/around the legs, as well as a bit on the floor for a shadowing effect.

Hope you like it... #radiancesilk #superiorthreads #kimonosilkbysuperior #inktense #berninausa #bernina830 

My latest piece

I have been so busy lately...  summer is family time and we spent all but 10 days in July on the road.  From my son-in-laws family lake house in Fiddle Lake, Pa, to Puerto Rico for my husband's fathers family reunion, with a little vacation time added on to the end, to a week in Vegas for work.  It is a wonder I found anytime to quilt, but I did.

I actually was able to finish a piece I started at the CQQ Retreat in April.  She doesn't have a name yet, but she is 95% complete.  I may add a few dimensional while flowers falling off the overpass and I still need to do a label (nut I need a name first)...  but other than that she is done.  I even did some tinting on her to add shadows and depth in her back and arms.

What do you think?

Oh...  looking at the picture I realized I never added her earring!..  ok, so maybe 94% complete :-).

Enjoy!

Life... why must it always get in the way...

So, I know most are probably thinking I stopped blogging, but honestly that is not my intention.  But it seems I have spent much of the first half of the year on the road and then heads down on deadlines for one show or another.

So I won't bore you with a long update, but I will share some of my work from the past few months.

just pics, no long verbiage for now... but I am hoping to do better going forward.  Yes, I WANT to blog more :-)...

 The result of all of my experimentation on my Silhouette cutter:

Currently on display at View's exhibit "For the Birds" in Old Forge, NY

I have two others that I've finished this year, but can't seem to find a picture of those.

Here is one that I started at retreat in April, but haven't touched since...  guess I need a deadline to get me moving on it :-)

Ok, lunch break is over :-)  Hope you enjoyed!

I couldn't wait!

Well it worked!  See my last post for the background to this statement..

Now I get to move on to the fun part....

Woohoo!

I must say, this was a HUGE learning curve!

Some of you might remember my earlier post here about playing with my Silhouette Cameo cutter.  Well, that was in January, and true this hasn't been a continuous or daily journey, but I must say it has been a journey.

First I must say that Martha Shiff, the moderator of the Silhouette Cameo facebook group is a goddess.  Her patience and her support have been wonderful to me and many others.  I must also say, I have used my cameo successfully for quite a few large solid images, with no problem at all.  You have seen some of these in my dancer art quilts.  But I decided in January to use the Cameo to cut out a very detailed, small circle that I had sketched.  So first I had to learn how to get clean images into the cutter that were drawn with pencil, with eraser lines, that didn't translate into cut lines when creating a cut file.  Then of course, I wanted many circles interconnected, so it is was about compound images and point editing...  my head was exploding...

Next I had to learn how to treat the fabric, so that very thin segments with curves and points could be cut with clean and sharp edges.  Along with that how to treat the mat, so that the fabric stuck enough, so those thin pieces wouldn't come up when the machine rollers rolled often them, back and forth, several times.  Of course, there were the cut settings.... blades settings, cut speed, etc...  Whew!

Well here are just a couple of the images that were the result of many hours of testing...  I won't show you the two before this one.. lol... it was truly a birds nest!.

These pieces are only 10" across, so the average circle in these photos is about 4" in diameter, with all the cut outs, making some of the pieces only 1/8" thick. 

I am writing this as the Cameo is cutting what I hope to be my final cut.  I really want to use in my next art quilt (I hope it works, as I don't have any more of this particular batik... I failed the first 2 cuts!)  It has been cutting for about 40 minutes now...  Keep you fingers crossed!

An interesting discussion.....

Tonight's guild meeting, led to a very interesting discussion and some deep thought on my part. 

What is good enough?  Does it matter if your points don't match, that your seams are more like jug handles than a 4 way intersection?  Who cares if you cross over lines in your machine quilting, or if you just zoom across the top to get it finished....  is 'done' better than 'good.?

Is design more important than technique?  If a piece looks good from across the room, isn't that all that counts?  Does it matter if your stitch length varies greatly across the piece?  Do you need to quilt evenly across the quilt? Would it get a passing mark from the 'quilt police'?

What is a 'fiber artist' or a 'quilting professional'?  When do you graduate from a quilter or crafter to an 'artist' or a 'professional'?  If it is on your business card, does that make it so?  Or if you get paid for a quilt or a speaking/teacher slot, does that make you a professional?  What about if you publish patterns, yet someone else makes even the sample from beginning to end...  are you a fiber artist or quilting professional, or a pattern maker?  Does getting paid to write an article on quilting make you a professional quilter or professional writer, or should you have to actually have made an award winning quilt.. or what?

Interesting questions....  most of which the answer is subjective, for others the answers don't really matter, as there is no regulatory body in the quilting industry.  And I think you could ask many award winning quilters and get very different answers.

What do you think?
Renee

What was I ever thinking...

I don't know about you, but I tend to get these 'great' quilting ideas, just as I am about to fall asleep.  So of course, it somehow materializes in my dreams.  A couple of weeks ago, you saw the circular sketch I posted and how I wanted to turn that into for my next project.  Well, it showed up in my dream as a brightly colored quilt on a dark background, in varying sizes.  Well of course, I woke up thinking, well I know what I am going to do for the next FANE (FiberArts North East) challange!

Well that piece has gone under some metamorphosis, not because I didn't like the design of the circle, but because I couldn't get it into my Silhouette Cameo cutter clean enough to make clean cuts.  Next I tired creating one large piece with many circles connected, all at the same size, but there were two problems that I bumped into that quickly changed my mind.  First all the circles the same size was boring, and second, at 3" in diameter, the detail was way too small to show like I wanted it to.  So instead, I started recreating my sketch at almost the same level of detail in the Cameo software itself.  Nope, still too small, but the good thing when working digitally you can stretch the object to any size you want.  So I spend hours creating these different circular designs, only to realize, that most of the detail was going to be too small to cut and even more so, to show the see through effect I was going for....  so after about another 15 hours or so of playing around in the software, I did a test cut on paper.

Ughhh, while most will work out nicely, some areas are still way too small.  Here's to hoping I can enlarge them quickly without loosing the integrity of the piece.  I already know that one part won't work at the size I have, because the paper ripped right up when I tried to remove it from the cameo mat...  the pieces were just too thinly cut!

Oh well...  I see more hours at the computer in my horizion..  But not tonight...  Sweet dreams everyone!

Renee