Online Stitch Class -- Week 6

Here is my final Week 6 sampler for the "Library of Personal Stitches" class. This week's class is: Texture Creating Crusty Surfaces...

I love those crusty surfaces.

A sampler of dimensional, built up stitches. Had lots of fun experimenting with the "Detached Buttonhole" stitch to build dimension around the wheels and on a variety of other stitches.

Didn't do as well with the "Cast On" stitches. The little purple blobs are suppose to be flat partial circles. Didn't quite get the "flower petals" stitch either (purple "flower" at bottom of sampler).

The "Casalguidi Stitch" (purple cord above) is very cool, but time consuming. I've shown all four stages of this stitch on my sampler:

1. Couch several strands of fibers (red yarn) in the desired shape

2. Satin Stitch the couched strands

3. Do a loose foundation stitch over the satin stitch

4. Do rows of Stem Stitch onto the foundation stitch until the cord is covered.

I'm sad to see this class come to an end but I still have plenty of stitching to practice and improve upon. Again I would highly recommend taking a class from Sharon Boggon at Joggles. In fact Joggles has the new Spring classes listed and I'm planning to take Sharon's "Studio Journals: A Designer's Workhorse" class in June.

Online Stitch Class -- Week 5

Here is my practice sampler from Week 5 of the "Personal Library of Stitches" class. This week's lesson covers direction and shape.

Only one more week left of this wonderful class. I've certainly learned a lot!

Fast Friday Quilt #2

What a happy surprise, after posting my first Fast Friday Quilt, a member of the Fast Friday Fiber Challenge group left some nice comments. I don't know how she found my blog -- I thought I was posting my quilts inconspicuously and relatively unseen. Just goes to show, you never know who might be dropping in...

Here is my Fast Friday Fabric Challenge Quilt -- Challenge #31
Color Concept: Highly saturated colors combined with muted colors (to create the illusion of luminosity)
Composition Concept: Use planes and masses (to create light and shadow)

My quilt concept: A saturated colored leaf falling down in front of a muted wall, casting a shadow on the wall. My thought process is good -- my execution leaves something to be desired. But again, the point of this is to practice and get better.

Still not happy with my art photography skills -- the color is not accurate. And yes, these really are two different photos. I like the background best in the photo above and the leaf best in the photo below.

Thought I'd try Colleen Wise's shadow technique from her book, Casting Shadows. To get an accurate leaf shadow, I hung a leaf template to a piece of paper, put directional light on the leaf, and traced the shadow. The leaf template flipped up causing an elongated shadow and I didn't recreate the flip in my fabric leaf, so the shadow looks a bit wonky and unnatural.

I like the way my wall turned out -- looks like a wall. I made lighter free motion lines in the upper left corner (source of light) and darker lines moving to the bottom right.

Tried a "pillowcase" style of binding/backing, with some success but not exactly straight.

Original leaf

Improved leaf (except the flash picture took away some of the dimension)
Made the veins more visible, changed the shape slightly, and added hand stitching (French knots and Bullion knots on stem). My free motion foot went bad, so I had to hand stitch (outline stitch) the leaf onto the quilt which took me forever.

Online Stitch Class -- Week 4

Here I am at Week 4 of my "Personal Library of Stitches" online class. This week's practice sampler covers Contrast of Texture, Scale and Density:

I concentrated mostly on the buttonhole stitch and its many variations. I liked overlapping, layering and stacking stitches to get scale and density contrast.

The wild pink fiber created a funky look in the buttonhole stitch. Had fun with the wheel buttonhole stitch once I figured out how to do it properly. The two top left round masses are attempts to cover up and layer over originally defective looking buttonhole wheels.