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Friday, April 28, 2017

For the love of birds

 

A small local museum about birds turns 30 this summer and is having an art show with numbers as the theme. This is my art quilt for the show. The tree's branches are in a heart shape and there are 30 birds, one for each year of " bird love" that has gone into this gem of a place for bird lovers. It is situated on a dirt road near camels hump in Huntington vermont with loads of trails to go bird watching, a viewing window where you can see birds and frogs and a large collection of handmade carved birds with lots of educational material to learn about the different birds.

 

Anyway this is how I went about making " for the love of birds"

I had no idea what I was doing so am pleased that it came out so well

Started with this really cool suede like mottled fabric that had that eerie glow in it already. But I wanted the glow concentrated in the middle of the tree so needed to add white paint.

The only white paint I had on hand was regular house paint but figured what the heck, let's try it!

 

I took an old kitchen brush and stabbed and swirled.

 

Nice texture but I'm going for eerie.

 

Time for the big guns. Found this old huge paintbrush in the basement.

I wet down my fabric with a spray bottle of water first.

 

Yes!

 

 

I pounced and swirled that old paintbrush and ended up with this. Love it!

Unfortunately it did dry a lot lighter but still kept enough of the effect to work.

 

The tree and the birds were added using fusible web, then appliquéd by machine with monofilament thread.

The quilting is sort of a McTavishing style (McDowelling)

I was surprised that I had no trouble whatsoever with the quilting using the house paint. I'm sure if I had laid it on thick there would have been issues but just changing the color to be lighter it was fine.

Have you ever tried house paint on fabric?

 

 

Thursday, April 13, 2017

Hermit thrush

Spring is here! Birds are singing

 

And the wild crocuses are croaking!

 

Hermit thrush before quilting

 

And after.

Shows you how much free motion quilting adds to a piece.

Enjoy the spring!

Friday, April 7, 2017

Painting with a toilet paper tube

I saw a you tube video here where a woman showed how to make a fuzzy dandelion with paint on paper using a toilet paper tube so thought I would try it. Mine didn't come out as good as hers but I sure had fun.

 

First I had to mangel a roll of toilet paper to get the cardboard out since I didn't have any on hand. Then cut all around the bottom about 2" up to make it like a brush. Next I laid a piece of black fabric on some flat styrofoam , pinned in place and lightly sprayed with water.

 

After dipping my " brush" into some acrylic paint the dabbing and pouncing begins. First using a darker color and then going lighter. In the end I also added some purple - just because ;-)

 

The first attempt ( see top pic) didn't look very dandelion - y so I made another smaller " brush" out of a small piece of just mail taped into a tube. One mangled toilet paper roll is quite enough, thank you.

This round came out looking more like a dandelion in the fuzz stage.

 

The one on the top ended up getting mushed.

Someone on Instagram said it looks like a dr. Seuss truffula tree.

It was a mistake

Yes! That was what I was trying to do all along.