The "other" artwork for the article in QA
I did a total of 10 ATCs for the Quilting Arts article, and some (rightfully so) didn’t make the cut. I was very partial to the zombie and the robot, so those being in the article make me very happy. The cupcake is a reworked design I did for someone online who didn’t follow through on her trade and I got the card back.
Sadly, green LEDs in this voltage do not light up too brightly. That’s why I think that though the holiday tree and the UFO are awesome, they don’t work well for print.
So, seeing all of these ideas… what design would you put lights into?
Technique of the Week #5 – Wholecloth Painted Surface
Project Hours: About 4 hours
Design and materials: 1 hour
Execution: 3 hours
The idea for this week’s quilt came from an episode of Quilting Arts, Season 4. After watching Sue Kelly show how you could paint over a quilted surface with oil paintsticks, I decided on a faster approach with a “dry brushing” technique of my own. Paintsticks take 3-5 days to dry and cure before they can be heat set. Ths is done with fabric paints and cured in 1 hour.
The Octopus was freedhand drawn with a chalk fabric gel pen, and then quilted over in Blue thread to match the background. I chose dense quilting and a couple of bubbles to add interest to the background.
Once the piece was quilted, I ironed it from the back so the front would have as much heighth as it was going to get. Using a piece of cardboard as a pallate, I daubed on some paint and got my paintbrush wet. Here is the “dry brushing” part, where you get a lot of the paint OFF of the brush and glide it over the “hills” of the quilting, leaving the “valleys” paint free. It takes a lot of passes witht he dry brush to get the amount of paint to show up. This was a lot of fun!
Unusual Animals
Can you believe it’s June already? I can hardly believe it. I’m almost halfway through another year of weekly quilts. I had a tough time deciding on a theme, so I went with an odd one.
I’ve been researching unusual animals for possible theme inclusion, and when I happened upon the narwhal, I knew this was it for June. The hard part is that I will be away 2 weekends of June, so I had to thin of something simple.
This weekend really disappeared fast… I spent most of Saturday drawing and painting ATCs for my weekend retreat in 2 weeks. Sunday was supposed to be a Mustang only car show with my dad and brother (both own Mustang Cobra cars…
I drew exactly 3 of these before it was right, a drawing in my bedside drawing pad at night, then the ATC, and the mockup for the fusible for this piece. I do love him, he’s just so cute.
Narwhal’s tusks were hunted by Vikings and often sold a fake unicorn horns, worth about as much as a castle in Medieval times.