applique – Page 7 – Daily Fiber

Jubilee Quilters Show

Posted on June 22, 2019 by Laura Kate

Yesterday I attended a show hosted by our local quilt group. To say it was inspirational is an understatement. Who knew that in our little county of 50,000 residents there were so many superb fiber artists? Because the organizers permitted photography, I took a number of images. It was hard to narrow it down to favorites, but I am pleased to share the following:

Hexagon shapes
Created in technique called “Stack and Whack”

**Technically superb. How did the maker create all those perfectly round circles?**

**Created using a jellyroll group of fabrics. Name of quilt is “Ocean Deep.”**

**My favorite wall hanging quilt. The giraffe is created with dozens of flower shapes sewn atop one another. The birds and vines are fussy cut applique.**

**My favorite large quilt. It is a log cabin style, using batik fabrics.**

**I chose this one because the maker used hand-dyed fabrics for her squares.**

I admired the quilt below for its irregular and artfully placed strips, as well as for the cute applique ladybugs. The maker created it while recovering from a lung transplant. She finished the squares before passing away in 2008. Her grandmother sewed the top together.

I hope you enjoyed these quilts, and found them as inspiring as I did.

drawing, hand embroidery, painting, sewing

Welcome to Summer, Farewell to Gloria

Posted on June 20, 2019 by Laura Kate

It’s my desire to note each season as it arrives with a fiber project that celebrates the specialness of the season. When I learned of the passing of Gloria Vanderbilt, I decided to include a small tribute to her in today’s celebration of summer.

I remember Gloria Vanderbilt best from her television adverts, promoting her line of jeans. She promised to make jeans designed to fit women’s curves. That promise was fulfilled – those jeans did fit us! She branded her product by signing her name on the hip pocket. Soon, all the designers were catering to women’s shape and placing their logos on the pockets.

So, thank you, Gloria. You made us feel good about our bodies, at a time in our lives when we needed a boost to our self image.

Today’s fiber object shows a woman contemplating the sun while lying on a beach. In tribute to Ms. Vanderbilt, my lady is dressed in a pair of cut-off jeans. Here is the sketch I made with the design’s basic elements.

I toyed with the idea of inserting the Gloria Vanderbilt logo somewhere in the design, but ultimately decided not to. Here is the finished object.

I’m happy with all the elements of this piece. First of all, my ability to draw is getting better. It only took me two tries to sketch this slightly stylized female body. I am also getting better control of the fabric paint while using the wash technique. And finally, both my hand and machine embroidery are improved.

colorwork, drawing, hand embroidery, sewing

Inspired by O’Keefe

Posted on June 4, 2019 by Laura Kate

My fiber efforts have been rather uninspired over the last two days, so no new posts. Then I picked up this book written by Georgia O’Keefe. It is an autobiography told in her own words and in beautifully reproduced images of her paintings. It got my creative thoughts moving again.

While she spent most of her life living in and painting the American Southwest, in the early stages of her career O’Keefe was best known for her large-scale paintings of flowers. Here is what she has to say about these works:

Nobody sees a flower – really – it is so small – we haven’t time – and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time. If I could paint the flower exactly as I see it no one would see what I see because I would paint it small like the flower is small. So I said to myself – I’ll paint what I see – what the flower is to me but I’ll paint is big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it.
Exhibition catalog, An American Place, 1939

So I decided to create a fiber flower, because I want to look closely at a flower. I chose to make a Moonflower, partly because of its star-like shape, and partly because I don’t see them growing around here. When I lived in Texas, I grew some moonflowers. It was way too hot to enjoy the garden during the day. Instead I sat outside at dusk, when I could watch the moonflowers swirl open.

Here is a pencil sketch I made of my moonflower:

I plan to use white poplin for the flower, with fabric paint on the shaded areas and embroidery on the bright areas. Here are some green fabrics I have chosen for the background and the flower shape I will cut from the white poplin.

The next steps are to piece together and sew the background.

**Background with paper template showing flower placement**

Tomorrow I paint.

colorwork, hand embroidery, sewing

Haiku illustrated

Posted on May 22, 2019 by Laura Kate

So here is what has happened since you last checked in with the haiku project. I have transferred the image of the jaguar to fabric.

Using Jacquard Textile paint, I added the features and spots to this beast.

Next I hand embroidered the details, including eyes, ears, mouth, paws and whiskers.

Here are the fabrics I chose, in the general layout I wanted.

The next step was to embroider the haiku onto the dark green rectangle. It was important to me to replicate Henry’s handwriting as well as I could. I enlarged the original on the printer. Using chalked paper, I traced over the letters to mark them on the fabric. Then I embroidered the letters in white floss.

Finally I appliqued all of the pieces to the background fabric, machine-stitched around the raw edges, and embroidered the last few white whiskers on the cat. Here is the piece in its current state:

And here is a final close-up of the jaguar.

My original goal for this piece was to illustrate Henry’s poem, and to practice embroidering hand writing onto fabric. At the outset, I never expected to paint the fabric so much. But I’m glad I did it. I learned more about how to apply paint to fabric. And I ended up with a colorful and meaningful piece of fabric art.

hand embroidery, sewing

Henry’s Haiku

Posted on May 20, 2019 by Laura Kate

During a recent visit, my grandson handed me this post-it note containing a haiku that he had written.

Henry is a boy of few words, so I got almost no explanation on the source of these bonne mots. My husband reminded me that we had visited the zoo with Henry, and given him a camera to use. The poem may have been inspired by the sight of a jaguar cub. Here is a photo that my husband took that day at the zoo.

I am inspired by this poem and the photograph to make a fiber object featuring a white whiskered cat and Henry’s haiku. I’m planning to use applique and embroidery techniques. There is a very nice image in NatGeo of a jaguar cub in the jungles of Brazil with a good layout.