Tag: whimsical design

Posted in collage

Collage 101

Posted on by Laura Kate

I am standing firmly at the nexus of art and craft this week.

On Tuesday I attended an introductory class at my local art association’s studio. About ten of us were there to learn how to do collage technique. Our instructor was Debbie Finch

Here she is giving us some preliminary instruction.

After selecting a subject and tracing it onto a canvas board, we spent a lot of time hunting through magazines to find images with colors that we wanted to use.

Debbie offered the option to use a pattern of a peacock for our design.

Some chose to use it,

Others brought an image or improvised from what they pulled out of the magazines.

There was one artist who clearly came with an idea in mind. She worked swiftly and finished her collage in about an hour.

Note the googly eyes, which she must have brought to class.

Kerry told us this was to be a gift for a grandchild. I was impressed – very impressed.

Me – I started out pretty well. I was prepared. I had brought a copy of my hummingbird drawing, and had pre-selected magazines and torn out several pages in advance. But after three hours of struggling with paper and glue, I had barely finished the background.

Debbie was kind enough to compliment my ” blending of soft shades.” Hm.

I took it home, and have been fussing over it for the last two days.

  • BACKGROUND
  • FLOWERS COMPLETE
  • HUMMINGBIRD

I soon realized that the collage technique does not lend itself to realism. As I worked through my magazines, I was taken by some appealing images unrelated to my original design. In the end I inserted a woman’s face, a tree frog and a trio of flies onto the surface. I’m going for Whimsy.

To finish up I added a little metallic paint and a few pen lines.

MAGICAL HUMMINGBIRD

Before I can seal the collage with top coat, I will need to buy a wide flat brush. I have no desire to ruin my 1 inch flat watercolor brush by using it to spread glue.

Posted in quilting

Finished Object Friday – Quilting

Posted on by Laura Kate

After three months, I have finished the pet-friendly quilt that started with this fabric.

Inspired by Rayna Gillman’s improvisational piecing technique and using a combination of log cabin and strip pieced squares, I designed a pair of blocks I call Dog House, Cat Barn.

The blocks finish at 12 inches square. But how can they turn into a bed quilt? After mulling it over for awhile and making several sketches on graph paper, I found that I could fit four blocks across five rows to come up with a twin-size quilt. To create balance, I staggered the rows by four inches with a spacing strip, alternating between left side and right side every row.

I also felt that the balance would improve if the center row was different. Thus was conceived the Pet Condo construction project in “mid-town,” (if you will permit my flight of fancy.)

Four inches of sashing in a grey polka-dot fabric between the rows made a “street,” giving the animal neighbors a nice boulevard for walking over to visit. With my concept complete, I re-named the quilt Animal Friends.

Oh, another group of animal friends were introduced via the background fabric: Our hardworking and very dear bees.

The Animal Friends quilt measures 57 by 84 inches. It was quilted with a combination of walking foot “stitch in the ditch” and free motion stitching on my Bernina.