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Fabric Die-Cutting Expert Ebony Love

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A Week of Art Experiments

July 9, 2013 by Ebony Love

My word of the year for 2013 is “Nurture”, and part of that goal was to nurture creativity by playing more.  At the time I didn’t know what form that would take, but over the last few weeks, I’ve given it a good run.

I told you about my workshop with Victoria Findlay Wolfe – that was tough but I pushed through it.  I’ve also been working on a few projects simultaneously to push myself out of my comfort zone.

My first project is a guild challenge for the Chicago Modern Quilt Guild.  We were each assigned a season (I got Fall) and are supposed to make a quilt from it. I started out wanting to recreate a photo in a mosaic style, using diamonds instead of squares.

I’d been working on it off and on for a couple of weeks, and got about this far:
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They kind of look like trees to me… sort of.  This could turn out really cool or really terrible, but as I have been looking at it, I’m starting to doubt it.  I’m not ready to just trash it, but I don’t think I will finish it in time for the challenge if I keep going.  So I decided to stop.

In the midst of making that decision, I started working on another project, this time a collaboration with artist Catherine Matthews-Scanlon. She’s been working on a coloring book for artists, and I saw one of her pages posted up.  I loved it so much and thought it would make a really interesting quilting pattern, so I asked her if I could stitch it up and she said yes.  Here’s the first one that I did:
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This is actually the lower half of the coloring page, and this was all done freehand after tracing the image with a blue washout pen. I have many other ideas to experiment with – changing the thread color, painting the image with Inktense pencils, maybe even doing some thread painting. I washed and dried this one to see what would happen; it definitely needs blocking, but I am just using this one as an experiment.  I’m going to film Quilt It! with Jodie Davis next month, and I’ll be talking all about this collaboration and how I create these images from Catherine’s work.

In the midst of doing this collaboration, I got a new idea for my CMQG Challenge, which gave me the confidence to abandon the mosaic for the time being.  It’s a 3-dimensional piece that’s 24″ x 36″, in some really cool jewel tones for fall.

I chose this color palette:
070913 066

 

From top to bottom (and these are all Robert Kaufman Kona): Amber, Teal Blue, Chinese Red, Curry, Peridot, and Berry.

After settling on this palette, I was hunting for a backing or binding fabric in my stash when I found this Australian Aboriginal print:
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This is why quilter’s have stash. This is an amazing find, isn’t it? It’s why I cannot abandon commercial prints, try as I might. Some things are too lovely not to use buy.

So what am I doing with these solids? Well I decided to quilt up some leaves:
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The thread is Superior So Fine 40wt variegated, and it has some purple, blue, red, and turquoise in it.  I quilted these up and then cut them out using a combination of pinking shears and a rotary cutter with a pinking blade.
070913 090
I think they turned out awesome!

Now I have to work on quilting the top, which because of the leaves, needs to be a very simple pattern.

I hope you’re stretching yourself this week!

Filed Under: Sewing Tagged With: Embellishing

« Improving Your Creative Practice
And Sometimes, I Just Don’t Want To »

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