Week 9 Rachael Goldman

An experiment in cutting away circles. I took an older piece of hand painted white one white that I did a while ago and layered it with a "marbled with shaving cream" piece and some batting. I then quilted the heck out of it with circles, circles and more circles. Then I cut away some of the circles. In some places I got bright patches of color, dark or bleh colors in others. So I decided to outline in gold on some and color others in the gold. The finished piece is 9 X9, mounted on stretcher bars. Rachael

Ulla Westermann - Week 9 - Labyrinth

For the background I used a piece of burlap that I dyed recently in Heather's class. For the two corner labyrinths I fused commercial fabric and stitched it down. The other parts are ribbons and yarn. The piece is 14 in x 10 in.

Owl

I fell way off the art wagon. School work completely depleted me, but I think this drawing brought me back. I love this owl so much I worked on him for a day and a half and finished it in no time. I especially like the eyes and I think the focus of the piece is that left eye specular shine. The feathers have a nice flow too! I am happy with this one! It's 17x11" on toned paper with colored pencils.
Riley Franklin

Party Girl - Diane Anderson

This party girl is made of papier mache and added embellishments.  She is as fresh and as frivolous as the beginning of Spring.  Her "core" is a smooth stone stamped with the word "Imagine".  I like the idea of imagining all possibilities - especially at this time of year.  The background is a shawl that I am knitting in seed stitch (not yet finished). The yarn is Aslan Trends "Litoral Sparkle" - one of my favorite yarns to work with.  - Diane Anderson 

Hi all,
I figured out the comments issue. I downloaded Google chrome and signed in again using Heather's info. This worked.
I think what happened was when I signed in using Firefox, it was only temporarily. Each time I clicked "sign in" I got to listing my blog and thought I was signed in. There was no place on the blog page to allow me to sign in with Heather's info.

I'm still not sure how I could change the Firefox setup on Blogger, but did figure a way around it.
Thanks all for your possible solutions. They helped me find the way!
Jo Noble

Many holes

I made a background of many scraps and covered that with tulle, then quilted.  I covered that with a piece of painted and stamped fabric, quilted in circles and cut out the top layer in some of the circles.  Then I cut holes through the whole thing and burnt the edges.  The back is dyed green batting which you can see through the burnt holes.  And then I put holes through the whole piece with grommets.  It was interesting to see how many ways I could make holes.  Keats Scott

Bead Iterations-Week 7 Laura Shea

Another layout for the 30 beads. Finally found a way to keep them together without their rolling around all over the place. Next step: wire-working them more or less into this arrangement vertically.  Then adding slanted wires to fix them in place so that each single blue bead will be fixed into 30 different positions. Then figuring out some attractive way to hang them for display.
Laura Shea

From Jo regarding comments

I am using Firefox 20.0.1 as my browser.
Thanks for the comments. Still can't get it to work.
I am signed in as various artists playing together, but that doesn't seem to make a difference.
DARN!
Jo

Help - I want to comment!

I am hoping that all of us that are in the challenge will have an opportunity to post comments and get to know each other. I cannot tell you how many times I have tried!
I have a Macintosh desktop that allows me to post my work just fine.
However, whenever I try to make a comment, the above screen comes up. Under Select profile is the following:
Google Account
LiveJournal
WorkPress
Type Pad
AIM
OpenID

All these options, except Goggle Account, ask for info that I don't have.
Since I do have a Google Account, and so does Heather so I think I end up using her account info, it accepts it and goes into etherland.
I also notice there are only two commentators. That could be a clue right there.
Can anyone help me?  I.V. didn't know how either.
Jo Noble

This is My Heart on Dog. The day after Heather posted the prompt for this week, our dog, Rocky, had what is basically being called a 'cardiac episode.' He has congestive heart failure and aortic stenosis on top of a murmur and defective aortic valve. So all I could think about was a dog shaped hole in my heart. So here is my somewhat literal interpretation. Hand dyed cotton fabric, the heart was then painted with thread and I sketched in the shading with a sharpie. For the hole I cut a little bit of the fabric away and then burned the rest, so it is uneven. The piece is 9x9. Rachael

Ulla Westermann - Week 8 - Reflections on a lake

Under the blue fabric is a layer of blue-green tree fabric that shows through the holes. The rock fabric is fused and stitched on. I used thread painting and some embroidery floss for the two downed trees. Then I added ricing and french knots for ripples in the water. This piece is 14" x 10".

Self Portrait - Cyndi Jarest

I'm late to the game, but decided I would try 12 creations, one a month.  This is a thread stitched portrait  using a photo copy transferred to organza as a base copy, then stitched over.  The size is 8x8.  Cyndi Jarest.

Week #8 Prompt & Piece by Heather Thomas

Week #8 Prompt; Holes
My apologies for being late with this, life can get in the way!
This week's prompt is rather simple, it is to use actual holes in your work.  These holes can be made to reveal layers as I did with my piece or they can be made so that they go through your entire piece.  All that this challenge asks is that you figure out a way to make holes in your work.
The piece above has many layers; the backing fabric, thin batting, a blue green cotton, a violet gauze, some red gauze strips, yellow cheesecloth, then the final layer of Mexican jute. Before I laid the jute on top, I poked holes in it with the end of my scissors then enlarged the holes by tearing into them with my fingers.  Then, I pulled threads in groups along both the warp and the weft to get the lighter colored rows or lines that you see.  This made different types of holes; squares where two pulled lines intersect and fine lines of holes both of which revealed the yellow cheesecloth below.
I stitched everything by hand (I've been envious of I.V.'s hand stitched work) with straight stitch, ricing and French knots and hand dyed embroidery floss.

Girl with roses collage

The background of this collage is fabric strips, paper and part of a lace curtain.  The little girl was a photo on TAP.  The butterflies were plastic "sequins" that I bent a bit to give dimension.  Another week of using stuff I already have! Keats Scott

"Vines" by Denise

This is last week's quilt from the weaving assignment.  I didn't like the process of weaving the polka-dot ribbons. The red and blue/green fabric was hand dyed and looks like vines.  It needed something to break up all the white after I quilted the design off center, so I added the last few pieces of ribbon that I had left. Sometimes the "challenge" is taking a good picture. The quilt is rectangular although it doesn't appear so in the picture.   Denise Pitonyak

Rachael Goldman week 7

Well this week's project turned out a lot differently than I had envisioned it. I was going to have it off center and not so framed, with the words for a home blessing. Oh well. Best laid plans and all… The finished piece is 9x9. The hamsa and pomegranate are a stamp that I carved into some speedy cut, then stamped onto a scrap of hand dyed cotton, then overpainted with lumiere paint and some red foil. It was then glued onto a piece of painted tyvek I found in my sewing room while cleaning. I glued all of it to a monoprinted piece of cotton, also found in the cleaning process. I edged the tyvek by couching some fiber. Rachael

Wk 7 - Collage by Jo Noble

I don't know the name of the technique, but you sandwich soluble stabilizer with gobs of stuff, stitch like crazy and then wash the stabilizer out. I then cut it up and put it on some red woven fabric I have. Would have been better to NOT put in on the red fabric cause it overpowered the cool stuff in the applique. There are many layers of stuff and it was a new technique that I'm glad I tried.
Piece is 8 x 11.
Jo Noble

Ulla Westermann - Week 7 - Collage

Oh what fun, experimenting with all the endless possibilities. I used ribbon, yarn, lace, and fabric for this piece. There is one tiny area that has 4 layers. The dimensions are 14" x 10".

Week 7 Debbie Helser

This is another 8 X 10 piece of dyed canvas mounted on painted batting. I stamped the circle stamps and the checkerboard across the bottom with ink. I quilted around the circles, checkerboard and background using the clear thread which I will not be using again any time soon. I found a bead store in Hiwa, Hawaii and bought a bunch of beads. The artist/owner of the store then gave me a bunch of beads that she can't use in her jewelry because they are flawed but thought I could use them . They are perfect for me! I liked the stamped piece of fabric a lot but don't feel that I enhanced it with the quilting I did. I'll have to try again.

Week 6 Debbie Helser

I'm getting caught up today. Here is the bit of weaving. It was inspired by the plastic bag that is caught in the tree outside my office window. Inspiration can come from strange places. It is 8 X 10. I cut strips from the blue plastic bags my local newspaper comes in each week and attached them to a couple of fallen tree branches. The orange fabric came from a package of Heather's hand dyed fabrics that I cut into strips then stitched them together. I wove it all together and zigzagged around the top and bottom. On Heather's suggestion, I took the iron to it. I wrapped a bit of silver thread around the y-shaped tree branch and added the clunky clear acrylic beads. I like the juxtaposition of the natural and man-made materials, like the plastic bag in the tree (which I don't like). 

Week 5 Debbie Helser

This is a little 8 X 10 ditty I embroidered while in a class in Hawaii. I started with a piece of dyed canvas then stamped the lotus and pattern across the bottom. I laid that on a piece of painted batting then  embroidered around the flower, added the stem and "constellations". I finished it off with a bit of quilting in a grid across the bottom. I like the effect of the lotus blossom floating with just a touch of "grounding" in the stem.

Week #7 ~ Prompt; Collage

Week #7, Prompt & Piece by Heather Thomas,
Sorry this is so late.  I kind of had a rough weekend with my right hand, but it's better now and doesn't hurt so much to type.
Here is my little piece for the week.  It's a collage.  the word collage is French for "to glue".  But most collage artists include multiple layers in the collage process.  So, this weeks prompt is to work in multiple layers, at least three, and to use glue (I used iron-on adhesive) to hold things down, even if it's only temporary, I did stitch afterward.
I've been trying very hard not to let my weekly pieces look too much like my daily pieces from last year.  I failed with this one!
Heather

Out of Africa - Moira Mallison (2/12)

This piece served double-duty for another quilt challenge group I sometimes participate in, which provided the theme.  All commercial fabrics, pieced and fused.  One of my intentions with this quilt was to put some attention on line as a design element. The mixing of so many prints was a challenge for me, and I'm please with the result. The symbols used in this piece are Adinkra symbols from West Africa.

• heart-like symbol is Sankofa - learn from the past
• the fern is Aya - endurance, resourcefulness
• the flower-like one  is Ananse Ntontan - wisdom and creativity
• the knot is Nyansapo - wisdom, ingenuity, intelligence and patience

Rachael Goldman week 5

 I had a lot of fun this week. I like to weave fabric, but haven't done it in a long time; so it was nice to dust off that skill. This top one is Ahava, Love. I painted the fabric and wove the 2 pieces together. I stamped the hamsa directed onto the woven fabric, and then outlined it in gold paint and added some metal embellishments. It's not quite finished, but will be mounted onto wrapped stretcher bars.

This one was for some fun and levity. My daughter is a HUGE Doctor Who fan, so this will go into her room. I painted 2 pieces of fabric, wove them, and then splatter some silver on top. After it dryed, I used needle point plastic to add more texture with black and silver paint. I printed out the photo of the Tardis and mounted it on foam core to give it the depth of floating in space.

turning and bending

Hello,

This week's effort--more fiery fall colors this time, drawing again on my stash of dyed silk organza and embroidery threads.

'til next time,

A.

Week Six- 30 Dodecahedra Laura Shea

Finished the last of the 30. Next week wire working them together to arrange so that the blue bead moves all around in 30 different positions.
Laura

Ulla Westermann - Week 6

My favorite colors! I sewed the gray stripes out of fabric and used ribbons for the colored stripes. To make it more interesting I used different widths and played with the angle they're woven through. After quilting the background I added some beads. The piece is 14" x 10".

Wk 6 - Weaving by Jo Noble

This took way longer than I intended. Partly because the brownish stripes were part of a bigger piece of striped shiny fabric that shredded like crazy and also wouldn't press flat. I am realizing that my sewing skills are sloppy. I need to work on them to get a more refined finished look. And I am SOOO not fond of binding!
The piece is 8" x 12". 
Jo Noble

Weaving Between the Lines - Diane Anderson

Ever since I was a hippie in the 1970's I always wanted to weave.  Alas, Life got in the way. About three years ago, I took a class on simple loom weaving.  This is what my weaving looks like - so far!  It is a UFO (Unfinished Object) that I hope to complete after I retire this June.   Diane Anderson

Woven mountains

As I drive into work I see blue, white and dark brown, (though today was just white), I've been wanting to capture those colors in something.  Weaving was just the right technique for me.  Keats Scott

Dreaming of green

My apologies for the late post!

I'm continuing to make pieces keyed to seasons--and, as I'm realizing that I'll likely cut these up and reassemble them in some way, I'm doing rougher edge finishes.  This one features an ombre foundation fabric, bits of hand-dyed silk organza, splatters of paint, and diagonal stitching.  No free-motion practice for this one, but the current week's project awaits!

Week # 6 Prompt; Weaving, by Heather Thomas

 

Good Afternoon,

I'm sorry that this is a day late.  I am feeling rather overwhelmed right now! Here is this weeks new prompt and my new piece.  The prompt is to weave.  On my piece above I wove two hand dyed rayon ribbons, one variegated gray to black and the other multicolored yellow through red orange.  After weaving them I straight stitched along the edges of the black ribbon, stippled the white base fabric and added silk cocoons and rods with seed beads for interest.

So, if you so desire, add some weaving to this week's piece.  You can weave fabric or ribbon like I did. You can weave metal, yarn, rubber, you name it.  The cool result of weaving is a lovely interplay of color and texture.  You all did such a great job with dimension last week I can't wait to see what you come up with this week!

Heather

Week 5 Circles for me too

 

Circles came to my mind too.  Also influenced by Fat Tuesday.  Puff paint and a cut silk cocoon with a felt ball inside.  Painted cotton batting.  Still having fun using what I have on hand. Keats Scott

Rachael Goldman week 5

Going in Circles. The past few weeks have been really hectic. Sometimes I feel as if I am running in circles. I am so grateful that I have been able to find the time to create and post. The background fabric is hand dyed with instant mashed potatoes as a resist. I then began quilting in circles, lots and lots of circles. Under the fabric is a layer of batting and one of heavy felt.

A view of the dimension that was created.

Rachael

Week 5 "Abstract Kite" by Denise

As a traditional quilter, when I thought of 3 dimensions, I thought of prairie points.  The points are made from hand dyed fabric in a progression from yellow to blue. The background was also hand dyed by me. The batting, ribbon and beads are from Heather's store.  I didn't intend for it to be a kite but as I was working on the swirl, it started to look like a kite on a blue sky so I embraced the idea. The background is quilted with silk thread in very dense straight lines.  I like the color combination on this quilt.  Denise Pitonyak

Ulla Westermann - Week 5

I like the colors of the ocean on a sunny day, inspired by a visit to San Francisco last weekend. The background is pieced and then quilted. The blue and green patches are crocheted and the orange cord made out of yarn is weaved through the patches. This piece is 14" x 10".

2nd of 12 - Eileen King

I used a piece of ice dyed fabric that Debbie Helser taught me how to make a few weeks ago.  It has some really unusual colors that I just love.  I had some fluffy yarn that nicely picked up the colors of the fabric.  I used my favorite tool, the Hera marker, to sketch out where I wanted the swirls of yarn to go.  Then it was really easy to couch it on over the marks.  I quilted between the swirls and added some white trim to give it additional zest.  The background pink velour fabric is fused to Peltex.  Eileen King

Rising Suns and Moon over Colorado - Diane Anderson

A couple of years ago I bought some materials from Golden Fiber Arts Studio and didn't do anything with them, so I brought them out for this project.  It isn't significantly 3 dimensional - but I like the colors and it was fun putting it all together - Diane Anderson