Walks in the Woods - Art Quilts

Monday, May 9, 2011

Artist Monday–Happy Mother’s Day

Mondays on my blog is a day to feature artist. I want to learn about artist myself and to share what I know and learn with others.

Today as a tribute to Mother’s Day, I am honoring my mother. Without the kind encouragement and dedication of my mother I would not be the artist that I am today.

My mother is not an artist per say but she does love to arrange flowers and she loves gardening.

Growing up we moved often. I attended five different grade schools. As a way to keep me busy and happy my mom always had me in some sort of art class. I am totally amused by the current interest in surface design and techniques. As a kid I was trying out all kinds of different arts and crafts and constantly figuring out new forms of creativity.

Thanks mom for giving me this life long gift of curiosity.

Friday, May 6, 2011

Design Wall Friday

2 comments

I am so excited that Penny sent me a picture of her design wall.

Hi Frieda,
Here's my design wall earlier this week--looking at a couple of pieces I'd dyed to incorporate into a quilt back.
I'm so grateful for our conversation on dyeing in the basement even if it wasn't 70 degrees! You were right--it works just fine. Perhaps things would be a little darker if the temperature were higher, but no reason to wait until summer to dye. . .
All best,
Penny from Galesburg

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Artist Village

10 comments

Kathy York had a great idea for an entry into Tactile Architecture. So she contacted some of her friends to help out.The idea was to create an artist village with three dimensional stitched houses. A group of us put on our thimbles and started stitching away.

Mine is the little one under the tree to the left.

I call my little house “Woodland Cottage”. It seemed like a natural to me.

I don’t really have any process pictures, but here is my finished house. It is about 12” tall and about 8” wide. I used my hand dyed fabric, the stuff I call “wicked” fabric for the base of the house.

I love the trilliums that bloom in the spring in my little woods and decided to add them around the bottom of my woodland cottage.

I fused the “wicked” fabric and wrapped the fused fabric on top of the shape of the house cut out from TimTex. This was all fused to the TimTex. The Trilliums circle the whole house.

I fuse appliqued them to the fabric and then machine quilted them through the fabric and TimTex in 30 weight rayon thread.

Once I had all the Trilliums quilted, I quilted the base of the house also in #30 rayon in a pattern I call “tree bark”. It reminds me of the way tree bark looks on.

We had to make our houses so that they could be shipped flat, so the roof and the chimney all come off the house and can lay down flat.

The house, the roof, and the chimney are attached with velcro.

The roof tiles are two fabrics fused together.

I cut out white oak leaves from the two fused fabrics that then form an overlapping design on top of “wicked” fabrics fused to the timtex for the roof.

I machine quilted down the center of each layer of leaves with #30 rayon thread right through all the layers of fabric and TimTex

And while it is hard to tell the leaves gradate from dark to light. I used my gradation Forest Floor as the top fabric for the leaf tiles.

I have a good friend who makes jewelry,her business is called Of Nature and each item that "Of Nature" completes consists of an actual piece of nature covered in copper. I had her use this process to cover the doors and windows that I made out of leaves, twigs and acorns. I think they look FABULOUS!

I had a bit of a dilemma when it came to attaching the windows and doors, but I eventually drilled holes in them and sewed them to the house.

You can view the rest of the village by following along the time line on the schedule below. I hope you have enjoyed this peek into my process of creating “Woodland Cottage”.

Susan Else (website) May 2 http://www.susanelse.com/

Frances Holliday Alford May 3 http://www.franceshollidayalford.com/weblog/

Pamela Allen (website) May 4 http://pamelart.homestead.com/titlepage.html

Frieda Anderson May 5 http://friestyle.blogspot.com/

Lisa Call May 6 http://blog.lisacall.com/

Jane Davila May 9 http://janedavila.blogspot.com/

Naomi Adams May 10 http://killerbeedesigns.com/blog1/

Jamie Fingal May 11 http://jamiefingaldesigns.blogspot.com/

Barb Forrister May 12 http://www.freespiritartstudio.blogspot.com/

Vickie Hallmark May 13 http://fiberartglass.blogspot.com/

Connie Hudson May 16 http://beyondtherail2010.blogspot.com/

Leslie Jenison May 17 http://leslietuckerjenison.blogspot.com/

Sherri McCauley May 18 http://sherrilipmanmccauley.blogspot.com/

Judy Perez May 19 http://judyperez.blogspot.com/

Melanie Testa May 20 http://www.melanietesta.com/mtype/

Laura Wasilowski May 23 http://artfabrik.blogspot.com/

Kathy York May 24 http://aquamoonartquilts.blogspot.com/

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

And the winner is...

0 comments

So I decided to go to randomnumbers.com to help me pick a comment number. I entered 1-100, because I had 100 comments, and 65 came up as the winner.
Maggie Szanfranski was the 65th commenter. Congratulations Maggie. I know you will enjoy this book. Please email me privately at frieda@friestyle.com and send me your address.
Thanks to everyone else who participated. If you go to Laura's website and check out the next blogger on the blog tour you still might have a chance to win a copy of Laura's fun book :)

Monday, May 2, 2011

Fanciful Stitches Colorful Quilts

101 comments

My good friend Laura Wasilowski has written the most charming and fanciful new book. It contains 11 fused projects for you to make and fanciful stitching for you to create on top of these small whimsical house quilts.
This is my interview with Laura in our booth in Paducah, April 2011.
If you leave a comment today, here on my blog, you will have a chance to receive a free copy of this book.

Interview with Laura Wasilowski about her new book Fanciful Stitches Colorful Quilts

Artist Monday

1 comments

More of my favorites at Paducah.
While I make contemporaty quilts, I love traditional patterns and settings.

My favorite color combinations, lime and pink.

Sunday, May 1, 2011