More Tutorials!

About this time last year I created a post with links to tutorials I've written. I'm happy to say that I have now added some more!!

These are some cute mini-stockings that I designed for last year's Quilting Arts Gifts.

I love them as embellishments for gifts

I originally designed them to hang on a swag

Yesterday this project was featured on Quilting Daily, so if you'd like to make your own mini-stockings, head *here* to get the directions.

Though not Christmasy, these water bottle slings make easy gifts, especially for kids (so they can carry their own!).

 They were originally in 101 Patchwork Projects + Quilts, but I also showed how to make them on Quilting Arts TV episode 910, and the directions are *here*.

If you're looking for more technique oriented info, there are many great articles available on the Machine Quilting Unlimited Web Extras! page. In particular, if you're interested in learning how to quilt feathers, check out the links to my article on feathers, as well as Judy Woodworth's.

The holiday season always inspires me to create, and I hope some of my projects inspire you to do some fun quilting, sewing or crafting too. Merry Christmas!

Headed to Houston

Tomorrow I'll be headed to Houston for the International Quilt Festival. If you're there, stop by and see me in the Meander Publishing Booth, #1832 - I would love to see you!

Some of the fall color we had in this neck of the woods

We were very fortunate and weathered Sandy with only 16 hours without power. (This was quite a relief after the massive tree damage we had from the derecho.) My heart goes out to all those folks who were not so lucky, and suffered tremendous losses of all kinds. All my best wishes go to those facing cleanup and rebuilding.

Melanie's Breast Pockets

As many of you know, well known fiber artist Melanie Testa is raising awareness about women who choose to remain flat after breast cancer surgery. She's hoping to collect 1,000 breast pockets to symbolically represent women who have chosen to forgo reconstruction.

I made 5 pockets to represent women I've known who've chosen to remain flat.

 

The top two are for Melanie.

This one is for Gerrie.

The two blue ones are for a relative who's story I don't fully know, but they could just as well represent two other Ladies (the capital L is deliberate) I've known. All three of them hark from a different era - the one who is still with us just turned 103. No nonsense women who took great pride in their appearance, I did not know them before their surgeries. From what I could tell, though, they were all confident in the decision they'd made.

I put a little note in the pockets, and a blue bird to wish them each happiness.

 If you'd like to participate go to Melanie's blog post for more information, and be sure to watch her Pinterest page to see more pockets.

Fun With Reston Quilters Unlimited

Last week I had the great pleasure of visiting with the lovely ladies of Reston Quilters Unlimited twice! On Tuesday night I gave a lecture, then I went back on Saturday for my workshop "Feathers, Fronds, and Ferns". I forgot to take pictures until half of the class had already left, but here are six of them with some samples of their work.

You can see that everyone made good progress during the day - I was so proud of them for working so hard!

Here are two samples of the work done in class by Susan (shown 3rd from the right in the picture above).

Susan did beautiful work that shows up wonderfully due to the contrast of the white thread on the green background.

Many thanks to the whole guild, and especially Jamie Sculley and Susanne Jones, for two fun visits!

Kaleidoscope Fun Part 3

Last week I shared some fun ways that I use kaleidoscopes in quilt designs. In Part 1 I showed how I create kaleidoscopes using Kaleidoscope Kreator, then import them back into the program to create a new look. In Part 2 I showed how to use a kaleidoscope with a simple layer to create a medallion center for a quilt.

As easy and fun as those two techniques are, what I most enjoy is using kaleidoscopes as part of digital collages. When I made my DVD, Digital Collage for Quilt Design, the one thing that I most wanted folks to take away from it was that you can use any image - photo, scanned documents or objects, drawings, paintings etc. - as part of a digital collage. If you look at my quilts (here and here) you'll see that I certainly use photographs in my collages, but also a variety of other image types.

Using a variety of image types in your digital collages can add texture, depth, and a more painterly looking result. It's really a way to personalize your art! In all the examples below I imported the kaleidoscopes into Photoshop and combined them with other images.

So how have I used kaleidoscopes in digital collages? Let's see

This background was created by heavily manipulating a feathered kaleidoscope, then copying it three times and arranging the images in a square.

Here the kaleidoscope has been cropped and used as a background for a silhouette. It's a very graphic look.

Again, a heavily manipulated kaleidoscope used as a background. Doesn't it remind you of a batik?

Using various transparencies for the kaleidoscope layers creates a fill for the butterfly, as well as the "frame" of feathers.

The "fancy" part of the background kaleidoscope was selectively removed, leaving a graphic, sun like design.

Yet another heavily manipulated kaleidoscope forms the background.

The "sprig" layer is placed on a kaleidoscope background. Because of the transparency of the "sprig" layer the background acts as a fill for the buds. I could easily extract the black background and use this design element on a different composition.

I love symmetry, but for my collages my focal point is generally not the kaleidoscope. As you can see I instead use them as  background elements, fills,  or textures. The framing effect a kaleidoscope can add to a composition is particularly appealing to me.

I hope you've enjoyed this series of posts - they were certainly fun for me! I'd love to hear how you use kaleidoscopes in your quilts too.

Kaleidoscope Fun Part 2

In my last post I shared a simple technique for creating a kaleidoscope in Kaleidoscope Kreator, then importing the saved Kaleidoscope back into the program for further manipulation. Today I'll show an easy digital layering technique for creating the center of a medallion quilt. (If you are not familiar with the Kaliedoscope Kreator program, which I'll call KK from now on, you can refer to my original post, or go to the KALcollections website for more information.)

I'm lucky to write a column called Filler Finesse for Machine Quilting Unlimited.  Each issue I show how to quilt three filler designs, including a written description, diagrams, and stitch outs of each filler. I also create a composition where I use all three fillers. In every issue I try to make the composition a little different. The first three issues of this year I made pictorial compositions (see an example here), but I wanted to switch things up a little for the next three. Here's the example from the July/August issue:

When I first started quilting the part I loved the most was the piecing. I've pieced many a sharp point in my day, but honestly didn't want to do that for this design. OK, this may seem like cheating, but for this little wall hanging I decided to use a couple of different software programs to create the look I wanted. It was much faster than piecing!

First I used Electric Quilt to create the blue rays. Briefly, I modified the block "Dean's Sunflower Sun", found in the Contemporary Pieced, Sun Compasses library. I simplified the block so that it consisted only of the rays, and then used the block by itself in a quilt layout. Then I exported that image as a jpeg. I originally saved the "quilt" with black rays, and later changed the background to red and the rays to blue in Photoshop.

The compass as it appeared when exported out of Electric Quilt

I used the magic wand tool in Photoshop to change the color of the rays and background

The next step was to use KK to create the feathered star in the center. I started with a photograph of a sunset that has a lovely gradation of oranges in the sky. Using a feathered star template it was a snap to create the star that I wanted, then save the star as a jpeg.

I imported the feathered star into Photoshop and created a duplicate of the background layer.  I used the magic wand tool to select and then clear the white background from the duplicate layer, leaving me with just the feathered star. I then dragged the star over the red, white, and blue compass.

I resized the star to fit the center circle, adjusted my colors a little, and voila, my cheater panel was complete! I printed it as large as I could (13"x13" on my printer), then added the blue borders. All of those solid colors provided a great canvas to show off my fillers.

Stay tuned for Part 3 of this series on ways I use  Kaleidoscope Kreator in my work, where I'll show how I've used kaleidoscopes in digital collages for art quilts.

Kaleidoscope Fun Part 1

I've been meaning to write a post about Kaleidoscope Kreator for a long time. It's a very fun, and very easy to use, software program that creates beautiful kaleidoscopes from your images. The more I thought about it, I realized that I really need to write three separate posts to show some of the ways I use it for my digital art.

Kaleidoscope Kreator is a very simple program to use. Basically you open the program, import an image from your computer, then select shapes from a template library to use in creating the kaleidoscope.  There are videos on the Kaleidoscope Kreations website that show how to do this.

Once your image is open the fun begins. By simply moving the image around the kaleidoscope changes, just as turning the outside of a real kaleidoscope changes what you see. Mesmerizing and fun! Though beautiful straight out of the program, the images can also be used in creative ways in conjunction with other software programs to create a wide variety of images.

In this post, Part 1, I'll show how I create kaleidoscopes, then import them back into the program to create a new look. Part 2 will show how to use a kaleidoscope with a simple layer to create a medallion center for a quilt, while in Part 3 I'll share how I've used kaleidoscopes as layers in digital collages for art quilts.

Obviously I love to play with digital images (as you can see in my DVD, Digital Collage for Quilt Design From Start to Finish). As I started to use Kaleidoscope Kreator (from here on out I'll call it KK) I wondered what would happen if I created a kaleidoscope, then brought it back into the program and played with it some more? Well, let's see!!

Here's a digital collage that I created in Photoshop. It has many layers, and I didn't keep track of what they all are, but I do know that the grid part is from a photo of duct tape residue, and the circle is a dome inside the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

I love this image on its own, but decided to play with it some in KK. Of course, photographs produce beautiful kaleidoscopic designs, but what can I say, I love to experiment!

I imported my image into KK, and chose a feather template. (If you wish to see a larger image, just click on the photo for a clearer view.)

This is a screen shot of my image in the program. I added the red ellipse to highlight where the feather is since the contrast is low here. In this instance I used the eyedropper tool to change the background of the kaleidoscope from the default (white) to a color that was already in my image.

Here is the resulting kaleidoscope, which is visible in the top right corner of the screenshot above. Pretty, right?

When I'm planning on using this process of reimporting a kaleidoscope for further manipulation, I like to choose one of the more lacy templates for my initial shape, as shown below:

(These templates are add-ons to the initial program.)

I saved this kaleidoscope, then opened the saved file in the program, as seen below.

Here I used a simpler, more solid template shape. And here's the resulting kaleidoscope:

A whole different look, and wouldn't this look great as yardage, or a note card? By reimporting the image a whole new world of designs is possible.

For one of my Quilting Arts TV projects (directions for which are available here) I designed a simple purse with a kaleidoscope flap.

 (For this kaleidoscope I imported the digital design for this quilt, and the original template I chose was one of the filigrees.)

As with anything digital, the options are endless! Stay tuned for Parts 2 and 3 of this series, where I'll show some other ways I've used Kaleidoscope Kreator.

Full disclosure: Back in early 2011 I was given the opportunity to use Kaleidoscope Kreator to design a project for QATV (episode 810). I was given a copy of the software, and add-on templates, to use, and compensated for making the project. However, Kaleidoscope Kreator was on my list of things to try out, so eventually I would have tried it out on my own. I'm simply writing these posts to share some fun ways I've used the program.

Happy Fourth of July!!

Wishing everyone a safe and happy holiday!

Skinny Strip Tips

Yesterday it rained all day. This blew my plans for lap swimming, but gave me the perfect excuse to stay inside and sew.

Lots and lots of skinny strips.

Here are some tips for sewing skinny strips:
- Starch the fabric - it really helps to keep the strips from growing.
- Extra fabric is your friend. Cut the pieces longer than you think you need, then trim them up after you piece them together.
- If the strips are made up of more than one piece of fabric, sew the strips in units, then sub cut them to avoid lots of short seams. Again, leave yourself a little extra width so that you don't end up short in the end.
- Don't iron the sewn strips, press them to keep them in shape.

What tips do you have for sewing skinny strips?