Sunday, January 13, 2008

Art Quilt "Slice" Done!!


As promised, here is the little tutorial I have put together on my journal with this little art quilt slice. To recap -- the owner of an art poster cut her poster up into five pieces. Each member of our five member group selected a "slice" of the original poster to recreate using whatever techniques she desired. The slices had to be done in fabric and fiber as they are all going to be reassembled, quilted and bound in the end. My slice is outlined in pencil in the middle left area of the picture (you can see it if you look really close.)

Here are the details of the construction of my slice:







Step 1 -- I laid a piece of tracing paper over my "slice" of the poster and traced it with sharpie. I then traced over the tracing paper with "freezer" paper to make my little applique templates.





Step 2: I ironed the freezer paper templates on to the fabric I selected for each section. In most cases, I used hand dyed fabric or batik.



Step 3: After ironing templates down, I cut them out, peeled the freezer paper off.



Step 4: Then I ironed them down on to a piece of tea dyed muslin using a light table with my original picture on top of the light table for placement.


Step 5: After ironing all of the pieces down to the background I painted in highlights and detail with acrylic paint -- which can be heatset with an iron once dry.

After the paint was dry came the fun part. I laid out all of my silk and rayon threads in every shade of pink and green I have. Looking at the original poster slice that I had, I free motion embroidered the rest of the detail in on the flower petals, pestals and leaves.





The picture above is the original poster print of my slice, and the picture below is my appliqued, painted and free motion embroidered interpretation....


All in all this was a good experience. I learned an incredible amount along the way and am fairly pleased with the end result. It is amazing what you can do with thread to bring out the detail and suggest images. Threadpainting is something I am going to experiment with much more!

6 comments:

Teresa said...

Just beautiful. You have such a gift. Make sure you show us a pic of the finished product.

Anonymous said...

...your "slice" of this quilt is gorgeous!A print of that slice would make beautiful note cards, too!
Great work!

Wurzerl said...

It is really gorgeous! I am waiting to see more.
Have a good week

Unknown said...

Thanks for sharing the process, Cathie! What is the freezer paper doing? Is it used to fix things together? Anyway, it is a wonderful textile piece you created here.

Cathie said...

Andrea, the freezer paper is just that it's paper you wrap meat and stuff up to freeze it. BUT - we artists have found a wonderful use for it -- it is paper on one side and shiny on the other side. You can trace an outline of a shape (applique shape) onto the paper side, cut it out and iron it down to a piece of fabric and it sticks so you can cut out your little fabric shapes. We use it as template material. I can send you some if you'd like to try it.

Lynn Cohen said...

Very interesting process, thanks for sharing. And THANK YOU SO MUCH for your beautiful words for my YES first painting ever.
The more I look at it the more I like it too. And your words gave me even more of a realization about it's parts. Thanks CG. Much appreciated. And I will think about painting on quilts. Mine can be seen on the slide show on the right side bar of my blog btw.

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