Pay It Forward Gifts Done!!!

Today was "catch up" day. I had some little commitments I had to work on before I start work on my next big project which is an art quilt for my sister in law, Leslie.

Here are the three gifts I will be sending to the recipients of my Pay it Forward.

I made some handmade fabric from wool, metallic fibers, pieces of foil, painted and blasted tyvek and cool Australian yarns I had laying around by needle punching them onto a piece of woold. Then, I layered on a piece of organza over the top of the whole thing, and free motion embroidered the front with metallic thread. After that I burned through the organza with a heat gun, affixed some Swavroski crystals and silk ribbons to the front and novelty yarns to the top and covered the back with a hand painted piece of cotton duck cloth that is painted with metallic Lumiere paints. They are so fun to make and come out different every time! I hope their recipients enjoy them!

6x6 Traditional "Blocks" with a Twist Done....

Here are the results of my interpretation of the traditional blocks with a twist challenge from Surface Design.

This first piece (my personal favorite) was made with three types of handmade fabrics. The largest layer was just commercial fabric overpainted with Lumiere paints and stamped with metallics. The second layer fabric is made from soy silk fibers that I made by layering the colored fibers (warp and weft) on a screen, placed another piece of screen on top and painted the soy silk and screen sandwich with a glue/water mix -- actually saturating it and then rolling over it with a rolling pin on a towel to get out the excess water. I then took the fibers out from between the screens and hung the newly made fabric to dry. The little center square is also made from silk fiber fabric that I made the same way, however after I took the fabric out from between the screens, I quickly painted (it while still wet) with Lumiere paints. Then I hung that to dry. Once both pieces were totally dry, I cut them into squares (square within a square). The first piece I glued down on a piece of 6x6 timtex, covered the entire surface with tulle and stitched around the edges. After that I stitched the second square down, then the third square and quilted over the entire piece with a free motion quilting stitch using metallic copper thread and finished it by binding it with copper tape. Finally, I made a little copper swirlie in the middle with paint.

This piece started out as a piece of sponge painted paper that was layered with fabric, silk, stamped and covered with organza, stitched all over the place with metallic thread and then heat blasted.

This final piece was made using a base of commercial fabric that I painted with metallic paint, layered with silver lame' pieces and covered with a 6x6 piece of bronze organza. I free motion quilted with bronze metallic thread all over the entire thing, then I stitched a piece of embossed copper to the center and copper foil to the edges. The picture doesn't do this one justice as it really is very colorful.

The backs of all three pieces have a piece of texture stamped muslin on the back.

This was an interesting challenge as it made me focus on trying to come up with innovative technique/materials to provide a "twist" to a "standard" quilt block and I think overall, I was successful.

I think I'm done now for a while with the challenges as I want to focus on honing some of the quilting skills I have been learning. It's one thing to go through the motions, it's another to do it with precision and finesse - and THAT is my goal!