O is for found Objects, or Oh, look what I found!

All the discussion about FFFC has kick-started me to finish this piece, which measures 13" x 10".  Found Objects, including washers, a ring, and oval earrings, were encased under a damask napkin by hand stitching around them.  This was bordered by hand-dyed cotton fabric.

Thank you all for the great discussion.  I think it gave us all that needed push to get things done.

V is for Viktoria

V is for Viktoria

Close up of embroidery

Bits of trim and Jewelry

Since someone else posted a previously completed Alphabet quilt, I will share mine.  A couple of years ago my guild did an Alphabet Soup challenge.  Each artist was given their letter in fabric and had to use it on the front of the quilt.  Quilts were to be 18"x 24".  Each artist got to select their letter from list of remaining letters.  By the time I got to select there were only a few vowels and V left,   I chose V.  

My daughter was named after my grandmother.  I used the German spelling of Viktoria.   My grandmother did wonderful embroidery work.  I have several pieces of her work.  My daughter does lovely cross stitch.  I  immediately had an idea for this piece, I tried to make it look like Victorian crazy patch.  The floral embroidered motifs came from a maternity smock that I had made and worn when expecting my daughter.  For some reason my mother had cut of the motifs and saved them.  I had done the little house cross stitch many years ago and never framed it.  The buttons are vintage and come from my late mother's button box.  As well as the brooches. The lacy trim came from my daughter.  She had pulled all the filly decorations off a lampshade and gave me a box filled with bits of this and that.  I tea dyed the letter V's, they were on a white background.  It was a very satisfying piece to make.

The collection was hung in that year's quilt show.  It also was on display at the HMQS quilt show, and at the Springville art museum's annual quilt show. I can't quite remember what year it was made.  I am not where I can look at the label today.

Q is for Quilt

All this lively discussion in the past week encouraged me to  post this piece which fits the current challenge, although it was made for a different challenge group.  "Q is for Quilt"  and a few other things.  The small yellow quilt hanging off the bottom is a six inch nine patch quilt with 1/4 inch squares.   Other items beginning with Q were added using ATP- a first for me.  The quilting includes cursive lower case q's, too.

Peggi Yacovissi, Wellsboro PA

Road Trip!

"R" is For Road Trip!

This is a collage of several small postcard-style quilts that show a road trip through the Southwest. The background is a city skyline while the border represents the wide open road. Text includes not only the free-form cut letters, but  also the background map behind the two figures. My quilt measures 22" x 21".

Pouring T

21" x 17"

I seldom include letters or words in my pieces, but the challenge called for them, hence, Pouring T, quite literally!  I tried cutting the letters out from fabric, but since I was unwilling to sew all around the edges for each letter, I tried out a technique that came through Joggles.com recently.  They had a video of printing using adhesive foam and pieces of foam core for printing, and since I always have loads of foam core scraps, I gave it a try.  The printing came out a bit light, but I filled in the T's with the same marker I had used for ink, and outlined the H2O steam and felt satisfied with the result.

At first, I was going to crop the kettle, but it wanted to be included in its entirety -- though it didn't want to have a handle!

Thanks, Ann, for a fun challenge.  I welcome any comments.

Fresh Fish!

This piece began with sun dyeing muslin using Dye-na-Flow, cut paper shapes, and plant material [read: weeds!] from my yard. It’s a fun, quick and easy process. A fellow art quilter loaned me a wonderful Fred B. Mullet fish stamp that I applied with black and gold textile paints.

As I worked on the piece, this narrative kept going through my head: Five fancy fish, freely floating, fleetly flitting, and fitly finning from Fiji to France, from Finland to Formosa. Fascinating, friendly…and flagrantly flirting! -- Fresh Fish!
I had notions of somehow including that text via free-motion quilting, but I’m just not that good! Maybe one day.

12"x26"

Enjoy, and feedback welcomed.

Robert Hartley

S is For Smile

 

Take a smile. Or two.. Or three…

The Daily Smile Countdown!

Beads, buttons, charms, lace, lock washers, sequins, trims, washers, yarns, zipper.

 

Temperance

This quilt is about "Temperance" and is the newest in my series of family history quilts. The photo in the center is of my great-grandmother, Laura Kincaid Seaman Meade. To the left is her father, the "father of Sumner [WA]," who was very pro-temperance. To the right is Laura's second husband - a "hops king" until aphids destroyed that industry. The photo in the top row is of a hops kiln and workers in Sumner. Sumner was a "dry" town, but many residents became rich from hops, from which beer is made. I have no idea how Laura handled this situation.
I have not quilted this top yet. I enjoyed finding lots of antique-ish red prints. I will probably add more quotes. There are also quotes and images about temperance and the hops industry on the back.

A is for Attitude

In March, 2013 Craftsy.com sponsored its first ever quilting cruise. They provided us with four great instructors. Each one taught us a different technique. Pam Holland taught us how to make a quilted alphabet book. This was our first block entitled "A is for Attitude". Pam has written a book entitled "The Adventures of the Amazing Alphabet" and has created a different character for each letter. Her website is www.pamhollanddesignsandproductions.com if you want to check out her quilts, which are amazing. I enjoyed learning the technique of creating a pattern and then tracing it onto my background fabric. You then either color in the areas you want hi-lited with colored pencil or use textile marking pens. You then quilt around everything to make it more pronounced. I would like to make all the letters for my grandchildren, but I think it would take me forever and a day, so this may be my last attempt at letter quilts. The quilt measures 8.5" x 11". I have two granddaughters, Angelica and Alivia so one of them may get this little quilt. Comments are welcome.

C is for Cute

This challenge was just too good to pass up.  I have been working on a technique in Photo Shop called Typographic Portraits.  I am teaching that technique along with others that I incorporate in my computer image quilts next week.  I needed to work on a few more samples and this challenge gave me just the excuse I needed to create another text portrait.

Generally I incorporate a lot of adjectives that describe the person who's portrait I am working on to make up the image.   Because I wanted to use only one or two words for this challenge I chose cute and cousins.  These two are so cute together as they show their love for each other frequently.  As usual I don't have time to finish this piece but wanted to post it as printed on fabric. 

Summing it all up...

The letter I chose is the Greek letter SIGMA. In mathematics, it stands for "summation", and also "series."

It's probably obvious that I did this in a hurry, (Fast Friday), and it was fun. The letters in the quilt, all sigmas, are cut from the yellowed pages of my high school calculus book, now an antique. The text on the pages is about summation and series. I used tulle over the paper cutouts to protect them, and I did a little echo quilting. It is about 14" x 16".

Speaking of series, this might be the beginning of a series for me. My next letter would be DELTA, which stands for "change." 

Thanks for an interesting challenge!

Marilyn Foulke
Louisville, KY

Challenge #81: What's the Word?

Theme: WHAT’S THE WORD?

Host:  Ann Turley, Fallbrook, CA

Due:  June 1, 2013

Create a quilt that illustrates a word and a letter of the alphabet. Think outside the realms of normal with subtlety, whimsy, or emotion.  For example, when you think of the letter “A”, the image most of us see is of an apple. Go beyond that, thinking of nouns, verbs and adjectives. For example, I might want to find an interesting way to portray an arpeggio – a quick succession of musical notes. Or perhaps I may want to find an emotion and a letter match. Think “F” is for fear – how would you work with that imagery? Lastly, add a bit of relevant text to your quilt. This could be a subtle as repeating your chosen letter in the shadows, or as in-your-face as a large block print in a corner.  Maybe a bit of poetry that speaks of your image could be used. Whatever you decide, make it yours and make it personal to you.

This is one that I made that illustrates the idea, entitled Pea Pod Soup (the words are there, on the right, if you look closely):

Links that may be helpful:

Hexagons, music and text

http://luannkessi.blogspot.com/2012/11/hexagon-text-quiltmore-progress.html

A collection of paper-pieced blocks that get my idea across better that I ever could!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/basildonkitchens/8112518230/

Scroll down to the little heart quilt:

http://www.pjhornbergerfolkartist.com/2013/03/new-textile-art-art-quilts.html

This one could easily illustrate an emotion:

http://www.etsy.com/listing/102618933/framed-guardian-angel-original-outsider?ref=v1_other_1

In my opinion, Susan Shie is amongst the best at adding text to her pieces:

www.turtlemoon.com/gallery/gallery.htm

So have fun, don’t over-think your quilt, just do it!