My beginnings

I had lots of ideas for 'Beginnings', but in the end the piece chose itself.  This piece was one that I was working on for my weekly/fortnightly videos and it just became beginnings.

It started as a collage, then I added the thread painting.  The scene is of a beach not far from where I was born (My mother, in fact, went into labour on the beach), so it is very 'My beginnings' in that sense, but it also was me going back to my beginnings with art quilting.  Landscape and thread painting.I think Iwould take uptoo much space if I listed all the fabrics I used, because there are a ton. I will post my video and some more info later about that.
Here are some close ups.

The little bay with bead foam.

Some of the collage background.  I knotted some of my basic embroidery on the top and left the threads loose for texture.

I put a few grasses in the corner as a foreground (needs more contrast, though).

Close up of the thread painting.  It does look awful this close, doesn't it?

A bit more of the collage and the frayed edge of the organza I did the thread painting on.
It's a bit different and a bit the same for me.  I hope you all like it.

its all about the details

at least it is for  me!  I'm very much one who likes the little architectural details, and older buildings have so much character.  When I was in Halifax, Nova Scotia earlier in the summer, I took some pictures of some of the older campus buildings at Dalhousie University.


This building, the MacDonald Building, was the University library at one point.  I really like the crispness of the white dentil trim against the stone walls.  The building was built in 1914.  This became the basis for my challenge quilt.  One thing that I've discovered in doing these challenges is that I am most comfortable working from a photo.  I have a hard time with abstract, and as much as I would like to give it a better try, I'm just not comfortable there very often, and usually do not like my results very much, so I stick in my comfort zone, although this time I did take markers to my finished quilt!
So here's my progress - working from an enlarged photograph, I sketched out my pieces and started cutting fabric.  I had this great brickwork fabric in my stash, but it was  a little too regular a pattern, so I applied fusible web to it and then cut it up in much smaller, random size pieces, and applied them to my background - a combination of one of my hand dyes for the sky and a medium grey, which became the grout lines.

the starting fabric

the resulting fabric

I then added white and a darker grey to create the background and shading for some of the trim areas.  Many itty bitty little pieces later, I was progressing well.

progress

I added lots of little pieces of a couple of greens to create the bush, and used a layer of green tulle over them before quilting them down.  A lot of the detail in the trim was added with some thread painting and the quilting, but I was at a loss as to how to quilt the sky until I decided to just echo quilt it. with straight closely placed lines.

but it was still missing some shading and some of the finer details,

so out came my gel pens and markers, and with nary a hesitation, I attacked my finished quilt! I'm very pleased with how it has turned out!  (not so pleased with this picture - the sun was shining so brightly but I'm not really complaining!)

The MacDonald Building in fabric

Thank you Nicolette for a really fun challenge!

Happy quilting!

Not quite...

My piece has really taken a lot longer than it should have and although I'm revealing, it really isn't finished.

Light and Shade

It is based on a photo by Jorg Reuter which is creative commons here.  Obviously, it is about balancing rocks which we talked about recently, and appears to be a very popular hobby! 
I sketched and sketched and came up with this.

Obviously this is not the right shape for our challenges and then I hit upon including light and shade in the background and widening it. I traced my sketch onto muslin (just the lines and dots, not all the black).
Then I sandwiched it and free machined most of the lines in black thread (That was a lot of lines).
Then I painted the background in acrylic (next time I will use fabric paint as it is very hard to stich through acrylic although the lumiere is so gorgeous....)
I coloured the stones and shells with watercolour pencils and a brush.
Then the time consuming part, which is not finished began.  I wanted to hand stitch all over it as it is so flat and I wanted more texture.

I tend to embroider by thread, lol.  I will start with one thread and when that thread is finished, I go to a different coloured thread and a different area and so on.  Stops me getting bored.
In the first pic, I have basically finished the bottom rock, but I haven't touched the background here.
In the second picture, I have done some work on the lower stone and have done some background stitching.  Still need to do some black back the other way,
On the shell, I have only stitched some highlights and a strand of pink.
I find that I am beginning to like this style, with thread sketching, painting and hand embroidery, only I need to make sure I have more time for the hand stitching, as I always underestimate how long it will take.
Anyhow, even though I am in no way finished this piece, I really like it (wow, first time for everything!) and am going to take my time and enjoy the stitching process whilst I think about the next challenge.
Too much talk, sorry.

A long way up

Ah well, like Beverly, my idea didn't quite come together the way I wanted it to.  I was beating myself up about it and then I had a very serious talk to myself and said that as I am always spouting off about serendipity and mistakes being a good thing, I should be really happy.

Here is "Up in the milky way"  I think my problem with it is that it is so monochromatic - which as you know is not me, however there are lots of sparkles, more than are shown in the photo. I used  the technique of quilting densely first, then painting.  This gave me the background.  The milky way was originally stencilled in with a silver shiva stick, but I really did not like it as the contrast was too stark, so I scribbled all over it with a variegated blue and white thread  (scribbling being my mode of quilting in the background, too)
Finally, (I thought it was final)  I added iron on rhinestones for the stars.  I was actually very accurate about where I put the stars, using star maps and my own observations late at night to place the major stars, because this is actually what I see most nights when I look up.  The sky is full of stars because there are few lights out here in the bush at night to interfere with the view of the sky.
Anyway, I had bound it and was "finished" and decided that the contrast was still to high, so I began adding hand stitching, seed stitches and cross stitches. 
One thing I am learning about myself is that I actually like to hand stitch and doing the fiddly bits.  Once, I was a bit of a purist and did everything by machine, but hand and machine work both have different textures and work together well.
The contrast is still too high between the sky and the Milky way, but like Beverly, I might still add a bit more stitching, because as I was adding the stitches last night, I was liking the quilt more and more.

Home is where the heart is

That is what I wanted to celebrate.  The place I live. 

The gum trees and wattles that I walk under every day, the river I see out my window and the mossy rocks in the forest behind my house. 
This piece is mostly thread painted, with a bit of applique, some underpainting and  layering of sheers.  I used around 16 bobbins of bobbin fill - that is one bobbin per square inch!!!  
So.....  I know you will forgive me if I haven't quite finished.  I just need to finish the faced binding, but I am so tired after being up all night - and I need to get some sleep and be a bit fresher before I tackle that..
One day, I will actually complete something simple and uncluttered - maybe the next challenge?   Didn't I say that last time.......?