Paper painting with Elizabeth St. Hilaire-Nelson

Back in early June my daughter treated me to a three day class with an artist whose work I've been admiring and following for some time--Elizabeth St. Hilaire-Nelson.   You can follow her blog here--you'll be amazed by her creativity.  And did I say she competed in a triatholon the day before our class?   Amazing energy.

Anyway, my daughter drove from Connecticut and I drove up from Pennsylvania and we met in Penn Yan, NY where the class was held.  It was sponsored by the Art Center of Yates County.  We had to come with a painting of an apple or a pear that we had prepared before class.  Then we began painting any and all kinds of papers.  Some of the students had been to the class the previous year and they brought along many different kinds of papers that they had collected during the year, some already painted and some which they painted during the class.  Each was to bring a sketch of the subject they wanted to work on.  I chose one of my favorite subjects--the chameleon.  You might remember that I did a chameleon in a workshop with Susan Carlson about two years ago.  Seems I have a reptile thing going.  Anyway, here are my two completed projects.

Fortunately one of the students had the perfect paper for the head of the chameleon which she generously shared.  If you ever have a chance to take a class with Elizabeth, don't hesitate.  She recently shared a photo on her blog of part of an old fence that she'd done some paper painting on.  Since then I've been searching flea markets and yard sales for some old fence but have not met with any success yet.

Clean up going on

I've been working at cleaning up my sewing area and weeding unwanted, unfinished items that I know I'll never complete, in preparation of our quilt guild's first flea market/yard sale.  I came across the four blocks in the center of the above photo.  They were from Aardvarks patterns and though I really liked the larger wall hanging/quilt I had sort of lost interest in it.  Somehow a light bulb went off and I decided to just put the four together and frame it with some irregular squares/ ala Carol Taylor.  I'm thinking it looks kind of nice.  Still have to finish the borders.  I have the squares done, just need to add them together and then add to the inside piece.  So, another UFO almost done.  I'm also submitting some other UFOs for sale at the yard sale.  We'll see if any members are willing to take up the challenge and finish them.

Next up is my huge Kim McLean Flower Basket quilt.  The center part is almost done--only a few motifs to applique down and I may just fuse them down and then to do the circles around the entire quilt.  That will take a while...but I'm on a roll.

Meanwhile, waiting for the muse to come and provide some fodder for an original work.

Third attempt

This will be the third attempt to post this entry on my blog.  Frankly, sick of trying so this is the shortened version.

Finally finished my paper piecing wall hanging.  Hate paper piecing.  The inner quarter circles were a beast to do and I'm not happy with them.  To leave the paper on while joining the inner circle to the next arc?  That is the question.  Directions say to leave on.  I couldn't stand it and removed the paper first, but still not satisfied.  As I said I wasn't happy but moved on.   

There should have been a gazillion spikes in the outer boarder.  Sick of doing paper piecing so I found some fabric in my stash that I thought worked and in the long run was probably more effective.  All the fabrics were from my stash.

Now on the other UFOs.  Like I said, short and sweet.  Hope this managed to appear.

Using my stash

Two posts in two days...unbelievable!

Last March I attended the AQS show in Lancaster.  I've always loved New York Beauty type blocks and one of the vendors was Deb Karasik.  I"d looked at her website before and had seen this wall hanging called Batik Wheels but was not impressed by the colors on the pattern cover.  I know one should be able to envision something with different colors, a different setting, etc., etc., etc. but that's not something I'm able to do very well.  In any case, as a backdrop for her vending space she had this quilt in a yellow/orange color way.  I was smitten.  Bought the pattern then and there, came home, selected the fabrics and let it sit in a box ready for starting.  All the fabrics are from my stash.  I'm embarrassed to say I have a huge stash.  Now--this was 11 months ago!

 Encouraged by a friend in Nova Scotia who is working on Karen Stone's Cinco de Mayo I decided to tackle this one.  The directions are awesome!  It even comes with a little plastic rectangle to use when trimming and comes with all the papers for paper piecing.  It's a light weight velum similar to what I've purchased for paper piecing, kind of like what they use as an overlay in wedding invitations.  Tears away beautifully. BTW, originally I chose all tonal type batiks but found the look was getting kind of boring so I introduced some batiks with more obvious patterns in them.  I think it made it more interesting.  You can see another of Deb's creations on the cover of the current Quilter's Newsletter.   And I know she's the author of two books on paper piecing.

So here is the wall hanging in progress.  If you zoom in on the photo you can see a copy of the photo which Deb allowed me to take at the quilt show.  You can see there a huge number of spikes in the other border.  I have not put any of the circles together at this point, waiting to see if anything needs to be repositioned.  BTW, orange has become my new"go to" color.  Love it!

Second time's a charm ( I hope)

I'm still having a love/hate relationship with this Mac.  I've had it over a year now and I'm still not sure it was a wise purchase.  It continues to do things without my approval--like losing the entire post I'd just created.  So here goes, again...

Last July I took a five day  class with Philippa Naylor at Quilting by the Lake.  I finally finished the piece.  Philippa's work is perfection itself and I wanted to try to incorporate what I learned in a piece that would be worthy of her instructions.  Some parts I feel do that; others do not.  I'm not happy with the trapunto on the curlicues.  Philippa uses three layers of batting in her trapunto (two in the actual design and one with the regular batting.  She has a unique way of ending the piping and also stipples her bindings, both techniques I used in this piece.  Also the center petals are kind of free form--done individually and then put together.  The first two days of the week were devoted to learning some of her favorite techniques and then the last three days were devoted to designing our own work and incorporating the techniques we felt would be good for the piece.  I wanted to get it done because I'm going to be going again this July and there is a quilt show during the two weeks of classes and I needed to get it done.  Only took 8 months...

And--lost the photos again.  Somehow one was retrieved.  Lost the one showing the stippling on the binding.  Bummer.

To Be or Not To Be

What to do?  I fused these designs several months ago and I'm determined to finish some of my UFOs.  I'm a follower of Kathy Doughty's blog Material Obsession and am amazed at the creativity she and her students use in composing setting strips.  I decided to try some fabric I normally wouldn't use but I don't think it's working.

Another quilter whose work I admire is Gabrielle Swain and she uses a lot of offset arrangements with a variation of half square triangles as setting strips.  Her book is Applique in Bloom and if you have a chance to see it you can see her various settings for her quilts.  I may try something like that.

 So--do I put them away in the box for a while (week? month? year? eternity?) or gift them to someone else to finish. I'm anxious to work on something that thrills/challenges me and this quilt is not doing it unfortunately.  I like the blocks by themselves but... Decisions, decisions.

Craftsy class work

I'm a big fan of on-line classes especially those offered by craftsy and their classes (especially if you wait for half price classes) and one that I took recently is the Log Cabin Art Quilts taught by Judith Trager.  You make free form lob cabin blocks and then screen print motifs on the surface.  The strips are free form cut with no ruler until the final squareing up.   I had never done screen printing and this seemed like a nice chance to investigate the process.  What fun!  I just did my first screen printing using kite shapes and I'm going to embellish them and then make some funky kind of strings for them so the piece will be three dimensional. These blocks were made with fabrics straight from my scrap bin but I have fabric selected for a more serious type of work like the one that Judith goes on to demonstrate in the class.  These classes are well worth the money, imho.

And then--I came across a blog entry by Terri Stegmiller Terri's blog entry (think that's the spelling) in which she shows making stencils out of hot glue.  Oh!  the possibilities are endless...

BTW, I have not blogged in weeks because at the end of November I slipped on black ice and broke my right wrist.  Of course, I'm a "righty" so my quilting and knitting projects came to an abrupt halt for a bit.  Fortunately the physical therapist recommended a return to knitting to strengthen the muscles and I was able to do some piecing using my left hand.  You know--we never give up.  Anyway, I'm full of enthusiasm for new projects now.  And I'm awfully careful where I walk when I suspect there is ice anywhere near where I'm walking.