What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

design sheets in progress, paint and stitch

colage and embroidery, surface design

collage and embroidery, surface design

collage and embroidery, surface design

When I am given interesting materials I like to play and see what I can do with them. Recently in my volunteer work I came across the first of five volumes of a Braille book. No one knew what happened to the other four, so I got to take that volume home.

The Braille printed pages look like code, with raised dots on both sides of each page. According to the American Foundation for the Blind, “Braille symbols are formed within units of space known as braille cells. A full braille cell consists of six ...

collage and embroidery, sampling, surface design

playing with collage and stitch

simple collage and a little doodling

As of yesterday I have made 50 4 by 4 inch collages in my effort to complete the 100 day project. I wrote about the beginning of my effort here, and am pretty darn proud to have made it halfway.

Here are the collages I’ve made since the first 16. They’ve continued in an abstract landscape vein; and mostly contain some stamping, stenciling, or printing.

You logical types will have noticed there are actually 36 collages shown. One is for today, and the other is because I numbered two collages as 38. Since I don’t much like ...

This past Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday I participated in a Zoom workshop on Textural Style with Natalya Khorover. We had a two hour Zoom session each day and then homework to do for the next day’s class. The class focused on using scraps of any type to create small machine and hand sewn collages. Natalya stresses materials reuse, especially plastics, in her work and teaching, though this workshop used fabrics more than plastics.

By Friday afternoon my studio looked like a fabric scrap cannon had been fired off, I had started four pieces, and my brain was exhausted. So ...

Finally, this year I’m doing the 100 day project. What’s that? You choose a creative project, do it every single day for 100 days, and share your process on social media. The organizers define creative widely, but I chose to make 4 by 4 inch collages from my paper scraps and stamps. Why? I already had all the materials needed, the size makes it doable, and it’s a chance for more composition practice.

Since February 22, the official start date, I have made 16 small collages. Sometimes I made two in a day as I had all ...

Not every piece of art has to be a blockbuster. Sometimes doing little projects can be satisfying, too. Over the past week I have been inspired to create mini bits by what turned up when I went hunting for a missing quilt. I am ashamed to say there’s no method to my quilt storage system other than compatibility between quilt size and storage container. A quilt may be rolled up, under my bed, in a tote, or in a big black trunk. So I looked through a lot of stuff before I found what I sought. Along the way ...

Thank goodness dreary February is brightened up by Valentine’s Day. This year I decided to go traditional with hearts and flowers to celebrate, though I won’t turn down a nice bottle of wine or some dark chocolate.

I think I once made a hearts quilt, but it was gifted a long time ago. Rather than go the quilt route I found it was faster and more fun to sew some hearts onto leftover blank greeting cards. The background is painted pattern tissue, and the hearts are old sheet music that I painted and stamped. The papers were heavy ...

I have packed an art project every time we’ve spent a few winter weeks in Florida. Last year it was assorted fabric strips and my sewing machine that produced four small quilts. Years before that I took hand stitching projects that resulted in the embroidered squares of “Every Which Way” and “Torii Traces.”

To change it up on this trip I took materials for making collages. Of course I had the exciting task of sewing down all those wool felt squares, but that was mindless work. Because I didn’t want to harm the furnishings at ...

“We don’t have to live with our mistakes simply because we spent a long time making them, or we fear it will take a long time to correct them.” – Bonnie Hunter

I came across the above sentence by accident as I don’t read Bonnie’s blog every day. But I’m glad I read her January 4 post as I think I need to apply her attitude toward my work. Oddly, I don’t worry about mistakes in my quilting and have no problem cutting up or revising work I consider a failure. Yet, I am surprised to ...

Last year I began to poke my head over the parapet a bit and get out more. The landscape has changed as online teaching and get togethers become more permanent. I am so over Zoom meetings, though it can work for classes.

I used the extra home time to dive into non fabric art mediums such as collage and mixed media. Of course that meant new supplies were bought and a new learning curve was begun, which was a good thing. The basics of design and composition carried over from quilting, of course, but different mediums have different pros and ...

Thanks to Drew Steinbrecher’s free online class I have a growing collection of sketch books made from children’s board books. In the past I started sketch books, but didn’t keep up with them. If you ever started a daily exercise program on January 1, found it became weekly by January 20, and maybe every three weeks by February 5, you know the process.

Drew uses his gel prints, gluing them directly on the book pages, but almost any material, paint, or drawing tool can be used as long as you gesso the pages first. Why board books ...

So far my goal to not buy fabric is holding up well and I’ve been patting myself on the back for my restraint. I don’t count fabric I’m given as that’s simply recycling. Then I look around my studio and notice that I have substituted mixed media supplies for fabric accumulation. Oh dear.

It began with paint and a bit of glue. I already had fabric paint, but I got serious about decent acrylic paint for gelli printing. Since different collage artists use different glues I added several types to my stash to see if I ...

papers and fabrics for collage