Three Lake Michigan Beach Boys Quilt --Now in its Home!

This is the quilt that I have posted about earlier at great length!  I wrote 11 posts about the construction of this quilt back in July and August.  As discussed no doubt there, this is the second quilt I've made, based on a photo taken by the mother of the two little boys on the left five years ago.  I gave the quilt to their mother, our daughter Susan, for a recent birthday. Now the quilt is hanging in her home, upstairs in the playroom, a wonderfully sunny sort of loft area that all the bedrooms and the stairway open into.  It is hanging above a sofa that we gave to Susan many years ago, when she started graduate school in North Carolina and had almost no furniture to furnish her apartment.  This sofa has had so many different reupholsterings!  For years it was in our den in our old house.

It is exciting to me to see this quilt now in its new home!  This is such an appropriate spot for it, and I think it looks great hanging here.

My First Material Mavens Quilt--Asian Harmonies

This is my quilt for my new Internet Art Quilt group, The Material Mavens.  Our group is made up of 12 art quilters from the East Coast to the West, down to Texas, and across the Atlantic to Scotland.  We make 12"x 12" quilts based on themes chosen in turn by our members.  Our first theme was Harmony.

I debated many ideas and designs before finally settling on this one.  Here I sun-printed the Chinese characters for harmony on some fabric that I had just painted, using a combination of two blues and black, acrylic fabric paint.  To do this, I cut out the characters from craft foam and laid them onto the background and then placed the fabric in the sun.  As hot as it's been, and as bright as the sun, the printing process took very little time.

Then I cut out from commercial fabrics the Yin-Yang and fused first and then appliqued it with a small zig zag stitch to the background.  Next from some lovely Asian-themed commercial fabrics I cut out two Koi, whose tails and bodies just fit each side of the Yin-Yang.  I used the same fusing and applique methods as before.

I backed the quilt with some blue fabric that is printed with Chinese characters--who knows what words are used there!  I used the pillow case method of finishing the edges.

a close-up view of the sun-printed Chinese characters for Harmony

A close up of my two koi

The back of my quilt

Katie Pasquini-Masopust's Latest Book

I took a class from Katie PM in 2009.  What a class and what a teacher!  Katie's latest book is now out:
INSPIRATIONS IN DESIGN FOR THE CREATIVE QUILTER.  I am particularly fond of this book because (1) the methods taught in the book are those that Katie was teaching our class and (2) my quilt that was started in her class appears on p. 24!  It is most exciting to me, a novice art quilter, that one of my quilts is now "out there" in a book by a well-known and highly-respected quilt artist and teacher.

I discussed this quilt in an earlier post:

http://artquiltaspirant.blogspot.com/2011/05/art-quilt-two.html

Here's a photo of the quilt as it looks hanging in our bedroom.  You can't tell from the photo, but our walls are painted a pale aqua.  I love the color obviously!

Portrait Quilt: Part Nine--Finished at Last!

Today was a red letter day.  I finished sewing down the binding on the back of the quilt.  My good friend Judy quilted it for me.  I had quilted the first quilt I made from this photo, but time was running short and I had another quilt to finish for yet another birthday present.  (This portrait quilt is for our daughter's 40th birthday.  Her two sons are the little boys on the left, with their cousin on the right.)

Anyway, here it is, finished at last!

And now, here are some close-up views of the quilt:

Portrait Quilt: Tweaking at the End: Part Eight

And I just thought I was done!  Taking a new look at my pictures, which always reveal more than seeing a quilt "in person," somehow, made me realize I was not happy with the shadows on the boys' necks.  Too, a sharp-eyed friend noticed a problem with Locke's profile.  She was so right!  He has a distinct profile, a strong chin, high cheek bones, etc.  I made his forehead come forward too much and his cheek bones recede.  How could that have happened?  Was my tracing at fault?  No, it turned out that I erred in my cutting out, as the tracing was correct.  So I did a lot of picking out of threads, taking off of tulle, recutting tulle and refusing it, etc. etc.  For Locke I made a new partial pattern and re-cut the front of his face.

Here are the results, and hopefully now I'll be content:  

The quilt as a whole

Close-up of Locke.  I reshaped his profile in rather
subtle, but to me important, ways.
Added a darker shadow under his chin.
This is pinned at this point; not yet
appliqued down.

The shadows on Dawson at left and Malcolm at
right are also subtly different.  Still
not "perfect," but better!

Portrait Quilt Appliqueing--Part Seven, Constructing a Portrait Quilt

This is my last day to work on this quilt for awhile. On Sunday I hand it over to my good friend Judy, who often does my machine quilting for her.  Not only is she reasonable, but she's the best free motion quilter I've ever encountered!  When she's done, I'll add the binding, using the same special, Marcia Stein, method that I used on the first quilt.  This was a topic of the one post I put up on this blog in June.

Today I finished up the appliqueing.  This to me is a fun part of this process!  I don't like changing thread colors so often, but except for that, it is enjoyable. I used something like 16 different threads for this stage of construction.  Following Marcia Stein's instructions, I use a tiny zig-zag stitch, matching the thread color to the section being sewn down. 

I also did a bit of "thread sketching" today, on the tops of all the boys' heads.  All had some "Denice the Menace" sticking-up hair.  Locke's was particularly dramatic!  Here are some photos:

This shows the appliqueing on some of the
smaller areas of the quilt.  It's also a good
one to illustrate thread colors:  7
different ones here!

More of the detail work

Note the thread sketching of Locke's "top knot"!

And here, the thread sketching on
Dawson and Malcolm

Here's the quilt as a whole,
now appliqued at last!

Portrait Quilt--Part 6.5--Continuing with the Shading

The shadows/shading with fused-down tulle went faster than on my first quilt, probably because I have the process down pat.  I prepare a good-sized piece of brown tulle with the Misty Fuse on the back.  Again, I sandwich the two of these between two sheets of parchment paper.  I use a medium hot iron, and I count to 10 before I move the iron.  This seems to work to adhere the fusible to the tulle yet not to melt either the tulle or the fusible--both are meltable!

Then I trace on freezer paper's dull side the shapes of the various shadows, using my original cartoon enlargement.  After cutting out around these patterns, I place them on the prepared tulle, top it again with parchment, and iron once more, about the same length of time.  Then I cut out the shapes.  I have learned to let the freezer paper cool totally before removing the pieces from the ironing board; it seems to stick better when I do that.

Then I carefully remove the pattern from a shape, place it where it belongs, and then do a third ironing, again using the parchment on top and underneath, to adhere it to the figures where needed.

Here is the quilt, shading in place on the boys, pinned to the now-sewn background.  Where you see some pins sticking into the shadows--those are places where I have added additional tulle and not yet ironed them down.

PS  I've had to clean my iron with the product I mentioned several posts back.  No matter how careful I am, inevitably I get fusible on the iron.

The entire quilt, background now sewn,
shading done on the figures.

Close up of the two brothers.  Dawson
on the left was barefoot, and
getting his feet to look "right" was a challenge,
but I like them better here than
on my first quilt.   Especially
 when the quilt is viewed from
a distance, it looks quite like
he is up on his tiptoes on his left foot!

I had fun designing the shoes for the two
boys who are shod!