Picture This Journal Quilts

 I mentioned some time ago that I had had good news and today I can reveal what that was. I visited the Spring Quilt Festival at Ingliston, Edinburgh and the travelling journal quilt competition was on show there. This competition is organized by Grosvenor Shows and they set a new theme each year. For this one the theme was: Picture This. And yes, that is the 2nd Place Rozette adorning my two pieces.

The competition requires that you enter two A4 sized pieces and I like to make mine as a pair. I also use these journal quilt competitions to step slightly out of my comfort zone and use new, experimental techniques. For these two I returned to using Craft Attitude and in fact technique wise these two JQs are made much like my Virgin Marriage piece that I produced for Craft Attitude themselves. When they asked me to make some pieces for them to show off on their website they kindly send me 2 packages of Craft Attitude and I'm eking them out! You can in fact buy this from Amazon. It is for sale under a variety of trade names such as Craft Attitude for Scrapbooking, Wood, Quilts etc., but all of these are the exact same product, only the instructions are geared towards the specific crafts mentioned. It used to be quite expensive via the UK Amazon site but it has come down in price considerably and you can even get it with free postage.

This is my description to go with these two journal quilts: " The word "picture" always translates into photographs for me, so I used my photographs of sunsets, printed them out onto Craft Attitude, and applied them to a lace appliquéd, machine quilted, painted and stencilled background and framed them in gold lame.

Those of you who came to my recent 52 Journals exhibition in Peebles will recognize the framing method as one I have used before on various pieces. Doing it in gold lame made it a bit more challenging but on the plus side it doesn't fray! The theme Picture This made me want to put a frame around them. The top one is titled: The Sun himself must die and the bottom one: The Sunset of Life. Both have their title included using vintage text.

Our Lives are Rivers

I am going to try and post several projects here that were completed quite some time ago but that for one reason or another never made it onto a blog post. This one is the oldest and has been lingering on my work desk for so long that I kept overlooking it so used had I become to it's presence. I made it as part of my work for Craft Attitude way back in January. In face the completion date was the 25th of that month as I duly noted on the back. The size is approx.10 x 15".

It was inspired by a photograph I took even longer ago, on the 19th October last year when John and I visited the Stobo Water Gardens when they were at the height of their autumn colours, so very much at the same time of year as now.

As it was a project for Craft Attitude who in the end selected to use one of the other projects I made for them I did write a full tutorial for it and here it is, just in case you're interested:

Our Lives are Rivers

1. Print one of your painted papers (made using gelli plate, paint, stencils and spray ink) onto a cotton fabric sheet.
2. Print photograph of bridge onto Craft Attitude.
3. Attach Craft Attitude image on top of the printed cotton sheet from step 1 using WonderUnder (or Bondaweb if you're in the UK).
4. Attach WonderUnder to the back of the resulting piece and cut into 9 1” strips.
5. Prepare the 14.3/4” x 10.1/2” background by layering the fabric (French Journal Collection by London Portfolio for Michael Miller) with batting and backing fabric and machine quilt it in straight lines.
6. Sew on the yellow binding.
7. Appliqué on the 9 strips (don’t forget to use an ironing sheet!), spacing them regularly over the surface.
8. Stitch them down by machine along the perimeter.
9. From the background fabric cut and appliqué a bird image as shown, again using WonderUnder and machine stitching.
10. Layer the vintage text with painted fabric and, using the Xyron Create a Sticker machine adhere as shown. Hand stitch along the vintage text and cover with Diamond Glaze
11. Bead along the binding and the image strips using size 11 seed beads in matching colours. Also bead areas of the bird.
12. Add hanging sleeve.

This is the gelli printed paper mentioned in step 1

Craft Attitude is now available from Amazon in the UK. It's sold under various names such as Craft Attitude for Quilts, Scrapbooking or for Shoes or Glass, but in fact this is all exactly the same product, only the instructions are different for the different media you can use it on. Don't forget when you're printing on it that it comes in American letter size rather than A4 so adjust your printer settings. 

The vintage text comes from my favourite vintage book (and one I've used in most of the 52 Journals too): Proverbial Philosophy by Tupper. In fact I have just bought another copy on Ebay as the present one is falling to pieces rapidly. I do love this particular sentence almost more than any of the other gems I discovered in this book. A word of warning though, this is an ultra religious tract and some of the comments may offend. As most of you know I'm not religious and although I find some of the text objectionable I put up with it because he uses words beautifully and some of the feelings he expresses are universal. I also cut out sentences and once out of context they become more meaningful to me.

Here are some more detailed pictures although it has to be said that photographing this piece was difficult. It looks much better in real life to my eyes. This is something many visitors to the 52 Journals exhibition also told me: that seeing the journals online was very different from seeing them in the flesh so to speak. It is almost impossible to capture that sense of texture that stitched art has in a picture. I can only try my best here on this blog but you will have to wait till the next exhibition to see this with your own eyes.

The Virgin Marriage

I had sort of forgotten about the other projects I made using Craft Attitude so here is one of them with a step by step tutorial about how to make it. I've used one of my most favourite vintage images on this piece dating from the 19th Century,  and that you may have seen before in my work here and here  

The Virgin Marriage

1.

1. On a background of muslin (that's calico in the UK) put a layer of Mistyfuse, and lay on strips of different laces. When the background is covered and using an ironing sheet iron down the layers and adhere the laces.
2. Layer this piece with batting (wadding in UK speak) and a backing fabric.
3. Machine quilt in a grid pattern.

4. With a soft paint roller apply white emulsion paint to the whole surface of the piece. Let dry.

5. Using fabric paint spray and a variety of leaf stencils add pattern. Let dry.

6. Print vintage image (I used my own, called Type of Beauty, from The Graphic, 1883) on Craft Attitude. Run through Xyron machine (Xyron Creatopia) with a fabric glue cartridge (making sure the glossy side of Craft Attitude is down!). You could also use Mistyfuse again for this step but be very careful and use an ironing sheet so the Craft Attitude doesn't melt)  Apply to the background area made above and cut that background area back to ¼” all around the image.
7. Hand stitch and bead the major lines in your design as shown. Add embellishment in the shape of  vintage velvet leaves (from LostArtCreation), vintage button and vintage text. The text reads: "LADY: thou wilt wed me; clothed in white".
8. Cut out a piece of background fabric (brown in my case) about 1.1/2” larger on all sides from your image piece. Layer with batting and backing fabric and machine quilt in straight lines. Sew on binding of your choice.

9. Applique the original piece with the vintage image onto this background piece, using hand done buttonhole stitch and a variegated thread.
10. Add size 11 seed beads in matching colours around the buttonhole stitch and the binding. Sew on vintage buttons and text as shown. Add 3 lines of hand running stitch on the left.
11. Add hanging sleeve to the back and enjoy!

Posted at the crack of dawn in my nightie, while we have a connection to the world wide web!

Posted with Blogsy

ATCs with Attitude

As I mentioned in a previous post I have been making things with Craft Attitude to show what can be done with this product on fabric. They have now revealed these Artist Trading Cards on their Facebook page and I can thus show them to you here too.

There was a time when I made many ATCs for swaps but due to the increased costs of postage I haven't swapped in quite a long time. Making these ones reminded me of how much I used to enjoy producing them and I might go back to a bit of swapping one of these days. Artist Trading Cards for those of you who are not familiar with the concept, are sized 2.5 x 3.5" and are made to be exchanged with other artists.

 For these ATCs I used a background left over from another of my Craft Attitude pieces that I will show you in the not too far distant future and which involved lace applique, machine stitching, painting and stencilling which together build up a very textural background.

I  had plenty of the lace background made for that larger project left so I made this set of Artist Trading Cards based on my own flower and tree photographs. I fitted as many of these photographs (sized 2 x 3”) on one sheet of Craft Attitude. I used my Xyron with fabric glue cartridge on the glossy side of the printed Craft Attitude sheet, cut out the individual pictures and adhered them to the lace backgrounds which were cut 2.1/2” x 3.1/2”. I stitched around the images with gold thread by machine and beaded (by hand) along the outline. Vintage text was stitched on as shown and the ATCs were edged with hand done buttonhole stitch.

 

On these individual pictures of each ATC you can see just how well the textured background can be discerned through the images printed on Craft Attitude. They seem to merge with it.

Joie de Vivre

Joie de Vivre is both the title of this piece and the feeling I enjoyed when working with a new product, called Craft Attitude. You can read about it on the Craft Attitude website as well as on their Facebook page. I was very honoured to be asked to test it out for them and of course fabric was my chosen medium. The Craft Attitude sheets are sold under many different names all ending in Attitude such as Jewellery, Decor, Flower, Magnet, Scrapbooking, Shoe, Wood and Quilt Attitude but they are all in fact the same product. The sheets come with full instructions and are meant for use with your inkjet printer. Once it has printed you let it dry for a couple of hours, remove it from the carrier sheet and what you have is a completely transparent image that takes on the texture of the background. And for me the biggest bonus is that it can be stitched by both machine and hand. It has a very soft handle and unlike other transfer methods hand stitching through it is a pure pleasure.

I got so carried away that I made quite a few items with the product, and they will be popping up here on my blog in the coming days and weeks. This is the one they liked best and joy of joys, it is also my favourite. Love it when that happens. I have written a tutorial about how to make this for them and also for you, the readers of this blog.

 Joie de Vivre

1. Cut a piece of grey/silver fabric to size (9.1/4” square)
2. Layer with batting (wadding in UK) and background fabric and free machine quilt using silver thread and lines radiating from the centre.
3. Sew on binding made from the same fabric.
   
4. Print out a painted piece of your art (I used the piece shown above which is part of one of my drop cloths) onto Craft Attitude and add adhesive with a Xyron Creatopia machine loaded with a fabric glue cartridge to the glossy side of Craft Attitude. Cut out to 8” square and adhere to the piece made in step 2.
5. Sew around the edges
6. Adhere the fabric images (from Alphastamps The Secrets and Clown Valentine collage sheets) as shown, again using the Xyron.
7. Emphasize some of the quilted background lines with size 11 seed beads matching the background colours
8. Print out text Joie de Vivre using a Dymo writer and adhere.
9. Sew on the 3 rings following the machine quilted line from the hand of the figure upwards.
10. Sew on sequins to the figure’s costume.
11. Sew on a hanging sleeve to the back

As you can see I used a Xyron Creatopia glue machine with a fabric glue cartridge on this piece which worked very well but on other trial pieces I also used Mistyfuse and Bondaweb (WonderUnder in US speak) to attach the Craft Attitude sheet to the background,  and they worked just as well. Just don't forget that ironing sheet or baking parchment!  Craft Attitude is a plastic containing product therefore:  NO touching it with a hot iron!!!

So as you can see this girl is not just filled with joie de vivre but she also has Attitude!