Magical Metal Altars at Create

Thursday I taught Magical Metal Altars to a full class with 20 students. This is a new class, kind of a larger modified version of the popular Fiesta Ornaments. What fun this was! 

I gave the students a wide range of options to create their altar; from using a template with everything predesigned by me to simple templates with various door and window shapes and imagery that could be used for reference and inspiration, to completely open ended templates allowing for total creative expression of painted imagery and embossed metal work.

I was amazed by the number of incredibly beautiful pieces that were made in this class.

Fantastic work done by everyone!

I think Create is a perfect name for this retreat, there was a lot of incredible work being done in so many class rooms. How difficult it must have been for students to decide what class to take when there were so many great options.

I want to give an extra thank you to all my wonderful students who chose to spend the day in my class.

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Painting Fabric Class at the Create Retreat

The Create retreat got off to a wonderful start on Wednesday. My first class had 8 students, it's such a pleasure to have a class that small on occasion, teaching 25 (my usual number for festival) can be challenging, because I always like to give everyone individual attention along with the class demos.

These gals were focusing on making smooth gradations, looks like they are really getting the hang of it.

I think it is interesting how many students I have who tell me they have never painted before and then they do really great work. I like to think I have helped open new doors for them in their creative process and allowed them to recognize their potential is so much more than they realize.

This student brought photos of birds that she had taken at the Field museum in Chicago to paint.

My trusty assistant Nina came along to help and spend some time painting and drawing in class.

Karen Becker who painted the birds, just sent me this photo of her finished quilted painted birds, beautiful!


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I have an article on sewing metal in Volume 3 of the emag In Stitches

Interweave's newest issue of In Stitches is now available for download. It's a great new magazine format that has written articles, videos and slideshows. Check out this great table of contents.

Along with my article, there is a slide show of high res photos of many of the ways I have combined metal with textiles

and a video showing different techniques for sewing and embossing metal.

If you'd like to learn more about what's in volume 3, watch this video featuring Jane Davila, the new editor of In Stitches and Pokey Bolton who gives an overview of the various ways to navigate the emag format.



I also heard there will be an ipad version available very soon as well!

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Lark Quilt It Contest

So you remember a couple weeks ago I mentioned the  Lark Books Quilt it contest?

Entrants will create an original Quilt of any size that incorporates at least three of the following five required elements

Bird/s
Mountains
Silver fabric, thread, item
Recycled/repurposed material
Beads

I sent in my entry in and got the ok to post it, so here it is

Take These Broken Wings 12" x 12"


It has a background of used tea bags gel mediumed to fabric.

I drew my design on the teabag fabric and painted in highlights with white and the branches with brown before moving on to color.

 I painted the color with transparent washes of textile paint.

After quilting it with wool felt I sewed an embossed metal wing made from a sheet of aluminum layered over a piece of copper and a wing shaped piece of wool felt to give it more stability. A silver brad  pierced through copper creates his shoulder joint.

Birds & Bees copper book

This is the finished copper book that I worked on embossing during Open Studios.
I decided to make a change to the books by backing the copper covers with painted grungeboard for extra stability. I really like the addition, giving the books a sturdy and clean finish.

Birds Eye View

I had so much fun making I Beelieve for Virgina Spiegel's Fiber art for a Cause that I had to make another one.

I wish things weren't so busy right now, I suppose that is not about to change any time soon, because I would love to make a bunch more.

I really like the combination of hard metal with soft fabric and I have always loved religious icon paintings that have the metal work over them with the little glimpses of painted surface.

Fiberart for a Cause

This is my donation piece for Virginia Spiegel's fund raiser Fiberart for a Cause. It is an Invitational Reverse Auction of Fiberart, March 24 - 26, 2009. Each artist donates a fiber artwork with 100% of the proceeds going directly to the American Cancer Society. 5 1/2” x 9 1/2”

To make this, I painted white PFD cotton fabric with textile paints, the letters were cut from magazines and collaged with gel medium. The finished painting was fused to Peltex heavy weight interfacing, and quilted. I cut the metal house shape from a sheet of aluminum craft metal with decorative scissors and used an x-acto to cut the window and doors. I used a 90/14 needle on my sewing machine to stitch the metal with a heavy cotton thread and embossed it after it was sewn to the panel.

I wanted to draw a more elaborate design on the metal than random doodles, so I drew a design on tracing paper and laid it over the metal and lightly traced over the design with a stylus transferring the design to the metal. I went over the design with the stylus embossing it in the metal giving it more depth and adding details.

Painted Peltex Pod Form

Stitched painted Peltex, embossed aluminum and wool felt.

I was curious what the surface of Peltex would look like painted. This is the non fusible kind.
I painted one side green and the other side purple, orange and metallic gold with textile paints.The surface came out slightly porous looking, not smooth and flat like painting lutradur or fabric, it has an interesting texture.

I cut shapes out of the Petex for the center of the pod and stitched free motion designs into it. The stitching does not stand out too much on the textured surface.

I cut outside leaves from fabric I had painted a while ago and fused it to wool felt, quilting leaf designs and finishing the edges with a satin stitch. I cut strips of aluminum and stitched it on the leaves and embossed it with free hand drawn designs. The metal helps the leaves hold a curved shape

I stitched some furry novelty yarn to the tops edges of the peltex and then satin stitched the sides leaving the top open.

Kind of reminds me of Little Shop of Horrors in this photo.

I fused a base to the leaves and stitched the leaf edges together through the lower sides of the center pod connecting the whole thing together.