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| Today is reveal day for my Facebook group Art Quilts Around the World. www.aroundtheworldin20quilts.blogspot.com. Our current challenge is about texture which is easy peasy because I use texture in many of my quilt through special occasion fabrics and embellishments. I went into my bridal/Las Vegas fabric stash and chose the "squeaky" plaid lame for the background, a brown hand dyed velvet for the hair, a new turquoise velvet from a vendor from United Kingdom at the Houston quilt show in October and an eyelash lame for the dress. I used hand dyed cottons and batik for the skin and facial features. I added a fun blue rick rack to the neckline to add more texture. |
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| I used a chunky textured hologram-like nail polish on the brow bone and some loose iridescent turquoise shapes from the nail art department heavily on the eyelids. I added a rhinestone to the nose area also but I would have done that anyway!! I have a lot of quilting on the face to create another type of texture. I discovered that with the nap of velvet all quilting stitches were "buried" in the nap and didn't show up very well. The next challenge is based on a favorite book and I have no ideas yet. I may choose a children's book. This challenge is due January 31, 2016. |
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| This is a new portrait quilt I made between preparing for the International Quilt Festival in Houston. I had drawn the design a few months ago and then let it sit for no real reason. When I attended the Quilt Expo in Madison WI in Sept. 2015 I found a charm pack with the "shabby chic" prints in a pink/green/turquoise/light brown color scheme. I unfortunately did not save the wrapper with the name. I thought of my daughter Jordana because of her curly hair and her love of these colors and the flowers. I pulled out the pattern and tweaked it a little and it came together. I wanted a Bella pattern with curly hair and I added an eyebrow, changed the face shape, mouth, nose width, added a separate eyelid applique piece and there is a full shoulder line. |
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| I had some pink flower felt trim which I glued to the neck area for a necklace. I sewed three pink flower shaped buttons over the felt and added some glitter nail polish to the flower centers. I hand sewed pink beads to the rest of the felt trim. |
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| This is a close up of the face. I quilted half of the face in a narrow cross hatch and the other in a curved echo stitch. I used only one thread for the ENTIRE quilting process-Sulky Blendables "Milk Chocolate" # 4011 in 30 weight. You can't go wrong with a thread named after chocolate!! The browns in this project did look like the brown in candy bars!! The rest of the embellishments include two large pink flowers from a large Hawaiian lei from Hobby Lobby taken apart with a button center, a rhinestone "nose piercing," hot pink chunky glitter nail polish on the mouth and a white fabric paint dot for the eye reflection. My favorite nail polishes are sitting in Houston watching for me so I will add some of those colors to the eye area when the quilt show is over and my box is shipped back home. Should this quilt become my next pattern? |
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| I will be part of the Halloween Tricks & Treats Forum at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, TX coincidentally on Halloween. It from 2-5pm and #760 in the events catalog. Go to www.quilts.com to register and view the details. My title is called "Witches-Toil and Trouble in Quilt Making!!" I love witches and lean toward a pretty witch over an old warty ones! The two quilts in these photos are teasers of some of my quilty work! This wall hanging above called Bella Strega is my newest pattern and the only witch quilt I converted into a pattern. I will get feedback at the show and possibly turn other witch quilts into patterns. This pattern is available on my website at www.laurieceesay.com, at Pine Street Quilts in Marinette, WI and will be available at the Houston show. |
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| This is a table runner I designed where I was inspired by silhouettes I saw on Pinterest and I already do a few on these silhouettes with historical hairstyles. I saw the phrase "Black Hat Society" as a spin on the Red Hat Society idea and thought it was a cute saying. I decided to add a wart to the witch's chin for the first time! |
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| In the close up photo I used foundation paper, a snowflake motif and variegated thread and machine quilted on the cheekbone/chin areas to repeat the snowflake theme. |
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| Today is reveal day for my Facebook art quilt group Art Quilts Around The World. The challenge theme was UNIFORM and I interpreted that as something being the same or having conformity. I prefer to make portrait quilts so I selected an Andy Warhol style with four of the SAME images of a woman and I call it "Pop Art Princess 3." What is the same in this quilt: The background; the sashing and the sashing quilting; the image of the woman; the stripe in the halter dress and the position of the stripe on the dress; the brow, lip and eye color; the variegated thread used for the skin tones; the glitter nail polish on the eye lids and the quilting on the images. What is NOT the same: The color of the hair, the skin tones and the glitter nail polish used to embellish the hair. The size of this quilt is 11.5" x 17.5" |
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| Of the four images I like this one the best because the combination of values of the skin tone, lip and brow color seem to be the most flattering. In the upper left corner, the image with the lightest skin tones and the pink hair has too much eye brow contrast and she looks severe. Likewise the black woman in the lower right corner has too low of contrast and I can't hardly see her brows. This became a happy accident to use in my lecture on value. This situation shows how a medium color appears dark or light in relationship to the colors it is placed with. |
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| This is my second favorite image because the woman appears serene. Even though I use the same applique pieces the women can look slightly different based on the fusing placement and the way I quilt it. The next challenge due November 30th is on TEXTURE which is a no-brainer because I use a variety of textures anyway in many of my quilts. I will now go back to prepping for my teaching job at IQF in Houston which is at the end of October! |
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| I go in streaks where I want to make fabric postcards and now is one of those times. I chose my line drawing fabric postcard pattern included in my Bridgette pattern and 5 Halloween colored fabrics to begin this project. I selected the fabrics in Halloween colors and not necessarily Halloween themed fabrics. Five fabrics in a variety of widths work nicely and the varied widths give a random look. Any fabric combinations will work-I chose Halloween this time and make 4-6 cards at a time. I cut them out on the diagonal to give movement and to accent a cheekbone line. I have two sides of the face in my designs and I like to place them together and they look like mirror images. I used black batik for the raw edged applique and black thread with a fancy stitch to join the top, bottom and Peltex stiffener. I usually use Fast2Fuse stiffener by Pellon but I could not find it online and I substituted Peltex and it actually worked nicer because it was heavier (less floppy.) I found the spiders at Joann Fabrics-they are not buttons but are flat on the back to glue to the front of the card. I created a spider web from variegated thread in the lower corner. I embellished with glitter nail polish on the eyelids and a dot of white matte fabric paint on the eye for the eye reflection. I intend to give two of these as door prizes in my "I Value That Quilt!" lecture I am giving twice at the Wisconsin Quilt Expo in Madison, WI on Friday Sept. 11, 2015. My pattern is available for sale from my website at www.laurieceesay.com. Maybe I will see you at the expo since it is a blast!! Their website is www.wiquiltexpo.com |
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| This is the front yard decked out for the Fourth of July-it gets a Northern Exposure so not a lot of sun and therefore all the hostas. |
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| I am sewing two BOMs I found on Pinterest and Facebook. The one in the top photo is from Facebook and is from Michelle Foster and her Aiming for Accuracy II-Quilt Along called Mishka's Playground. It began in March and on the 7th and 21st of each month a new set of small (8"-9") blocks are emailed to me and I can make them anyway I want. There is a FB page where we can post our work as well as view all the fun and varied versions of this pattern. I chose a white background and colorful fabrics with white polka dots. Sometimes the I disagree with the instructions and do my own thing!! |
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| This BOM is called Moccasin by Gen X Quilters and the designer is Ann Marie Chany. It is smaller than the first BOM I talked about at 67" square. The blocks are 9" in size and each pattern makes two of the same block but with different color ways. This BOM is more "modern" and I was totally enjoying it until June and July's blocks. The triangle block which is on the bottom of the photo was a huge problem using templates. I haven't used a temple since the 90s and it was still not a fun thing to do-not the most accurate triangles and I cut off the tips but I'm not re-doing it! There is a Facebook group but not many people post their work there. There is a Flickr group but I'm not into that. The BOM sample was in pinks, purples, orange, indigo, white and brown and I chose to do cooler colors plus lime green. |
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| These blocks are from a book called Arcadia Avenue by Sassafras Lane Designs. Each block is 18" in diameter and there are 12 paper pieced blocks. This pattern appeared very fun because of the use of the color wheel and I intend to use it in my color theory teachings. Once I began I realized each block was very slow going because of the pre-cutting all the fabric and making 1 wedges that are difficult to put together. I planned to make 9 blocks but since they take so long to make I am leaning towards only 4 blocks! |
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| Lastly, I am in an art quilt group formed through Facebook and every other month we create a small wall hanging based on a theme one of the members. The current theme is due July 31st and is called "snowflake." This photo is a sneak peek-I used sparkly plastic snowflakes from The Dollar Tree as a crown in the hair and a "statement" necklace on the clearance rack at Gordman's in Green Bay, WI and hand tacked it upside down. I used a few novelty snowflake fabrics, all cool colors with some shiny and some fuzzy fabrics. I will share the full photo on July 31st. |
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| I shared a teaser photo of this quilt a few months ago. I made it for the 2015 Hoffman Challenge. I have had the quilt finished since February. I will mail it to the exhibit curator today and thought it was time to show the full quilt. The 2015 theme fabric was predominantly red, black and metallic gold with a little orange and green. If you looked closely at the print there were knitting motifs and small quilt blocks and the general shape of the designs were squares and rectangles-all angular shapes. I decided to create an Egyptian woman and researched ancient Egyptian goddesses. Isis was a common goddess but not a name I want to use anymore since the international terrorist group took that name. I chose Bastet because she was the ancient goddess of fire, cats, of the home and pregnant women. I have a black cat and wanted to incorporate a cat, black or whatever, in a quilt and this idea was coming to life. |
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| As I was researching Egyptian clothing etc. I discovered they worn an excessive amount of gold ornamentation and their cats did too. Great since I was up to embellish this quilt to the max! I tapped into my "bridal store fabric stash" to get the look I wanted. I used black velvet (I'm humming that 1980s song in my head!) for the hair and black lame' for the underneath hair. I found the awesome white pleated fabric for the dress which I cut at different angles to get a 3D realistic look. |
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| I used the 2015 Challenge fabric for the yoke of the dress, the headpiece, the drapey fabric on the lower left of the woman and the parts of the stool the cat is sitting on. I added Egyptian hieroglyphics I found on Pinterest on the top and bottom panels. I selected my name for the letters-I thought it was interesting the "C" and the "S" are almost the same. When I say my last name strangers think it starts with an "S" so I found that intriguing. I have hand and machine sewed several metallic gold trims to the yoke, the cat, the headpiece and the seam allowances. The cat's necklace and the woman's earrings are from one set of earrings I found in February at Payless Shoes at Fox River Mall in Appleton WI which I took apart and separated. I used turquiose nail polish on the eyelids and white fabric paint for the eye reflection. |
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| I also used gold metallic thread and many decorative stitches on my sewing machine to further add to the heavy ornamentation. The bracelet also has beads sewn onto it. There is a gold metallic flang on the vertical borders. I had a blast making this quilt and must wait until mid-August to find out if it made the cut to travel from Sept. 2015-Sept. 2016 to various quilt venues across the country. I will miss it when it is gone!! |
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| This is my latest portrait quilt. I was inspired by the hair color industry and the funky neon hair colors that are available in the cosmetology industry. I have been searching and purchasing neon fabric and embellishments since last fall and recently had the time to make this quilt. I really love the yellow print that I used for the dress and wanted to use more of it in the borders but since I do not like yellow in large quantities I chose to use this print for the backing fabric instead. The fabric for the lipstick and the pale yellow highlights was purchased while at the IQF Houston 2014 Show last October which gives me good memories! I used Cherrywood Hand Dyed Fabrics for the gradation of 6 skin tone fabrics. They are hand dyed cottons and work very well for skin tones and are are equal to me as batiks. I purchased a fat quarter packet of browns for another project and love them to bits!! |
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| I decided to take photos of the various steps of this portrait quilt to show how it come alive with each step of stitching, borders, fabric paint and embellishments. This is just the center of the quilt. I chose to cut some of the top off the center once it was completely fused because all the background was not needed. |
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| This is the top with the various borders added. I love the swirly fabric on the left and bottom borders since it reminds me of the fashion designer Emilio Pucci! I fussy cut the directional pattern once I discovered there was a double direction. My cat Jack photo bombed this picture! Hi Jack!! |
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| The quilt is quilted, bound and on cardboard being blocked. This is a step I only was taught about 4-5 years ago which changed my world because it will square up a quilt and make it lay flat. This is VERY important for having a quilt hang in a quilt show and the judges love a straight quilt without any wavy edges!! |
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| I collected neon colored embellishments. I have a variegated orange/yellow ribbon, a fun neon colored decorative elastic, loose glitter, nail polish, rhinestones, and a variety of beads. I did not use everything which is the part that is hard because I have to use good taste and know when to stop adding more bling!! |
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| This is the finished close-up of the face. I added the ribbon and elastic to the dress neckline; the loose glitter was used for eyeliner; rhinestones were used to make an earring; nail polish was used in the yellow of the hair to add to the highlights; rhinestones were added to the right and top borders and beads were sewn to outside of the binding. I intend to enter this quilt in a national quilt show and beyond!! |
I am trying something new and posting on my blog from my iPad since the cord which attaches my camera to my laptop is being stupid and I am long overdue to post!! I was trying some different techie quilts stuff which I am not so good at and my brain was about to explode!! I was perusing Pinterest and found a quilt block design called The Power of Nine" that was in modern solid fabrics and all star blocks (my fave!) The pattern was available through www.craftsy.com to download and print. I needed to step away from the computer project and have a "no-brainer" sewing project and this was the one!! I had a few yards of a large scale print with bright colors and brown sunflowers. I pulled yellow, orange, two pinks, turquoise and blue batiks, a green stripe and a fabulous warm tobacco brown batik to make the blocks scrappy style. The way the designer had them was great but I am more into prints than solids. 
