Fish

Fish

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Fish 4 & 3 – Finished

For now I have the finished “Fish” pieces 4 & 3 hanging on the closet door. That’s it, I don’t plan on doing any more of these. They’ll go in the closet along with the other “skinny quilts” – I may take them to Parrsboro for the summer exhibit there, we’ll see when I start pulling work from the closet closer to the end of July.

One friend commented she’d put small bubbles coming to the surface – I did think about that for a moment as I was finishing the stitching on Fish 4 – but in the end I left the fish swimming peacefully among the seaweed.

Now back to the partially assembled quilt top. Really!

Corner Filled In

Fish 4

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I wasn’t intending to carry on with the “fish” but I’m stuck with the quilt I started so I went to work on another “fish” piece.

Fish #4

Because I’d cut bindings from the leftover piece of purple ombre, the leftover piece was a bit shorter than I wanted it to be, so I added some batik to the dark bottom end of the purple and filled in with seaweed-like shapes.

Not so many fish this time, they’re more spaced out, with one behind the seaweed (which meant I had to stitch it in place before fusing the seaweed to the panel. The other fish are just laying in place for now – I don’t know precisely where I will put them, I’ll know that after thread painting the seaweed elements.

I worked away at my machine yesterday, edge stitching the seaweed then adding three seaweed embroideries for texture. Late last evening, I fused the remaining fish in place.

Seaweed stitched

Next will be to edge stitch the remaining fish and add an eye to each. Again, I think I’m not going to do any background stitching, I like the water-like flow in the ombre print and don’t want to interfere with it.

OK. This really is the last of the fish pieces. REALLY.

Two Skinny Quilts – Finished

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School Of Fish #2

School Of Fish #2

Finished with a hidden binding and backing fabric. I like this one even more than the original. I think the ombre fabrics create a feeling of water and notice the single fish swimming against the school…. But that’s it for fish – I have no more in my bag of fusible scraps.

Skinny Quilt #4 – An Update

Skinny Quilt IV – Straightened

I wasn’t happy with this banner – it wasn’t quite square and it showed when the piece was hanging. Yesterday, I took it apart so I could straighten the sides and while I had the backing and binding off, I decided to remove the smallest blue circle – first, because it was the wrong colour – it didn’t really show up – and second, it was the eighth circle and an odd number is more pleasing. Now the yellow in the top large circle is now echoed in the small one and your eye moves between the two and is then drawn into the complexity of the fabric design of the other circles. A better balance.

Best of all, the banner is now square so it hangs straight and I can include it I the banner/skinny quilt collection.

Fish 2

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I have two quilts to work on but I’m not satisfied with the embroidery design I’ve created to quilt the “Nine Shades Of Grey” quilt and that has me hung up. So instead of quilting Magic Squares Quilt IV, I decided to work on edge stitching Fish 2.

Fish 2 

Fish 1 also used these same leftover off-cuts from Quilt-On-The-Go with the “X”s and “O”s  appliquéd to background layer of blue blocks.

Two weeks ago I gave away Fish 1 to a friend to whom I’d promised a wall hanging (Well, really I made “Tropical Flowers” with her in mind, but once I’d spent 2 months thread painting, and then had it hanging in my home for a while, I couldn’t part with it, so Fish 1 went to her, instead.) I know it has found a welcoming home.

After Fish 1 left the house, I missed it. For some reason I felt attached to it. However, I still had quite a few fish in a bag and two lengths of an ombre fabric in turquoise shades, so I decided to make Fish 2.

Same construction as the other Skinny Quilts/Banners – two unequal wide-ish pieces of fabric (cut from width-of-fabric) joined by a 1″ strip of a definitely contrasting fabric, with the appliqués fused then stitched in place.

This afternoon I edge-stitched all the fish, then added rather bright-coloured eyes (which I thought would be an improvement on Fish 1). I even managed to embroider my signature (even if I have it going in the wrong direction – the bottom edge of the signature should be facing the fish – nobody is ever going to notice it – once the embroidery began I knew I wanted it running bottom toward top but it was too late to stop and change it – as with a lot of this embroidery work – you get it right the first time, or you live with it.)

BTW – a better name for this piece is “Against The Crowd” or “Swimming Upstream” – one fish is swimming against the others!

Now I need to set up a hidden binding, add a backing, then hand stitch the binding in place – maybe tomorrow, or the day after.

Skinny Quilts/Wall Banners

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I’m not sure what to call these wall art pieces – they’re narrow raw-edge appliqué quilts constructed from a simple pieced background with a few fused top elements. It’s the simplicity of them that captured me in the first place and I decided to offer the idea as a class.

The class was yesterday.

To prepare for the class, I set up four skinny quilts as examples. I’d sewn backgrounds using narrowish width of fabric cuts from complementary fabrics and then cut out and arranged on each some shapes (to which I’d already added fusible web).

Panel #1: Diamonds.

I’d cut out more diamonds but decided to go with fewer and to bring the viewer’s eye toward the the bottom of the panel I added a single slightly smaller diamond.

Diamonds

Panel #2: Cascading Circles

From small scraps I cut out colourful circles in decreasing diameter, then fused them on the centre in increasing distance from one another to simulate a cascade.

Cascading Circles

Panel #3: Squares

With this panel I decided to keep the squares the same size, but when I laid out the squares I thought a couple of smaller squares top and bottom would balance the array. Then, as I was fusing the squares in place I decided to fill in the gap near the bottom right of the arrangement with two different small blue circles. I’m still deliberating whether or not to add something nearer the bottom of the panel.

Squares

Panel #4: A School Of Fish

The fish were leftover pieces I’d saved from the just finished quilt. As I was cutting out the “X” pieces I realized I was creating “Fish” shapes which I saved thinking I’d find a use for them at some point. It turned out the light coloured fabric was short a few inches from a full width of fabric panel so I added in the dark blue piece (also a leftover from the just finished quilt). The school of fish is swimming at the bottom of the panel.

Fish

The women in the class had a great day – the projects were simple enough for them to create the background panel, decide on some kind of appliqué, edge stitch the fused pieces, add batting and backing fabric, then sew on hidden binding strips on all four sides.

Not everybody got as far as the binding strips (everybody did finish the edge stitching of the appliqué) but Azar managed to complete her panel – she just has to hand stitch the hidden binding on the back and she’s ready to hang it.

Azar’s Skinny Art Quilt

The other women are joining me next Wednesday for a “come and sew” session where I can help them complete their panels. I hate leaving a class with another UFO and no idea how to finish the project.

I didn’t have a “pattern” or set of instructions for making a skinny quilt – the point of the project was to encourage the women to take an idea and improvise on it – to look at the fabrics they have on hand, set up a background, and add something simple, but elegant on top, do a bit of stitching/embroidery, then do an elegant finishing to create a piece of art.

Next week, I may set up one of the high-end embroidery machines in the shop to embroider signatures on each of their pieces – works of art, are after all, signed. I sign and date all of my wall art work!