Paper Quilts

 Here are the finished quilts made by my artsy friends, which i wrote about here. This is Karen's stunning black, white and rust quilt. In fact  - that is REAL rust - as in the fabric was purposefully stained with nails and wire mesh. Each of her circle/squares was cut into 4 wedges and mixed up for added interest.  She further embellished with rick rack and corrugated metal strips. It is mounted on foam core - and will ultimately receive a nice square wooden frame.

 

Here is Shelley's gorgeous metallic quilt.  Much smaller circles than Karen's, some left "whole", while others are cut in two, creating an interesting diamond effect in the center.  Nicely framed in a dark wood.  Each quilt square was embellished with  metallic accents that play up the gold and copper tones of the paper.

 

And finally here is Dorothy's.  Or should i say ONE of Dorothy's whimsical and colourful paper quilts. She made NINE of these - all framed in either black or white 18" wood frames.  Stunning.  She added beadwork to each quilt - the details are quite something.  She plans to sell them at the upcoming quilt SF show.

And so where is mine, you might ask? You can see it here - pretty much looks the same as when i made it a month ago - except it was tacked to the wall in the hallway.  It needs some repair before it could possibly be framed. But you know how it is, i just need to want to do it badly enough.

Paper Quilts - a Play Date...!

 Sunday afternoon i had the pleasure of spending time with three creative ladies, two of whom are expert FABRIC quilters.  We each created (or started) a paper quilt.  What is a paper quilt, you might ask?  Well, it can be many things - a combination of fabrics and papers or just paper, sewn or glued into shapes and arranged in a pleasing manner.  Here i created 9-8" squares each with 4 concentric circles, in my increasingly predictable robin's egg blue and sepia colour story.  I used scrapbook paper, wrapping paper, painted deli paper, tissue paper, book pages and vintage ephemera to create all the textural interest.  I lightly glued the circles to the square then cut them in half down the middle.  Then i rearranged the halves to spread out the blues and beiges across the piece.  Then i sewed each half together with a zigzag stich on the sewing machine.  Then i sewed rough (very rough!) circles along the edge of each paper circle.  Let all the loose threads stay!  Up to that is the "easy" part.  Then i had to sew the squares together.  This is where the heavier weight papers held up nicely, but the thinner papers kind of let me down.  They slipped, or tore or puckered.  But hey - it turned out really cool and you can't even tell from the picture!  The next step, according to the workshop that my friends took, is to further embellish with beads and buttons, etc - to create even more texture.  That will REALLY help cover up the mistakes!!

 This beautiful quilt (unfinished) is Dorothy's. She first ironed fabric to freezer paper for stability.  Then she layered on her paper circles.  Whereas i cut my circles in half - Dorothy's were cut into quarters.  This allows more variation of the pattern and colours.  Notice she even used paper doilies!! Next month i'll get a picture of her finished paper/fabric quilt.

And here are Shelley's luscious squares.  She used a blend of neutrals and metallic papers to create very uniform almost coin-like components for her paper quilt.  she will cut some in half or quarters, and leave some whole when she arranges her quilt.  Possibly on a muslin backing with spaces in between.  Stay tuned for pictures of the finished quilts, along with Karen's (sorry no photo yet) our master quilter.  Her larger circle/squares were in rich neutrals with a lot of strong geometric black designs.
You have got to try this!

Holiday Crafting

I came down with a terrible flu bug the week before christmas and ended up not putting up a tree or decorating in any way.  We were planning to spend the holidays with my sister and her family anyway - so by the time i was feeling better - it was time to  board a plane for Calgary.
As is our tradition, my niece and I did some crafting projects.  First we did some Martha Stewart glitter kits - butterflies and flowers. They are super easy to do - with pre cut sticky backing that you apply the glitter to one colour at a time - like with paint by numbers.

Next we created a large "paper quilt" on foam core. We cut rough squares from some colourful printed paper i was gifted by an art buddy.  We arranged them on the foam core and glued them with foam brushes and mod podge glue.

Next we cut some leaf shapes out of card stock with my niece's snazzy cricut and applied them randomly over the squares.  Then we added some gold filigree paper cut into leaf shapes.
It could use some final touches - like Portfolio water soluable oil pastels to add some shading and to smooth the sharp edges - but overall i think we did a great job!

Thanks Erica for another fun holiday creative play date!