Carving

Working in an alternative medium feels quite freeing. As a beginner, you do your best but there are no preconceived notions of the quality of your work. This winter I couldn't wait to purchase a diamond willow stick at the carving show. Where I used to live as a child in the Peace River area, diamond willow stalks could be gotten for free but here, I was happy to pay $22. for one.

A few pictures from my winter carving class. We have three new members and gosh they are doing  great. Of course that has a lot to do with the fact that we have a master carver, Joyce to provide excellent instruction.

Two new carvers. John from Alberta and Estela from Az. Missing is Diane also from Alberta.

 

John has a lot of carving to do as this is the first of a set of Chess pieces. This is the King carved in butternut wood. It is harder than bass wood but isn't the grain gorgeous.

Joyce showing Estela the importance of scoring the details first.



Estela's 'Little Man' . Amazing as this is her first year of carving.

L.Z. applies the technique of chip carving to a round surface. Now that is talent for you.

Diamond willow stick with the bark removed, the diamonds carved out, some peak holes created and the whole thing sanded and sanded. Larry is getting to be an expert at staff carving.

Close up of see through holes made between back to back diamonds.

Here is my diamond willow stick with a hole drilled through to start the look though. Gosh do I have a long way to go. It has a twig sticking out of it and I plan to carve a bird to sit there. This will be a very long project.  When I said that I plan to use my willow stick for a wall hanging rod, someone asked me what the wall hanging was like that is to hang on it. I had to say I haven't started it yet but I think it will be the easier of the two to complete.

Joyce, demonstrating how to carve a face.

Can you see the clean cuts. This is a master's work and what the rest of us carvers aspire to do.

It is always nice to have a sample to work from and by the next week John will have the duck's head attached. To do this he will drill a hole in each, insert a small round peg and glue the two pieces together.

 

Estela's first bird. Some carvers like a sanded smooth finish and some like the knife marks to show.



John's carving a gnome. He seems to always have someone in mind he is giving the piece to before he starts carving. That seems like a good idea to me.

Note the beard is detailed now.

Under Joyce's expert hand, a simple board cut out comes to life over a few hours and that is with all us beginner carvers interrupting her many times for help.

 



Almost done. Look at how clean the cuts are. No little fuzzy bits of wood hanging on.

My border collie is happy to be at home with all her toys surrounding her.



Spring Flowers Painted on Fabric

The following 3 textile pieces are painted onto cotton lawn material which will have a stabilizer attached before being free motion stitched.  The loose look of the lilacs delights me as it is more watercolour like than most of the textile pieces I have made so far. Hmm, how to apply that technique to other pieces???

Spring lilacs. Perhaps only the leaves and a very few blooms will need stitched details.

Okay, I know these look like yellow blobs but I am convinced I can stitch the shape of a daffodil onto them.

First I sponged some dark dye and then the lighter mauve dye. Although I can't remember for sure even though this was only last week, I believe the dye was thickened. After the coloured dyes had dried a bit, I added the drawn black line by squeezing thickened black dye through a small metal nib attached to the plastic squeeze bottle.

Spring is coming and it is time to think about spring blooms and also about feeding the birds that are migrating through.

Wild turkeys. Where we were bird watching two different children came up over the period of an hour we were there glasses for more 'exotic' birds. Both greeted the turkeys with "Hi turkey" as if they knew them. How delightful.

Acorn woodpecker

Broadbilled hummingbird. The cage around the feeder gave the birds somewhere to perch after drinking.

Quilt Group: 'Paint Chip Challenge 2015'

This mini-quilt/mugrug is off to a new home. Enjoy!

Nothing like a quilt show to bring like minded people together. I enjoyed connecting with other quilters interested in art quilting at the show, seeing old friends and going for lunch with a friend I don't get to see much. She has an amazing quilting project in the planning stage. It will be based on a painting she saw. In order to base her textile piece on the painting, she contacted the artist's for permission to do so. I understand the artist was thrilled.

All the 2015 Quilt Group Challenge entries were displayed together at our quilt show today. Here are photos of many of them.

 

Evergreen Block for Eileen

 

There will be more photos to share from the show but this is all for today's post. Our group has an interesting challenge for 2016 that will result in great individuality in the quilted pieces. Each member drew a number out of a bowl to correspond with a page in a magazine. That page was given to us and we are to base our quilted challenge project on the image or on some the words on that page. My image is mostly whites and silvers with some great words such as shimmering, platinum etc. Hmmm?

Quilting: Feeling Proud

Have you ever felt so proud you cried. Well that happened to me this week at my Quilting Groups' 'Show and Tell' and it wasn't only myself I was proud of, it was also fellow quilter, CK. A couple of years ago, CK got one of my dye painted cotton panels and this is what she created. She brought it to show me the day before the quilting meeting and I loved it but when she showed it in front of the group yesterday, I unexpectedly teared up. To see this collaboration between other quilters and myself was overwhelming. It totally is why I paint on fabric!

 

Quilter CK did such a great job offsetting the panel and surrounding it with the rich purples and framing sections with black. Wow! Thank you , thank you, thank you CK for creating this piece.

 

Some other purple quilts and quilt blocks that I recently photographed in my travels.

This was seen at a recent quilt show. The miniature version of the pattern made into a matching pillow slip is brilliant.

Diane is hand quilting this beauty. I thought it was neat how she was using a small frame to quilt section by section. In another post I am going to show another quilt Diane is making. Her explanation is so much like the way a painter would describe their painting that I am looking forward to sharing it.

Diane showed Estella how to create this block.

Hillary is using a yellow accent strip with the strip sets we sewed for a recent Kindling Chaos Quilt Class by Patty Bowers and Cheryl Coffman. To me, having the addition of yellow within the quilt seemed really important in the overall design of this scrappy style quilt. Wonderful Hilary!

Oh why didn't I label my photos from the 'Show and Tell' of my quilt group. If I recall correctly the blocks were created by different people. The generous purple sashing pulls this together so well.

Another quilt from my Quilting Group. The colours look well together and in thinking about colour theory I would describe it as a harmonious run of orange, yellow and green with and complementary colour accent of purple.

Jackie's quilt. It seemed like such a happy quilt that I am including it today in this post even though it only has a little purple. What girl wouldn't love this hanging on their wall or laying on their bed. 

Painting Desert Bighorn Sheep

My impression of a memorable trip into the desert. I combined the colours of some rocks we saw in the desert into the painting of the rocky terrain the desert bighorn sheep was poised on. As you can see in a following photo, the mountain colours were more brown but when painting I was drawn to include those burnt oranges of the rocks that were scattered in the desert at one of our rest stops. Those colours really stuck in my mind.

 What an 'epic' trip a group of us had one day this winter when we travelled nine miles through the desert. We were fortunate enough to see 4 different groups of desert big horn sheep. I really can't imagine how these animals survive the heat of the desert in the summer. Click here for information about them. It says they can go for weeks without visiting a water source! I thought their legs looked thinner than the Rocky Mountain Bighorn sheep that I am more used to seeing but I didn't find any information on that.

We saw these rocks in the desert at one of our rest stops. They seemed to be polished by the elements. Click gemstones for some information about gemstones of Arizona or click on  Jasper gemstone photos 



Might these be Jasper or agates?

 

Bighorn Sheep Watching from a Ridge

A ewe and her lamb. How precious!!! We were at quite a distance and the lamb danced here and there, seemingly unconcerned between it's Mom's legs.

I encourage you to include your 'memorable impressions' into your art work.

Painting Flowers on Cotton Fabric

What a delight it was to paint these floral pieces for another quilter. She has her own talents which includes her tremendous skill of thread painting. Her portraits of people's favorite pets are exquisite. She will be showing our guild sometime how she accomplishes this and with her permission I will post about it.  



Lupines. This pieces is approximately 14 X 14"
Hand painted using fiber reactive Procion dyes which results in washable cotton suitable for quilting.

 The following smaller four floral blocks were painted using the colours in the Lupine floral. People often ask me about the black line I use. It is created using thickened black dye that is placed in a squeeze bottle with a nib which I use for drawing.

Daisy Family

Hibiscus

Daffodil

Stargazer Lily

I wonder how this quilt top is going to be put together. Will there be pieced blocks in between? We will just have to wait and see.