"Opening" - The Fiber Funsters Group's Reveal 1

The Fiber Funsters, my small art quilt group, met this morning at my home for our monthly meeting. Our group decided last summer to start doing a challenge piece based on a particular word every-other month. Our first word was "Opening" and we shared these pieces with each other in November.     Today I was able to photograph most of our pieces to share here!  

"Convento Santa Catalina" by Carolyn
Hitter

The first piece to the left, "Convento Santa Catalina" was made from a photograph that Carolyn took at a convent in Arcquipa, Peru.  Carolyn's technique includes the use of tulle to create the shading and shadows.  She built up separate parts of the landscape and then put the different elements together, doing a majority of the stitchwork before backing the piece and keeping the quilting minimal.

Opening by Rebecca Simmons

Next, Rebecca also chose an opening flower (as did I.)  Rebecca made her piece using Tsukineko inks, basically painting both the flower and background.  She uses heavy stitch to accent the petals edges and veins.  The center of her flower has Angelina fiber and beading.

"Opening" by Debbie Hiatt

Debbie's piece is abstract, using up "leftovers" - scraps of silks most of us would love to have!  She highlights the "opening" in her piece with hand embroidery stitches, while the curved machine quilting echos the shape of the opening.

"Australia Rock" by Sally Simmons

"Australia Rock" in Narooma, Australia has a natural opening that Sally remembers vividly from her trip there. She used one of her photos to complete this piece, adding shading with tulle and very realistic looking greenery with threadwork.

Charo Lopez's "Open to Love"

What would this theme be without a piece that really opens?  Charo's heart stays closed with a bit of velcro, but you can also open it to see what is inside... the great loves of her life, her pets.  She says that Devon, the black cat, is her only pet at this point, but the others are waiting for her in heaven.  Charo used a template of hearts with glitter, paint, and rhinestones at different places over the piece, as well as lots of buttons (surrounding the main red heart both outside and inside, giving a real depth to the piece, and little heart buttons interspersed on the front.)  She printed photos on fabric of two of her animal loves, as well as having different charms to represent some of her pets.

"Open to Love" by Charo Lopez with heart opened

Close up of the inside of Charo's heart

Marylee designed this cute piece with "openings".  The little round balls seem to be rolling down the planks and through the openings like a pinball or pachinko machine, only to end up being gobbled up by a "Pack-man" shaped object.  Guess this dates me that I know pinball, pachinko and packman, huh?

"Opening" by Christina Fairley Erickson

I've shown the piece I made called "Opening" previously on this blog.  It is all machine embroidered.




While some of our newest pieces are still works in progress, I'll share them soon!

Thanks for all the inspirational projects at Seven-Alive! and Sincerely, Paula.


You might also be interested in:

The Fiber Funster's 
10 x 16 Group Challenge

Designing for a Theme

Designing for a Theme 
- Innovation Part 1

Current Works in Progress

Original sketched design

New week, new project. Well, actually one completely new, one just finished, and another in process. First, I started my next 5 x 7 Challenge piece, which I had sketched out last week.

Paper-piecing pattern

In thinking about how I could most effectively make this, I decided that paper-piecing would probably be the quickest with a nicely finished result. Since most of my art isn't geometric, I haven't had a lot of practice with paper-piecing.  

First section completed

This is where those of you who are familiar at this skill will probably laugh.  When you look at my pattern to the left, I have had to build each section with numbering.  However, I'm having to build parts of the sections on separate papers and then combine them, as my lines don't all match up.  It's seeming to work however.

"Opening" by Christina Fairley Erickson
100% Freehand Machine embroidered and Freemotion Quilted

I also just completed my first piece for the Fiber Funsters 10 x 16 challenge. Guess I'm all about the challenges this year! finishing off this dense freehand machine embroidery was more difficult than I expected. I decided to do a trap unto effect with a second layer of batting inside the lily, to have it stand out from the background. I then added the backing and freemotion quilted around the flower and in uneven horizontal lines over the blue background. Of course, I realized after doing a good portion that I could have just as well quilted from the back side since the flower was already outline, which would have made it possible to have even spacing of the lines. As it turned out, I couldn't distinguish my quilting lines from all the thread of the background, which makes it a little less precise when you view from the back side.

"Opening" back - faced and freemotion quilted

See the white
on the edge?

The real difficulty came when I faced the piece and tried to turn the facing to the back. With such dense stitching, it was remarkably stiff and didn't want to gracefully bend and hide the facing. Also, the process stressed it a bit and little bits of the white under-fabric were showing through.

The edge after painting
with fabric markers

See the difference/?

Well, I steamed and starched and pulled and cajoled, stay-stitched the seam allowance to the facing, and cut away as much of the seam allowance as possible.  I hand stitched the facing down, but still wasn't fully satisfied with the result.  In the end, I dug out some fabric markers and 'painted' the edges and little white spots that shouldn't be showing!  I think it did the trick!

My final piece to share is the second quilt for Fiber Funsters.  The word we're using this time is "Celebrate!" as our theme.  I'm not sure what I think of this piece yet or if it has any promise.  I played around with some fabrics I'd hand-dyed and painted and this is how far I've gotten.  I don't really know how I'm going to free-motion quilt it yet... But it's supposed to be done in a week, so that gives me a little motivation!

"Celebration" - work in progress by Christina Fairley Erickson

You might also be interested in:

52 Weeks of Art

The Fiber Funster's 
10 x 16 Group Challenge

2013 Open 5 x 7 Challenge

Blogs You Should Check Out!
For Fantastic Tutorials on FreeMotion Quilting go to The FreeMotion Quilting Project
Work in Progress Wednesday (Thanks Freshly Pieced!),
Link it Up Thursday  (Thanks Seven Alive!) and
 Can I Have a Whoop Whoop (Thanks, Confessions of a Fabric Addict!)
Off the Wall (Thanks Nina Marie Sayre)
TGIFF (Thanks Diane - FromBlankPages!)

The Fiber Funster's 10 x 16 Group Challenge

 

Last night I worked on finishing up the machine embroidered piece I started for my small art-quilt group, the Fiber Funsters.  This is the first piece in a series of challenges our group is doing, based on the book Twelve by Twelve: The International Art Quilt Challenge.  Each of us in the group will have a turn choosing a word to base the challenge on.  Then, the group members will make a small art quilt, sized 10" x 16", which somehow reflects that word, which we then present to the group in 2 months.  Why did we pick 10 x 16, rather than following the example of the 12 x 12 group?  We wanted to base our compositions on the Golden Mean or Golden Ratio.  This is where you use the ratio of 1 : 1.618 for your composition, making it more appealing to the eye.  If you're interested in finding out more about about the Golden Ration, check out this YouTube video.

We were first challenged with "Opening".   Any time I'm designing for a theme, I start with my sketchbook and brainstorm ideas for the concept or topic.  Opening invoked the following ideas for me:

• Doors
• Imagination
• Portals
• Beginnings
• Writer's Block
• Purse/Luggage/Briefcase
• Court (opening arguments)
• Flower
• Presents
• Hands
• Mail
• Body language (open arms vs open legs)
• Containers (boxes, food storage, etc.)
• Windows

Since I love plants and flowers, I decided to go with an opening Stargazer Lily, my favorite flower, and fairly accessible to get at the grocery floral department. After taking photos and thinking through what sort of composition I wanted, I made some sketches. Since I have done a lot of machine stitch, I thought it would be fun to make this completely through thread painting. I broke out all the colors Of pinks that I had for the flower, and chose some spring greens as a complement to the pinks. The background I decided on is blue, to complement the dark rust/orange of the flower's stamens. Here is a close-up of my stitch work:
Although the threadwork is time-intensive, I do love the result.  I will be practicing this more with my personal 5 x 7 challenge this year!