Ugly Hand-painted Fabric BEFORE Cutting...

 These 3 "before" photos should have been included in my most recent post (you'll have to scroll down to the "after" photos; for some reason Blogger isn't allowing me to close up that space)...

I mean, seriously ugly!!...although, believe it or not, I'm using the one at top right in a landscape now.
Go figure!

Used way too much water on this one--
AND transferred the paper-towel pattern
when I blotted the excess water!

This was a "scrunch" experiment...interesting
but impossible to use in a landscape.

Not sure where the "before" of that purple one is

And here are the "after" photos...

These will be used in mini-landscapes (or by my granddaughter)

Love these!

Really glad I finally cut these up!

Have a great weekend!

Linda

Ugly Hand-painted Fabric...What to Do?

A few years ago, I tried painting my own sky fabric, then tried painting an earth piece as well. The sky pieces mostly turned out okay (some doubled as water) and were used in these landscape quilts...

...but the earth piece did not turn out well, and it has now joined the rejected sky pieces in a strip-cutting bonanza---because what else do you do with ugly fabric???

And suddenly, they don't look so ugly.

Should have done this ages ago! Have a great weekend.

Linda

The Loch Tower

Last week it was a finish for The Loch Tower, 26" x 49". (Closeup photos further below--click on any to enlarge.)

The entire background was quilted first, without a backing, to cut down on drag weight at the machine.

 

Pieced separately, the tower was also quilted separately around each stone, then blocked before being appliqued to the background. (See small photo of the tower back, below left. The stabilizer behind the batting was not removed.)

The photo below shows (somewhat) the dimensionality given by the extra layer of batting behind the tower.

After gluing the tower to the quilted top, the backing was basted on, then firmly attached with additional lines of quilting in various places.

More photos of the finished quilt:

Happy spring (or autumn in the southern hemisphere) everyone!

Linda

The Tower(s)

Time for a new landscape. Two very similar sky fabrics I had painted a long time ago were calling from the closet--so, the more colorful one became water, reflecting the paler one.

Fabric audition

As soon as they went up on the design wall, my favorite stone fabric came to mind. I've kept plenty in stock ever since making a tower from it 8 or 9 years ago...

Section of my first tower quilt, The Tower

...so I decided to make a tower again, though with some variation.

The current tower, which finished at 25" long, began with the piece on the left...which after staring at it reminded me of a sausage...

             

...so I trimmed and tapered it more. The buttress/battlements section was pieced separately and glued atop the columnar piece, then delineated with two rows of black satin-stitch. Windows and a door were added. After some consternation at seeing the slightly lopsided doorway, I decided to write it off as a stonemason issue. How perfectly could they work with uncut stone, anyway? 😉

While the tower was being constructed, the background was developing, too. Not that I was in two places at once, but it was nice to periodically break away from one to work on the other.

Here the raw edges had just been free-motion stitched to the quilt top with clear mono-poly thread.

The day after I finished piecing this new tower, I was thrilled to receive an e-mail from Art Quilting Studio magazine, saying they had selected my first tower quilt for publication in their Summer 2021 issue. And how coincidental is that?!? They of course had no idea about what I'm working on currently!

Next time, the finished quilt.

Happy almost-spring here in the northern hemisphere! Happy almost-autumn in the southern one.

Linda