It Began As A Quilt

My last big project of 2022 has been finishing a quilt I called “Happy Accidents” because it was inspired by a piece of woven paper my Roomba had chewed up. You can read about it here and here.

I thought it was done, and started the quilting. I managed to quilt most of what I wanted with a walking foot, and planned to do details with hand stitching. Like many plans, that didn’t go as expected. I found that working needle and thread through four, sometimes five, layers of cloth was challenging. After doing a bit of backstitching, my aching hands told me to give that up.

So, there I was with a partially realized quilt that was probably fine as is, but I wanted more. At this point I left the domain of fabric and thread and entered the painting zone. I ruled out acrylic and fabric paint as too runny for a quilted piece. I considered Inktense briefly, but decided I wanted the flexibility of fuzziness that Neocolor II crayons give.

Of course when you make one change everything is affected, and more changes ensue. That’s why I have expanded the name of this piece to “Happy Accidents/Chaos Theory.” I also think parts of it look chaotic.

Here’s how it looks after several applications of Neocolor II to change the brightness or color of a part, and to emphasize lines that were formerly implicit.

The clipped on black and navy edge strips were to audition binding color. I chose the navy.

The top before quilting and painting.

I managed to spin the quilt many, many times as I quilted the circles and curves.

Finished size is 29 inches wide by 44 inches high. I have only to add binding and hanging sleeve, and I can call it done. I have no idea what I’m going to do with it. Maybe someone will hold a chaos theory art exhibit. If so, I have the perfect entry.

I’m linking to Off The Wall Fridays.

The Wrestling Match Begins

I have one more piece left to quilt, and it’s a doozy quilting-wise. I am enamored of circles and can get carried away when I put them on quilts, not remembering that I will have to quilt them. Of course, that’s not a problem if I take the easy path of straight line quilting.

For “Happy Accidents” I decided to feature circles in the quilting, so easy isn’t likely. It measures 29 by 45 inches,which sounds quite doable until you shove the quilt around 360 degrees a few times. And I plan to emphasize some curves with heavy threads.

Here’s the top after some refinements with Neocolor II pastels.

Color isn’t true.

The copy is pink because my printer’s cyan ink jets were clogged.

Another issue I face is the difficulty of marking the quilting pattern with eraseable markers or pens. Some of the fabric won’t take marks well and the paper resists everything. I may need to make quilting templates with freezer paper and iron them on.

I’ve chosen several threads in different weights so I will be changing colors frequently.

That leads to the last issue (I hope.) I have matched my quilting thread so well I can’t see the previous stitching in the paper areas, where I need to eyeball the new lines from the previous ones, as I can’t mark the paper. Whee!

I’m linking to Off The Wall Fridays.

Happy Accidents

Sometimes I decide to combine a collection of my painted/printed/altered fabric parts just to see if I can make them work together. Typically, I have no plan, not even a sketch. It’s a highly inefficient way to create, but I find it fun. Plus, it takes my mind off of any real world worries.

My latest mashup began with a naughty Roomba. I had unleashed it in my bedroom where it’s great for under the bed vacuuming. Unfortunately, I had stored a large sheet of lacy handmade paper between cardboard there, and the Roomba managed to mangle it thoroughly before I rescued it. Amazingly, the paper didn’t rip, but it was much softer. Figuring I couldn’t do any more damage, I colored it with Marabu fabric spray and decided I had to use it. It became a big part of “Happy Accidents.”

“Happy Accidents,” 29″ by 42″ (the color is off as we’ve had nothing but clouds since I finished) Except for the paper, which is hand stitched down, everything is either machine pieced or fused.

Among the bits I used were an old sheet that I used for painting (with thermofax printing,) monoprinted silk and linen, painted linen, painted PatternEase, bit of old curtain, muslin dress pattern, and ancient batik. There also Zen Chic and Grunge dot commercial fabrics.

Base layer with a few additions

One of many intermediate arrangements

Detail of fabric monoprinting, thermofax printing, PatternEase

Detail of batik I made in 1993, muslin dress pattern with thermofax printing

Detail of gel printed leaves on linen

I grant you the combination is a bit overwhelming even though I removed some of the circles in the editing process. But more is more, right? Now that’s out of my system and I can try to actually plan ahead for my next project.

I’m linking to Off The Wall Fridays.