Passion for quilting

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The doors are finished

Finally, just before the deadline, I managed to finish my doors quilt.This is the result:

And these are the individual doors:

The doors are all threadpainted and the background has been densely machine quilted. The doors were all made individually and then joined together. The seams were covered with ribbon. The outer edge of the quilt is finished with ribbon and cording. The keys were attached with cording,

Keys

My doors are coming along nicely. Yesterday I finished door number seven and this morning I started on door number 8. It actually looks like I’ll finish in time for my deadline. These are the background fabrics I’m using for my doors:

And this is my assistant Ares, where would I be without him?

A few weeks ago when I was talking to my husband about the doors he asked me about the keys and that sparked the idea to add some keys to the quilt. I went to the local second-hand shop to see what they had. At that point not a lot but they told me to come back a week later because they were just cleaning a house for someone and the had already seen boxes with keys. A week later I went back and there were more keys thatn I’ll ever need for this quilt. Of course I bought far too many but honestly, how can one resist…?

Enough keys for this quilt and more.

Beautiful big rusty keys.

I love these small ones as well.

Samples

So what am I doing with all those doors? They’re all going to be part of a quilt. I’m threadpainting them all separately and then joining them together to make one quilt. I made a couple of samples first:

The doors are first printed onto Miracle Fabric sheets, then added to a background with fusible web. After adding batting and backing the door is threadpainted. The background is quilted.

More doors…

It’s taken me a while but after lots of sampling, sleepless nights, endless cups of coffee and tea, I’ve finally decided which doors I’ll be using for my project.

Now all I have to do is thread paint them…

Happy New Year

Wishing you all a happy and creative 2012!

Doors

Doors, doors, doors…fascinating subject. I’m working on a doors project and the hard part is choosing which doors to use.

A bricked-up door in Italy

A garage door in Holland

Church doors in Holland

Front door in Holland

Front door in Mexico

Another Mexican door

Another door in Mexico

I like Mexican doors, this is another one

and this,

and this as well.

There are still more doors in my file so you can imagine I’m having a hard time choosing. I need at least nine doors for this project and if I have time (there’s a deadline) I could maybe do twelve… I’m going to thread paint them individually and then put them together to make one quilt. I’m using batik fabric as a background, different for each door.

Riddle

So, what do you get is you take five girls (ages 9-11), some sewing machines, fabric, fusible web, thread, batting, embellishments and a bit of time? Now before you answer, the girls have little or nog experience with the sewing machine or any sewing activity for that matter. Too hard for you? Well here’s the answer:

They all had a lot of fun working on their quilts and so did I. Maybe the thing they enjoyed most was working with the big Janome 7700 sewing machine. Guess what’s on their wishlist…

Meet the angels…

They’ve been around for a while but I haven’t gotten round to writing about them, my Christmas angels. I’d been wanting to make some angels since I fell in love with a little glass angel my parents brought from Mexico. There’s a little glass dove too that we’ve already used for the cradles of the twins and for their quilts as well (see the babyquilts of Emma and Eva).

Do you remember this piece of needlefelted fabric? It’s the perfect material for my angels.

I finished the pieces of the angels with gold yarn and then appliqued them onto the background. The background was quilted and then finished with gold cord.

There was still some fabric left so:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Danger! Approach with caution!

I really think embellisher machines should come with this warning. Of course, there are warnings in the manual of the embellisher, about keeping your fingers away from the needles for example. But nobody tells you how addictive the machine is. You don’t believe me? Look at the picture I took of this lady at the workshop I gave last Friday.

She doesn’t hear or see anything except her work. The result:

This was the first piece she made, to try out the machine and the different fabrics. Then she went on to do this piece, it’s not finished yet so she placed an order for the embellisher (I said it should come with a warning).


These are the pieces that were made by the other ladies:

Sample by Carla

Another piece by Carla

Sample by Cobie, she plans to frame it and hang it on her wall.

In case you’re wondering, Carla ordered the machine too, Cobie is thinking about it. Oh, and the owner of the shop where I gave the workshop ordered one too…Like I said, approach with caution!!!

 

A hole in your tights?

I’ve been wanting to use my embellisher to fix holes in sweaters or something. I keep telling people you can but I’ve never really tried it. But now I have, my niece Anna was kind enough to fall down and put a hole in her new tights.

An excellent challenge for my embellisher. Together we chose the colours, a pink dot (of course), a purple dot and yellow heart. A few minutes later Anna was ready to show her better-than-new tights!

But the embellisher can do more, much more. I love using it to make ‘new fabric, like this one in white, cream and gold.

The next step is stitching, lots of it.

And when it’s finished, it looks like this. The colour changes between the pictures are changing light, not changing colours…

The next step…to be continued.

Some more stitching, I finished my threadpainting!!! I love this technique and am definitely planning to do more.