When is a Celery a Rose?

Ah... it feels good to have another piece from my design wall finished! I completed "Celery Rose" last night. In an earlier post I talked about making prints from the base of a celery stalk. The prints looked like a rose which lead to creating a pattern from the print and voila!

The borders are needle felted and deliberately left uneven to
compliment the movement in the design.

Here is the divine inspiration - behold the celery stalk!

 
What other vegetables do you think would make an interesting print?

Summit Fever

Two fun adventures collided to create "Summit Fever"! I hiked Wadsworth State Park with my sister and a friend on a bitter cold morning. There was a lot of ice forming along the river and the waterfalls were beautiful. As part of my weekend walk series I wanted to try to create the feeling of ice on fabric. I worked through a number of techniques to get the feeling I was looking for which I'll go into in another post. The reason I mention it is because the fabric was perfect for the Summit Fever piece.

On the same weekend in another state my son summited Mt. Washington along with a couple of his buddies. It's the highest peak in New England and is known to have extreme weather conditions but I trust my son to be smart and to stay safe! Rob is writing about his outdoor winter adventures as part of an internship program with the New Hampshire State Park system - check it out: Hiking Mt. Washington State Park in Winter.

I created a pattern from a photo Rob took at the summit and combined it with my ice fabric and ended up with Summit Fever! Trying to achieve the feeling of cold, ice and snow on fabric is challenging. Have you tried any winter themed projects? Please share!

Creating a Design - from concept to completion!

The "Fruits of Our Labor" started as an idea I'd been thinking about... I'd like to walk you through the process so you too can put your ideas into action!

Start with a rough sketch (very rough as you can see!)

Clean up your sketch to create a working pattern. The background is more of a guide so I didn't make actual patterns for this step. When you have more detailed elements such as the woman, chair, barrel and wine bottle you'll need a pattern. I traced my sketch onto paper and this became my pattern.

Lay out your larger focal elements moving them around until you're satisfied with the layout. Remember balance is important for overall design appeal.

Once you're happy with the placement and color combinations you can sew the background into place and tact down the chair, arbor and woman.  You don't want to completely fuse the chair etc. into place now because the design is a work in progress and you may want to tweak their positions as you work.

OK - the foundation is in place and now you can have fun designing your fantasy garden! I use the "snippet" technique for this part. I apply a fusible webbing to the wrong side of my fabric. I cut tiny pieces of colorful fabric (any shape you need) to use in the garden. Here are the only tools you'll need - the coffee is essential for me!

Since a picture is worth a thousand words I'll let this photo explain the placement process.

Once you're happy with the placement press with a hot dry iron. This will fuse the pieces in place.

You're now ready for free-motion quilting! The goal is to stitch over the majority of your snippet pieces. Because they are so tiny you'll need to secure them into place or eventually they'll come loose and fall off. Free-motion quilting is really fun... just remember to relax and stretch often!

Note the embroidered flowers... I felt the design needed more texture.

Here is a detail of the grape arbor. You can really take a soft element and give it a pop with your quilting. 

The "Fruits of Our Labor" will be showing in the upcoming Fiber Harvest show at the Noah Webster Library in West Hartford, CT September 1st through October 15th.