Fun project

Scrap Art Village

10 x 9.5. A project created “just for fun.” Painted Lutrador base, paper and fabric shapes. Beads, buttons, sequins, stitching (machine and hand) and paint as embellishments. Lace, Angelina fibers and eyelash yarn add texture. All scraps. A fun and playful project – who says art has to be serious to be considered “art”?

pieces of scrap come
together on canvas new
meaning emerges

Playing Around

Returned from San Diego with a head cold, feeling pretty lousy. Wanted to do something, so I opened my art journal/sketchbook to a page and used that as inspiration. Using fabrics already fused and pulling quickly from my stash, I tried to work spontaneously without planning or forethought. I wanted to use stuff that was lying around, another “scrap art” piece.







Wanting to create texture, I used some of the painted fused paper I’d created a few weeks ago and newspaper that I colored with pencils. I question the palette, but it’s growing on me. Sort of funky, which I like.
Playful, for sure not serious art. Adding the buttons and beads and sequins and hand stitching was fun, so that by the time I finished it, I was not feeling so lousy. It’s fun to just play around.

Nature's Glory

Last week I visited Quilt Visions Art Quilt Gallery in San Diego where the Thomas Contemporary Quilt Collection was exhibited. What a fabulous collection! My favorites were Pamela Allen (The Cherry Picker, Funky Fiddlers, Eve Under Scruitiny), Noriko Endo (Autumn Walk), Sue Benner (Dear Nine Patch #6), Cindy Rinne (Erosion) and Jamie Fingal (Welcome Home). Also on exhibit were many quilts by Ruth McDowell as well as Frieda Anderson (Walk in the Woods), Jane Sassaman and many more.

I was inspired by Noriko Endo to create a woodsy scene, using tiny scraps of fabrics.

The "forest floor" also has candy wrapper, scraps from a book page, fabric leaves, and raffia. I tried adding glitter but the netting wouldn't contain it, (and I ended up with glitter everywhere!) I'll add a few gold seed beeds.

A scrap of salvage found it's way into the mix and provides the name for the piece, "Nature's Glory."

Noriko had added a jagged white stitch to one side of the trees to show light. I added a gold zigzag stitch as I'm still not comfortable with dropping the feed dogs.

There are several layers ... I actually started by painting batting. I then added the scraps and trapped them with green and white netting and machine stitching. Then I fused the tree and house shapes, using a satin stitch around the larger shapes.

Then I read where Noriko uses layers of soft black tulle, so naturally I had to go buy some and used that over the whole quilt and added the final quilting with monofiliment thread. I left the edge irregular because I didn't want to confine "woodsy scene."

Busy Intersections

I used painted paper towels, the ones that are under fabric, paper or canvas that I paint or use for brush cleanup, to cover a piece of burlap. I machine stitched a square grid to represent a “street map” of sorts. I fused leftover scraps of fabrics from other projects to represent colorful and diverse “neighborhoods.” The black lines represent the interconnections needed for a peaceful co-existence. I then stitched a diagonal grid to further represent connections and intersections. I used oil pastels to add a sort of gritty color in places and a Shiva paint stick to add gold highlights, coordinating with the gold in some of the fabrics. A bobbin had broken recently so I couched the black thread to form a semi border. Of course I had to add beads and buttons. You may not be able to see but I left the burlap showing in some places around the edges for interest. This is a quilt with only two layers. I’m probably going to attach it to black foam board and frame it. My husband’s reaction was “It’s busy”, hence the title, “Busy Intersections.” I love using scraps to create a piece of art!