Sisters

Sisters
by Ilene Atkins

One day in October several years ago, three of my sisters were here in Ontario for a visit. The weather was one of those perfect warm sunny fall days that we all love so much. We just had to go for a drive to see some of what Southern Ontario has to offer. 

We were all quite taken with the fall colours, and stopped a few times to take it all in. On one of those stops, near Collingwood, these two sailboats happened to go by. I snapped a few photos, and later printed this on onto fabric. 

I spent many an hour doing the threadpainting, and thinking fondly of my sisters and that great get-together. 

This quilt was chosen for exhibit at Quilt Canada, coming up June 15 to 18, 2016, in Toronto.

Update:  My quilt won first place in its category at Quilt Canada, in the National Juried Show. This is quite an honour, since my name was called with many other big names in the Canadian art quilt world. I am quite pleased. When I was at the show in Toronto, talking to people about my quilt, I was joined by one of my sisters who enjoyed that October day with me, and my good quilting friend from Alberta. It was a sweet moment in my life. 

A Little Thread Sketching

Snyder's Flats II
by Ilene Atkins  14" x 14"

I'd been working on this one for quite some time, It is a print of my own photo, and thread-painted quite intensely. I mounted it on the grey background for a bit of extra.

If you enlarge the detail photo, you can see the stitching I put into this. There are many, many colours and brands of thread. I try to blend the thread colours, working paint-by-number style, and reference my photo on my laptop. It is all free-motion stitched. My photo printed fabric is fused onto a stiff interfacing to keep it from distorting.

Snyder's Flats II detail
by Ilene Atkins

This one was accepted into Threadworks, currently on exhibition at the Wellington County Museum, and travelling to other locations for the next three years.

The Grand National Quilt Show

Autumn at Snyder's Flats
by Ilene Atkins

I can finally show you this quilt! It is called Autumn at Snyder's Flats, though everyone just calls it The Butterfly Quilt! I wrote about it here. I spent this afternoon at the opening reception at The Grand National here in Kitchener, link here.  The gallery was abuzz with quilty energy. It felt fabulous to be there, and to see my quilt on display with all the others. I was in the company of other great quilt artists, and truly amazing quilt art. This show goes until June 23, 2013, and is part of the St Jacob's Quilt & Fibre Art Festival, taking place in many communities in the area from May 21 to 25, 2013, link here. Perhaps you will be able to get to take in this show or one of the others in the area.

Rose Progress

I finished doing all the random heart FMQ on the unnamed red and denim quilt, which is now ready for binding. I want to put in a hanging sleeve before the binding goes on, which is not ready, so it will wait for a bit before it it finished.

In the meantime, I have been adding a few stitches to my October Rose piece that I wrote about here. You may be able to see the difference. I have a lot of pink threads now to use, and they have made a difference. I am aiming for a bit more contrast than the original photo has, so the rose shows better from a little distance.

I only have a little bit left of the petals to stitch. There are a few more leaves and stems to stitch, too, but for some reason they seem to go in much easier than the petals. I've decided to put it up on the wall to look at it for a bit to determine what it needs next, but now I'm looking at this photo of it on my computer screen and I can already find places to add a few more lines. Sometimes the hard part is to know when to stop!

While it waits, I have other projects to do. Have you figured out, yet, that I don't work on something from start to finish? I always have a number of irons in the fire.

I'm linking up again with the Needle and Thread Network, here.

An October Rose

I'm taking a break from sandwiching, and working on a thread-painting piece, a photo I took at the end of October of a beautiful rose in our garden. I happened to catch a couple of ladybugs, too. I find I don't have all the right shades of pink thread I need, but I did manage to do the ladybug, and I can do the buds and leaves, so I'll keep doing as much as I can until I can get more thread. It's always fun to go shopping for thread, isn't it?

I'm linking this up with WIP Wednesday, over at the Needle and Thread Network, link here.

In other news, my piece with the monarch butterfly was accepted into the Grand National Quilt Show, link here, but you will have to wait for opening day to see the whole thing. I wrote about it here. Very exciting.

Blue Flag Iris

Blue Flag Iris
by Ilene Atkins

Here's another piece I started ages ago. This one is my own photo, printed onto silk. I had printed a number of photos, and tried both cotton and silk. I found the cotton did not give me the vibrant colours I saw in my photos, so moved to silk. Thankfully, these colours turned out much brighter.  Think of those brilliantly dyed silks you see in the fabric stores, compared to the cottons. I think the silk has the ability to absorb more dye than the cotton, hence the better results in my printing experiments.

Blue Flag Iris, detail
by Ilene Atkins

I also tried several different kinds of stabilizer behind the printed fabric, and am still looking for that ideal one. I'll let you know when I find it. I then proceeded to thread-painting. I always think I'll just lay down a few outline stitches, to let the photo speak for itself, and next thing I know, the whole thing is covered is stitching! It became very distorted with all that stitching, and I didn't know what to do with it from there. So it languished in a box for a long time.

Then recently I came across Ann Fahl's book, Colouring with Thread, which I wrote about here. She describes the process of blocking a piece to get it flat and square. I was also afraid to get it wet, lest that leave water stains in the silk.  I decided it was do or die, so I dunked it and stretched it out. Amazing results. It was ready for backing and binding, so here it is. In many ways I am pleased with the results, but it has some issues I would like to work on in future pieces. 

I am linking this up with The Needle and Thread Network, here.

Thread-Painting a Finish

I've been working on a piece I started a while ago, printed onto cotton from my own photograph, 11x17". There was quite a bit of thread painting in it, on the butterfly and flowers.  Then I didn't know what to do with the background. With some new practice in FMQ, I decided to just jump in and get it done! Nothing fancy, just some long leaf-shaped filler moves. I'm just now finishing the hand stitching on the skinny 1/8" binding.

I had originally thought to add some beads to the flower centres, but now I think I like them in the thread painting the way they are, so I might just leave it the way it is. Any ideas?

I'm linking this up to Leah Day's Free Motion Quilting Project, one of my favourite blogs. See the link here, and read about what other quilters are up to.

Finished, Finally

Today, I did the last of the free-motion quilting stitches on the Christmas quilt I've been working on. What a relief that is. There were whispers around the house that I may never finish that baby, but I am proud to say I can call it a done deal. Well, it's not quite finished, because it still needs blocking and binding, but for me that part is an easy last step. I will post a photo of the whole thing when the binding is on.

You get a sneak peek of the centre here, though, and a close up of the free motion quilting. The candy-cane medallion you see is cut from a panel, fused on and stitched around the edge with invisible zig-zag stitching, with some thread-painting added on the holly and ribbon.

I cut out a cardboard template to do the sashing strips, but much of it is just free-motion. Interestingly, I switched to a smaller needle, and this improved my tension issues tremendously. A lot of it is heavily stitched, and there is some distortion, so I will need to block it to hopefully straighten it up. In a rare instance of foresight, I prepared the binding strips, label, and hanging sleeve when I was assembling the top back in November, so it will be a quick matter to get those on.

With this Christmas quilt off my machine table, I can now move on to other projects that I had set aside. I'll post about those when they come up. And with this new enthusiasm for free motion quilting, I took a look today through my WIP box, and there are a number of completed quilt tops.  And yes, some of them have been there for a while. I am thinking I now have the confidence to get to work on them and get them converted from tops to finished quilts. Imagine that!

After the Christmas Rush

I haven't posted for a while, and I know my sisters and friends are wondering . . . so here's an update! 

Like it always does, Christmas came and went very quickly. I was busy with work, family and friends, and a little bit of sewing. We love having all the lights and tree and decorations all around for those darkest days of the year. It's all so pretty and sparkle-y. A drive around the city to see the lights is a treat, too. We were even at an Orthodox Christmas party this past week. Our good friend has been very sick and in the hospital, so we've spent some time time there, too.

I have been still working on that Christmas quilt I started in November. The top went together very quickly, but after that, I got a little carried away with the quilting part of it. There is sure a lot of it. Can you see my stitches in the photo? Part of this was some practice for me, I did a lot of free-motion and thread-painting on it, and there is still a ways to go. I think to myself that I should be keeping this more simple, but it takes on a life of its own. Anyway, I like the way it's going, so I will keep plugging away at it.

I've also been working on some table runners that I started last year. On those, I did a lot of outline stitching and close stippling. This also felt like some practicing for my quilting, and I love adding these  around the house for Christmas. I was comparing the ones I'm working on this year to last year's ones, and I'm noticing a big difference in my quilting stitches. Last year, I did mostly straight lines, and a bit of stippling. I didn't know what else to do. This year, I've added to that some thread-painting, outline stitches, flowers, feathers, small bubbles, and other stitches. It may not be new to other people in the quilt world, but I am amazing myself all the time!