Returning to the Top Fives
From Emily: Top Five Things I've Made (with pictures!) All images are clickable.
1. Victorianna (aka My First Doll). I bought the pattern at the Houston Quilt Festival when I was 13 or 14, and made the thing by myself. I taught myself how to use a curved quilting needle, Mom helped me learn how to tea-dye muslin, and I had a lot of adventures with sewing yarn, stuffing, and finishing. The doll pattern comes as a "boudoir" doll, with sewn-on undies, and you can buy several dress patterns from her. Some are fancy Victorian-style things, some are clever transformations of traditional quilt patterns. I did make her a "Grandmother's Flower Garden" dress and apron, but I don't know where they are off the top of my head.
2. Wedding Quilt: Michelle and Andy. This was a collaboration between me and Shelley, and it took four years to finish because we were horrible procrastinators and then we had to shuttle it back and forth between us. Once the top was done, I took it home and eventually did all the finishing, quilted it and put little crystals all over. This was my first time working with: printer fabric sheets; wedge-cut circular piecing (which was hard and involved a hell of a lot of precise math and careful measurement); heat-bonding crystals; free-motion quilting. The writing you can see is from the day of their wedding - we did have the top finished just enough to get it there and have the guests sign it. It all had to be taken apart and redone eventually, but it got done!
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(I can't believe I don't have a photo of the finished version! Here's one of it in situ at Chez Michelle and Andy in Ithaca.)
3. Girl in a Headscarf, prismacolor on paper. This was my first project using Prismacolor Pencils. I took a course at Rice Continuing Studies with a very awesome teacher, and chose a gorgeous photo released under Creative Commons licensing to render. I used a grid method to get the image onto the paper, and then colored very carefully. :) This one currently hangs in my office.
4. Canterbury in Colors, watercolor on paper. I did this in my watercolor class at the Art League of Houston. I loved that class, and it's kind of a toss-up between this piece and the one of the girl in a chair. I find the Canterbury painting so appealing, though, plus it's based on one of my own photographs. I plan to make an art quilt out of it. This one is framed and hanging next to my door at home.
5. Wedding Quilt: Lisa and Tim. (Do you see a pattern in my quilt-making? LOL.) This is my first really finished pieced art quilt. I had done one earlier than this of Professor Snape for a fellow Harry Potter fan, but that was based around a print on fabric of one of my illustrations, so it doesn't count in the same way. For Godzilla, I pieced and appliqued the whole thing together and then did shaped quilting to emphasize form and line. And Godzilla's back spikes are actually 3-D. Mom found a great skyline fabric to use on the back so it could be linked to New York, as well. I really enjoyed the shopping for this - Lisa and Tim got some really exciting novelty fabrics. (And they were really enthusiastic when they opened the package, too!)
This entry was originally posted at http://zephre.dreamwidth.org/462261.html.
comments posted to original post.
1. Victorianna (aka My First Doll). I bought the pattern at the Houston Quilt Festival when I was 13 or 14, and made the thing by myself. I taught myself how to use a curved quilting needle, Mom helped me learn how to tea-dye muslin, and I had a lot of adventures with sewing yarn, stuffing, and finishing. The doll pattern comes as a "boudoir" doll, with sewn-on undies, and you can buy several dress patterns from her. Some are fancy Victorian-style things, some are clever transformations of traditional quilt patterns. I did make her a "Grandmother's Flower Garden" dress and apron, but I don't know where they are off the top of my head.
2. Wedding Quilt: Michelle and Andy. This was a collaboration between me and Shelley, and it took four years to finish because we were horrible procrastinators and then we had to shuttle it back and forth between us. Once the top was done, I took it home and eventually did all the finishing, quilted it and put little crystals all over. This was my first time working with: printer fabric sheets; wedge-cut circular piecing (which was hard and involved a hell of a lot of precise math and careful measurement); heat-bonding crystals; free-motion quilting. The writing you can see is from the day of their wedding - we did have the top finished just enough to get it there and have the guests sign it. It all had to be taken apart and redone eventually, but it got done!
<
(I can't believe I don't have a photo of the finished version! Here's one of it in situ at Chez Michelle and Andy in Ithaca.)
3. Girl in a Headscarf, prismacolor on paper. This was my first project using Prismacolor Pencils. I took a course at Rice Continuing Studies with a very awesome teacher, and chose a gorgeous photo released under Creative Commons licensing to render. I used a grid method to get the image onto the paper, and then colored very carefully. :) This one currently hangs in my office.
4. Canterbury in Colors, watercolor on paper. I did this in my watercolor class at the Art League of Houston. I loved that class, and it's kind of a toss-up between this piece and the one of the girl in a chair. I find the Canterbury painting so appealing, though, plus it's based on one of my own photographs. I plan to make an art quilt out of it. This one is framed and hanging next to my door at home.
5. Wedding Quilt: Lisa and Tim. (Do you see a pattern in my quilt-making? LOL.) This is my first really finished pieced art quilt. I had done one earlier than this of Professor Snape for a fellow Harry Potter fan, but that was based around a print on fabric of one of my illustrations, so it doesn't count in the same way. For Godzilla, I pieced and appliqued the whole thing together and then did shaped quilting to emphasize form and line. And Godzilla's back spikes are actually 3-D. Mom found a great skyline fabric to use on the back so it could be linked to New York, as well. I really enjoyed the shopping for this - Lisa and Tim got some really exciting novelty fabrics. (And they were really enthusiastic when they opened the package, too!)
This entry was originally posted at http://zephre.dreamwidth.org/462261.html.
comments posted to original post.