Having New Eyes

The Alaska Quilt is finished and hanging on the wall!

Wow, it seems like such a long time since I posted something, ANYTHING, here on "Having New Eyes"!  It's not all because of the holidays...It's been a really difficult fall/winter so far for my husband, healthwise, with lots of trips to doctors, hospitals, and ERs.  The upside is that, though finishing the AK quilt at home took longer than expected, I have had lots of handwork time in waiting rooms!  Can't wait to start sharing some of that with you.

The big news, though, is that I finished the Alaska quilt the night before Christmas, when all through the house.... well, you know the lyrics.  Chuck was touched beyond any gift he received this year, and there were quite a few that touched him.  This quilt contains all the wildlife and scenery that he enjoyed on his month long travels in Alaska, and while it ended up being bigger than I'd planned, it fits perfectly on the wall in front of his leatherworking workbench and he often stops tooling to sit and look.

This last picture is of the one patch border I decided to finish with, using pieces from all the fat quarters Chuck brought back for me from his trip.  The imagery in the quilt comes from multiple sources.  Some are actual photographs from his trip, printed on fabric and fused into the scenery.  Others are stock photos, similarly printed and fused.  Two images are my own paintings on fabric that I cut out and fused.  The water of the river was such fun, so abstract!  Lots of applique, plus plenty of decorative threads and lace.

I think that a quilt series on BOXERS has happened!

Laura Wasilowski recently said something about doing a series.  She was particularly talking about the blue chair that keeps popping up in her work.  I realized that of the several portraits I've done, I already have multiple dog portraits, and most of those are Boxers.  Of course I have my own Boxer - who would I be if I didn't have a Boxer in my life?

JJ, aka Jada Jarhead, is 6 yrs old and inspirational when it comes to portraits.  

Above is the digital photo made into a quilt from a picture I took last summer.

Above is the first portrait I did of JJ, using snippets of fabric and literally "Painting" with fabric pieces, some as small as a few threads, then securing all with tulle and quilting.

 To the left is a portrait I did based on a photograph I discovered on Red Bubble.com.  I contacted the photographer, and he was happy to let me use the image.  This is actually incorporated in a purse I made for a friend of mine who also happens to be a dog lover.

 

My most recent boxer portrait is of JJ's Texas cousin, Henry, when he was still a pup...

I edited this photo in Photoshop:

I printed out a black and white image of the photo onto fabric:

Which I then painted with acrylic paint and quilted with colored thread.

OHNO - another JJ quilt!?

I can't resist.  My boxer, JJ (aka Jada Jarhead), is an available and free, and dare I say beautiful?, model for my photos and quilts.  LOL.  I've just finished this small wall quilt.

I've actually had the picture of JJ printed out on cotton fabric and pieced together for nearly 6 months, and pinned to my design wall, but...  You know how it is don't you?  An idea comes along, perhaps in a magazine article, or a Quilting Arts episode, that really catches your fancy, but partway into the process some voice inside you says, no, I don't like the direction I'm going with this.  So it sits.  In my studio, I pin things like this on the design wall so that I think about it whenever I happen to glance that was.  Originally I was going to make a collage style quilt, with other dogs and summer pics/colors, but it wasn't coming together in my mind.  Only 2 weeks ago I asked that wonderful question "what if...?"  Within days, she was finished.

 

 

This quilt is for sale for 185.00

 

There are dogs, and then there are DOGS!

Found a picture of a dalmatian in a magazine, and just had to try a doggy paintover!  (did you know that my very first dog was a Dalmatian named Louis XVIII?)

My son, Mark, with Louis XVIII:

 

 

The digitally enhanced paintover:

Louis XVIII is long gone, having been replaced by 2 successive Boxers, but what a pretty dog he was!

First I paintover, then I fidget in photoshop...

This art is the result of a fairly bad quality, color vintage photo of my Dad as a young, unmarried man. His posture, the cigarette in his hand (that doesn't really show in the final piece), the flashy car, all jive with the Daddy I remember when I was very very little.  He was a playboy, a flyboy in the Air Force, who knew how to tend his own bar and had cocktail parties frequently for his crew.  All the women dressed like Jackie Kennedy, and the men still wore hats.  I was actually disappointed in my original paintover, and considered throwing it away, but....

 

 

The details of his clothing, his facial features, even his hands, aren't really clear in the original photo, so they aren't very clear in my paintover either.  What IS clear is that car!  What a car!  Here, in the final piece, the man remains slightly obscured, while the car stands out as the focus of the picture.

 

That's my dad!

A few days of making Artist Trading Cards

We're talking embellishment heaven!  Every year I want to have some new artist trading cards to bring with me to the Chicago International Quilt festival, because there's a trading card WALL in the middle of the vendor area where lots of artists leave their cards and do trades.  It's really fun to put mine up on Thursday, taking some in return, and then going back on Saturday to see which ones were already picked by someone else.  I like to contact the artists, who are supposed to put contact information on the backs of their ATC's, just to let them know I have their cards and how much I like them.  Sometimes I even get a reply!  I've never been contacted by anyone who picked my cards, but I always hope someone will.

Here are the cards I've finished so far:

this card was an experiment with digital ground, on a sheet of ANGELINA!!  It worked!  I did use 3 coats of dg, and printed a black and white image, then did some quilting and embellishing.

This is a simple photo, taken on a backpacking trip a few years back, printed on digital ground.

Microsoft clip art printed on digital ground and then painted and quilted.

Printed with dig.ground, and then pulled out my scrapbooking supplies for the sticker and border.

digital ground photo with scrapbooking sticker!

Fused fussy cut flower, ceramic button, seed beads, black embroidery.

The word Mother, and the flower image are printed on digital ground.  The black 'seeds' are embroidered.  The word 'loves' and the yellow lines are quilted, with velvet ribbons and a ceramic button added.

 

If you're interested in learning more about embellishments, I'd like to recommend a website/blog.  Linda Matthews' site has tons of information and instruction about embellishing, and she's released a instructional dvd called Titivations.  As a matter of fact, she's hosting a giveaway of her dvd during the month of April which, if you are a blogger, you can enter.  Details here.

Big Big Love

I've finished 1 of 2 challenge quilts for the TQS challenge, as the deadline draws frighteningly near!  This is the Big Love quilt, depicting the Lion and the Lamb laying down together.  Technically speaking, the Wolf and the Lamb lie down together in the book of Isaiah - but wolves don't have big flowing manes for me to color, and the lion and lamb imagery is popularly accepted and recognized, so there you have it.  If you'd like to read how I made this quilt, go to my Lion and Lamb page.

I am nearly finished with the Hippie Bus quilt, which is also destined for the Groovy Love Challenge - more later!