Venice (Europe 11)

So .. do I finish an old project or start a new one???

     This photo of Venice has been calling to me. A very grey picture except for the buildings where the canal starts to turn. On our Rick Steves' 21 Day Europe Tour we were able to rent 4 gondolas & a pair of Italian musicians late one evening and we drifted through the canals with our gondolier managing the oar.

 The art quilt size will be approximately 30" X 24" and a little less white/grey

     I couldn't find any material that I thought suitable for the water ... starting with the lighter patterned blue means I can make it darker with Inktense pencils, fabric markers or paint and add angelina fibres to give the luminescent quality.  Lots of threadwork is needed for all the architectural detail. (probably not the detail in the corners of the arch ... I believe the figures are naked men. ha ha)

Colour Challenge Revisited

     I am not always a stickler for rules if I am there when they are being created and I can ask if exceptions or modifications can be applied, but when you come into a project after it has already started and you see that the first few creations by other members are following the rules, you work within the given guidelines.
     So ... that being said, the Colour Challenge was meant to be a series of 10" X 8" pictures, mounted on small canvases so they could be hung.
1. July - Complimentary
2. Aug - Analgous
3. Sep - Triad
4. Oct - Tetrad
5. Nov - Split Complementary
6. Jan - Monochromatic
7. Feb - Achromatic - no colors - black,white, greys
8. Mar - High contrast or low contrast - color only
9. Apr - Full color - pure color, outer edge of color wheel

     But then cracks began to appear .... some people decided they wanted to do different sizes; some only completed certain colour months .... Hmmmmmmm.

     Although I was pleased with the overall concept, I really didn't like the 9 separate pieces (completed mid-June 2016) ... and being the artist, decided that if I wanted to modify the work, it was my choice!!

     All the binding was removed from the 9 pictures; they were trimmed and sewn together in one block, with a narrow dark grey border. (approx size 30 1/2" X 24 1/2")

     A few of the house lines are not exact matches but I like the overall look much better. This would be an interesting picture if I chose one of the colour challenges and did the whole picture that way .... maybe in just achromatic or perhaps in monochromatic.

It's Done!! My Scrapbook of Europe (Europe 10)

     I completely finished the Europe quilt on the weekend. I have even managed to clip all loose threads (I think) but, it turns out my camera does not want to cooperate.  My daughter came by to take photos.
     Although the maps lay flat on the fabric in the beginning, the extra stitching / quilting of the background fabric caused the maps to pucker loosely in the middle. I ended up having to go over every orange thread highway I had created, as well as some of the outlines of the pictures

Haarlem, Netherlands

centre of town, Rothenberg, Germany

     I thread-sketched the tulips on the background instead of making a separate picture: two reasons ... didn't want the wall-hanging to look cluttered and I really liked the background fabric & didn't want to cover it up.

Rothenberg, Germany --- one of the gates in the town wall

Florence, Italy

     It was so hard to create the awesomeness of this cathedral. There was so much detail --- I gave up on trying to make all the statues in all the little alcoves; the picture was too tiny to add them.

Colosseum, Rome, Italy

     I have seen pictures of the Colosseum everywhere but did not expect it to be so HUGE!  It amazes me how some of the buildings were created all around this site without the cranes and backhoes and equipment that we have today.

Cinque Terre, Italy

     Here is a place that I need to return to ... and perhaps walk the mountain path that connects the village along the coast. My tour friends and I took a boat to visit 4 of the villages.

Beaune, France

     The Burgundy region .... even though many of the places we visited were not that far apart (compared to traveling in Canada), I was amazed at the differences in architecture between one country and the next.

Paris, France

     And last, but not least, Paris .... a few too many people in all the 'touristy' spots, but I enjoyed walking the several kilometres from the cathedral to our hotel on my own, stopping into little shops and taking many photographs of buildings.
 
 The additional thread-sketching that I did on the background fabric: 1. the tulips (top, mid-right), 2. Amsterdam (top left), 3. the gondola in the Alps, Switzerland (middle right), 4. the gondola in Venice (bottom right) and 5. a cathedral top Rome (bottom mid-left).

     13 pictures in raw-edge applique or thread-sketched and six maps to represent 3+ weeks of travel.  Not sure what I will do with the rest of my photographs (close to 400!) ... there are a couple that I would like to do as stand-alone larger pictures. We shall see....
    

King Sized

     Years ago my daughter picked out various green fabrics and asked me to make her a quilt. She wanted a stripy quilt ... I showed her a variety of designs that would look good with her greens, but still she wanted a stripy quilt. That's what she got.
     She has since married and I made them a beautiful queen-sized quilt, thick and warm for the winter months.
     However, this summer, she and her husband (who is 6'5") decided to buy a king-sized bed, which, of course, meant they needed a larger quilt.
     Out came the stripy quilt ... I added 35 cm (14") panels to the sides and the bottom. There wasn't any of the original fabric left but with strips in the same tones, it was easy to find enough fabric to match (most of the fabric came from my stash and I only bought a few fat quarters to compliment the original).

     Working each panel was easy to machine quilt and I practiced swirls, circles  and random stipple ... the difficulty came with attaching the panels to the main quilt .... king-sized quilts are HEAVY!!
I checked out a few Youtube videos ... this one made the most sense for what I was doing although 
 the presenter was working with 9" blocks and I was attempting to add panels that were the full length of the quilt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji8BLS2rNHA
"How to Join Up Quilt as you Go Blocks" by Gourmet Quilter

Europe top (Europe 9)

The top is now done ... I had originally planned on doing more pictures but two things changed that plan.
     One ... I found some really pretty background fabric and I didn't want to cover it all and
     Two ... the blue-grey fabric that I had for doing the frames of the pictures was only a fat quarter and I was unable to find more of the same fabric.  Several other fabric colours were auditioned but I liked my original choice the best; without more fabric, there was no need to do more pictures!
     I used a brown fabric to frame the maps.

     This was hung on the clothesline on a slightly windy day (well, where I live, everyday is at least slightly windy with most days being very windy) ... hard to keep the fabric to stop moving long enough to take a picture.
     Since I didn't want to cover all of the background fabric, I chose to outline several more Europe scenes. Top centre has red tulips; top left has buildings in Amsterdam along a canal -- hard to see in the shadow; centre right has a mountain gondola from Switzerland; bottom right has a Venice gondola going along a canal and to the left of Italy is a church dome.
     Once I finish quilting the top, I will do some close-ups so the outline pictures can be seen better.  
     The piece currently measures 38" X 43" and has taken 88 hours to get this far. :-)

On to Beaune (Europe 8)

     Beaune France, a beautiful town, the capital of Burgundy wines. We walked through the hospital Hotel Dieu listening to the history on our headphones. I opted for the francais set and understood perhaps 1/3 of what was said .. I had to stop and 'rewind' several times since my hearing seemed to be slower than their speaking!
     A couple blocks from our hotel, several friends and I stopped for supper, sitting in an outdoor cafe and enjoying some people-watching.
     This particular piece took just under 7 hours to complete. I am getting the hang of doing the work and my efficiency and accuracy are improving. 

     Again I have left out some little details ... like the tiny windows on the roof, an extra chimney & the people and umbrellas.  I notice odd things when working on these pieces ... in this picture, the shutters on the lower windows are not full size ... and I realized that it is because of the tiny Juliette balconies. I may go back and add the gold coloured diamonds between the windows on the mansard roof.

Background (Europe 7)

     Found some beautiful Robert Kaufman fabric for the background. It wasn't what I was first looking for ... I had seen fabric with maps and stamps and travel pictures on them, but realized they would look too busy or overpower the work that I was doing.

     The photo doesn't do it justice; it is soft and feels luxurious (& probably a little too expensive for the background, but I'm blaming the price on the lousy exchange rate we have with the US) ; the colours are a multi soft blues, beiges and greys with a little bit of darker blue. Kind of resembles the mix of sky colours we had while traveling. I've added a medium-weight fusible interfacing to the back.

     After pinning the completed pictures and maps I have so far (Switzerland will be done by tonight), I think I may have to revise my plan a wee bit or I will end up covering most of the background fabric. Perhaps in some areas I will outline sites in navy or shades of grey-blues directly on the background. My plan was to complete another picture for Holland (perhaps the canals), another picture for France and possibly one of Venice.  Maybe a gondola would look better as an outline ... Hmmmm.