Something Fishy: More Quilted Silk Scrap Brooches

In February, I showed some Valentine's Day hearts made from felt, silk scraps and tulle. After the holiday, I wanted to go beyond hearts, so I dug up my aquatic life pattern e-book, printed out shapes, and used them to make....this butterfly fish...

...a winking crab....

 ...a lumpfish...

 ...a surprised angelfish....

,,,a bored Angelfish...

Same eye, different fish:

...a second seahorse (first one was here)...

A couple of snipefish...

...and cichlids...

...and sharks....

...octopii...

And so forth. Because I was running low on pin backings, I stitched gold safety pins to the back (You can also stitch a barrette finding or jump ring for a pendant; or, glue magnets to the back). I drip Fray Check on all the knots. 

These have made easy-to-transport gifts, which I inflict on friends and family on all occasions and non-occasions. I pinned them all to the back of a quilted wallhanging whose front was heavily sun-damaged. I roll this quilt up and carry it. When I meet someone who needs a brooch, I unroll it and let them choose!

Since making them, I revised and updated the ocean creatures pattern book with instructions for these brooches, as well as using these patterns to make applique quilts, especially from upcycled denim. More silk scrap valentines and a free tutorial are here. The pattern book is still available on my Etsy and blog shop.

How To Keep Them on the Farm, After They've Done Improvisational Strip Piecing?

Does this line ring a bell? "How do you keep them down on the farm, after they've seen Paris?" (with Paris pronounced "pareeeeee")?

It was one of my mother's favorite things to say, relevant to so many situations.Thanks to the Intertubes, I now know it was a post-World War I hit song, in 1919, nearly a decade before my mother was born. (This song has its own Wikipedia page!)

The question came to mind because I've been doing SO much improvising lately - cutting things up and stitching them down with no fusible web and only the loosest of plans. Back in my early days of quilting, I worried that once I experienced freedom, I'd never go back to the old fashioned methods.

And as it turned out, my apprehensions were correct. Especially in the last couple of months, when I've been playing with freehand cut squares, more squares, even more squares, and marshmallows,

And most recently, mostly-solid strips left over from the squares and marshmallows.

I began this project by laying the strips  modelled after the traditional strippy courthouse steps quilt block.

I experimented with running a cut-out zig zag through it (made for and rejected from another improv project). 

Now how to glue those strips down to get them under a sewing machine?

Not brain surgery! Decided the black background needed to be larger, so I popped the whole thing on a larger square of black felt. (Can't tell where the fabric ends and the felt begins). Freemotion quilted  with a stipple in variegated thread. Move veerrry slowly or the foot might get caught under a strip (it happened a few times) and you have to cut it out. 

Tried wrapping it around a 6" square 1" deep wrapped canvas block.

Meh! I'm not feeling it.
What about sewing the two side seams together, sewing the bottom together, and boxing it, to make a vase?

Taa daaa! OK, it's not elegant, but it's the perfect size to insulate a water bottle; and with a heavy glass jar inside, it's a funky flower vase! Now if only I could get myself to Paree!

Update: Shared on Nina Marie Sayre's Off the Wall Fridays. Check it out for more art quilting!

Quick Project for Quilters Who Love Fonts Too Much.

A bunch of years ago, I took an excellent class on the Adobe InDesign program, which I use to self-publish my patterns. Typography, of course, was an essential part of the class. The teacher told us that his personal font collection ran into the thousands - that's thousands of alphabet styles, and dollars, too, since the good and the new ones tend not to be free. He explained: "I'm a font whore!"

 I'd never heard the term before (although it's been around), but oh my gosh, me, too! Well, wait a sec, that term is pretty rude, since persons who sell their bodies are usually not so enthusiastic about it. So I'll edit that to "font groupie," to reflect the enthusiasm factor. There have been many times that I loved fonts too much and threw them about promiscuously on my pages!

Then I read Walter Isaacson's excellent biography of Steve Jobs. After dropping out of college formally, Jobs nonetheless audited a college calligraphy class. When he developed his first mass market computer, he was determined to give civilians the ability to select fonts, a word that most people didn't even know. Thus Jobs turned typography from an obscure field for graphic designers and printers, to a steamy pleasure for the masses. Jobs was the personal computer age's first f.g.

The other relevant pop culture influence here is the Mary Tyler Moore show. Remember that giant "M" hanging in her living room? I thought it was the coolest thing. [Here's a lovely blogpost by a retired designer, with a picture of Mary's 'M', plus the bloggers' own fab artistic alphabetic wall letter collection: http://goodlifeofdesign.blogspot.com/2011/02/letter-letter-on-wall.html] Just as Jobs launched the font-loving trend, Mary (or her show's set designers) almost certainly launched the wall-alphabet trend.

So what we have at the top of the post are three quiltlets that celebrate font symbols and letters, aka "glyphs." These make excellent wall hangings - solo or in groups - as well as bookmarks, and even, sometimes, bracelets. It's the perfect gift for a literary friend. I trundled through the dozens of fonts on my computer to find suitable glyphs. My main criteria was that they had to be relatively wide - no thin, narrow stretches, or they wouldn't support their weight and would be a big pain to cut out and stitch.

The ampersand is a manipulated version from the font Blackadder. I smoothed it and stretched it. It's about 10" high and 4" at its widest.

It really does work as a bracelet. Here's the ampersand on (petite) Local Teen's tiny wrist.

And then there's the exclamation point.

 I can't figure out if I got it from the Binner D font, or from Gloucester MT Extra Cond - they're similar.  It's 8" high not counting the loop. The black cord loop secures the top to the stacked buttons in the bottom dot. The loop also serves as a wallhanger.

The question mark started out in either Harrington or Poor Richards. Aren't those font names enticing? They REEK of ink, of the Gutenberg Bible, Thomas Paine, and Benjamin Franklin.

Want to make your own quilted glyphs? I used a combination of black felt and solid quilters cottons. Here's the approach I used:

1. Choose a letter or character you like, and size it up in a graphic design or word program.* (see below)
2. Print it out (not mirror image). Trace the printout onto freezer paper (or print directly onto freezer paper, if you know how).
3. Press the freezer paper pattern onto your first contrasting color - for the ampersand, I used a red quilters cotton.
4. Don't cut into the red cotton yet - instead, press the wrong side to fusible web, so it is fully backed with fusible, with the freezer paper still on top.
5. Cut out the red cotton letter close around the freezer paper pattern. Remove the pattern
6. Press red cotton symbol to another contrasting color, in this case a dark blue-green cotton.
7. Press the blue's back to more paper-backed fusible web.
8. Cut around the blue-green fabric so a sliver of it shows beyond the red areas.
9. Press the red/blue combination to felt of your choice. (I chose black acrylic felt.) Use a press cloth, and a moderate temperature, so you don't melt the felt. Decide which areas of the felt to cut away, and which to leave in place. Trying it on a wrist will help you engineer a closure.
10. Stitch around each color with a zig-zag. I used a gold metallic thread from Superior, which goes well through sewing machines.
11. Optional: Stitch around the outer edge of the felt, if you want.

* Wondering how to resize and manipulate characters? Here's what I did. First, I typed the glyph into my favorite graphics program, CorelDraw, where I can easily convert it to curves and play with it. If you don't have a graphics program, you can resize in MSWord. Type the letter in the font you like. Select it. Bold it if you want it all a little wider. Select it again - you'll get a menu that allows you to enter the size. My MSW 2010 lets me size the glyphs from 1 to 1638 points, the latter being so huge it takes up about 8 sheets of paper. Size it around 600 points - it should take up most of a standard sized page. If it cuts off the image, try going to to 'page layout' and doing away with the margins. I don't have an Apple, but I'm betting that, thanks to Steve J., it's much easier to play with fonts in their system. Or, resizing on a copy machine may be easier than wrassling with MSW. Sigh! If only Bill Gates were a f.g!

Would love to hear about your passion for fonts!

Appliqued Upcycled Blue Jeans Cowboy Baby Name Quilt

From about the age of 2, my baby boy wanted to be a cowboy. We live in an urban suburb, and are descended from long lines of gefilte-fish-eating city-dwellers, so this vocational goal was as implausible as it was delightful.

(Young people, that is not my son. That is Gene Wilder, the definitive Jewish cowboy, who played the role in Frisco Kid and Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles, two stupid, wildly politically-incorrect, utterly hilarious movies.)

I seized upon my son's cowboy aspirations as an excuse to make a quilted wall hanging from my  favorite garments for upcycling:  Denim jeans.

What is this thing? Why, it's an appliqued denim cowboy name quilt, of course! All raw-edge applique, so easy, so fun! 

The background is red felt, free-motion quilted. The lettering, comes from various parts of the jean,with hardware like fasteners and rivets left in wherever possible. It's sewn on by hand or machine, depending on whether the seams were too thick for my sewing machine needle. (I hate to admit it, but you could actually do this entire quilt with glue.) 

It also includes novelty fabric cutouts of cowboys and their accoutrements (cows, herding dogs, covered wagons, cattle skulls, etc.), added with fusible and machine stitching. All edges are raw - stray threads are a feature! 

All four corners have denim pockets. The cacti are appliqued felt. I threw on some other stuff, like a piece of petrified wood tied to a string tied to a vintage metal button (lower left of the photo below), a Levi's label (speaking of Jews and cowboys), and a golden cord lasso.

Belt loops are set at even intervals along the top. A loop of navy-and-white bandana, tied through each belt loop, holds the quilt onto nails on the wall. (It's off-the-wall for the shot below).

The piece measures about 32" x 15" But of course, my son has a short name, all straight lines. If the child's name is Persephone or Maximillian, you will need to make the letters smaller, and/or the quilt much longer.

Obviously, this upcycling project works best if your child has hopes and dreams that are somehow related to blue jeans. Along with cowpersons, if s/he wants to be a carpenter, a professor, Bruce Springsteen, or an explorer, denim is perfect.  However, if s/he wants to be an Olympic ice skater, use something spangly; if s/he wants to be a neurosurgeon, scrubs would be ideal, etc.

My son's cowboy dreams did fade away, alas, and from about 3rd grade to today (he's in college), he has pretty much wanted to be a scientist, like his dad.  And come to think of it, his father, and his father's scientific colleagues, mostly wear denim jeans to the office. So if my son one day has a scientific office and/or lab, I feel strongly that this wallhanging will fit in perfectly with the decor.

The lassoing of stray cows will transform from a literal projection of a future career, into a metaphor for the ongoing search for elusive scientific truth. (Rising violin music). So I won't have to make him a new science-themed denim name wallhanging any time soon!  Happy Birthday, son! I bought you a nice science book, instead!


P.S.

Come to think of it, Gene Wilder also starred in a Mel Brooks movie about careers in science!

Valentine update: Channeling my inner Northwest coast native person

You know how sometimes you create something and have a strong idea about a design decision, and then minutes/hours/days/weeks/years/decades later you realize where your idea came from?

So, in our last installment, I made a heart-and-arrow flannel and felt 3-D Valentine for my husband, which, when I gave it to him yesterday morning, looked something like this:

He loved it. Yay! In the evening, slightly stoned on excessive amounts of chocolate, I took it back to add a hanging loop.

As I stitched on a yellow ribbon, I was suddenly overwhelmed by a desire to sew tiny, mostly mother-of-pearl white buttons, onto the heart. At first I just sewed just one row within the red heart outline. But then I added more...and more...

The white on the red flannel and felt background just felt so RIGHT.

As I was finishing, I recognized from whence my compulsion had come: The button blankets of the Northwestern coast native tribes, of course! I'd seen them at museums in the Pacific Northwest during a visit to that area 21 years ago, and had been utterly entranced. (This was even before I became a quilter). The coastal people make spectacular red, black (or dark blue), and pearl button as capes and gifts. (They are rarely hung from walls, and never used as bedding, according to Wikipedia). Here's a modern button blanket made by Joshua Sherucij.

Here's an older one by deceased Haida artist Florence Davidson: 

(Learn more about her here.)

 Here's a family wearing their button capes.

So now I'm thinking....what ELSE can I make from red and black flannel or felt that involves lots of white buttons? (Because my button boxes spilleth over....)

Have you ever made anything like a button blanket?