Friday, December 2, 2011

Quilting every day

 This blog is supposed to be a record of my work and an incentive to do it.  Two of the things I think are really important in designing and creating my art are free machine practice and sketchbooks.  I am not as diligent in either of these two things as I should be.

I am going to try and do a quilting sample every day.  It is something I need to do, because my quilting is a little haphazard at times.  I will be doing a little four inch sample each day and will bind them with eyelets and rings into a little sample book I can use to refer to and to show.
Here are the first two pages, each bound differently.  I will also try and include lots of different bindings as well.  I could back to back the samples so two make one page, but I feel it is better to be able to see the back - and to include not so perfect samples like these.
My method so far is pretty simple
I draw the quilting lines with an iron off pen  with a little practice bit outside to start with.  In the first two, I only started to draw the pattern, since it repeated and I wanted to get to the stage of doing it without lines, however with this one there is no repeat.

Another thing I think I need to do every day is to take photos to use in my sketchbook, art book and journal.  My sketchbook is where I simply draw and paint.  My art book is where I encorporate mixed media and samples into little pieces of work and my journal is my notebook, where I record ideas, write notes to myself and generally nut things out.

So here are today's photos
This is an anemone or windflower leaf.  I love the edges of these leaves.
This is a dietes, or native iris, of which there are many in the garden.
I love this picture.  It is a grape vine leaf on our very overgrown fence.
Lastly, this is a very naughty blackberry, which has been poisoned, but keeps coming back, but the flowers are pretty.  I also like briar roses, which are similar, but pink.
There is a significant trend in my photos, isn't there, but this is what I see each day.

I will try to post on these two things once a week or sometimes every two weeks when things are really busy.  I will also try to include examples of using these two things, like quilting in pieces of work or sketchbook or artbook pages.