Quilts

Summer Report

August 9, 2014August 8, 2014 Elizabeth E.10 Comments

What I Did This Summer
(And can it already be over??)

1. Went to Utah and ate a Crab Sandwich at a Kneaders Sandwich Shop

2. Went to the beach with my grandkids and two of my kids

3. Entertained grandchildren with puzzles

4. Entertained grandchildren with forts made out of quilts (luckily I have a few)

5. Put the lighter summer look in the guest bedroom, loving how it makes Kaleidoscope shine
(on the end of the bed is my friendship quilt, which includes signatures from all my granddaughters)

6. Made a starry block for Susan for the Mid-Century Modern Bee in July

7. Made my August Mid-Century Bee block for Mary

8. Been arranging the blocks that come in from my turn at the Always Bee Learning Bee. Everyone must be on vacation, because they are dribbling in, little by little. But I love to see them all together!

9. Went to Zagreb (and Ljubljana and Dubrovnik–all in Slovenia and Croatia). . .

. . . and Budapest, Hungary.

10. Hosted a giveaway!

I did the Random Number Generator thing and got #3, but Susan said she already had that book so not to consider her.

So I did it again, and Carly was the winner. I’ll be in touch by email.

But I can’t let this go by without telling you all how thoughtful and interesting your comments were. I like how you read each other’s and answered each other; I love seeing community in our quilty world. It made me remember that I’m also inspired by quotes and sayings, as well as nature and other quilters. I love how Harlan said that when the creative juices are clicking, “something new and needed is created.” I appreciated Anne’s parsing out the difference between flat-out copying vs. being inspired by someone’s work. All of you brought excellent ideas to the conversation and I wish I could give you all a prize. You are all the best. Hope you also had a good summer!

Quilts

Inspiration. . . and a Giveaway!

August 7, 2014August 7, 2014 Elizabeth E.24 Comments

In the book I just finished reading, Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon, he writes that “Nothing is original.” He quotes Jonathan Lethem who notes that “when people call something ‘original,’ nine out of ten times they just don’t know the references or the original sources involved.” And in our quilt world, I see this all the time manifest in the copyright squabbles, the this-is-my-original-pattern-syndrome and it’s only a variation of a log cabin, the insistence by some in the modern quilt movement that they dreamed it all up — this modernist stuff, without any regard for where the idea first surfaced. . . and then resurfaced. When I see this stunning quilt by Nancy Crow, made when many young quilters’ parents had not even started dating, I think, as did Kleon when he quoted the Bible, “There is nothing new under the sun.”

But Kleon goes on to say that this idea fills him with hope, rather than despair: “As the French writer Andre Gide put it, ‘Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.” Kleon encourages us to note where our influences come from. I say, if you don’t know about some of the earlier quilters, try heading to the International Quilt Study Center and Museum and browse for a while. Take a look at these early masters and be inspired.

To inspire you, I’m giving away a copy of Austin Kleon’s book, a small little treasure, perfect for some end-of-summer reading. To win a copy, leave me a comment below and include a source of inspiration, whether it be another quilter, a photograph, an image, nature or something else–something or someone that provokes or triggers your spark of creativity. Rather than just saying “nature,” or “Michael James,” try to be specific, such as “the moment the sun drops to the horizon” or “Michael James’ ‘Aurora’ in his early work” so that we can learn from each other.

I’ll announce the winner on my next post, and send you a gift card from Amazon so you can order it yourself; for this reason, it will work for international as well as domestic. Have fun, everyone! This post will close on Saturday morning.

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Quilts

Deconstruction of Ted and Maurice at Lorinc Pap Ter, an Art Quilt

August 2, 2014October 26, 2017 Elizabeth E.12 Comments

This post is a deconstruction of the techniques I used to create Ted and Maurice at Lorinc Pap Ter, a small (12″ square) art quilt for the Four-in-Art Quilt group. Our challenge this quarter was Contrast, under the overall yearly theme of Urban. Often an idea will come to me, but sometimes I start with the technique. I knew I wanted to drag out those bottles of Bubble Jet Set and Bubble Jet Rinse that I’d ordered some time ago, and find out if this whole process was difficult or easy. It was easy.

Bubble Jet Set is a type of mordant that binds to your fabric and allows the ink from your inkjet printer to adhere more easily. I’ve printed on fabric for years, but haven’t ever prepared the fabrics. I first started by reading a lot of blog posts, and I’ll post the links at the end. The one website that described the process best was Caryl Bryer Fallert-Gentry’s (Bryerpatch.com), and I followed her instructions.

I bought a shallow plastic container at Target, about 4 inches deep with a latch-type lid, as I wanted to store the prepared fabric in there afterwards. I cut my fabric about 9 inches by 12 inches, grabbed the container and the Bubble Jet Set (I only needed that one at this time) and went down to the kitchen sink. I put on dishwashing gloves, as suggested, then laid the first piece of fabric in the bottom of the container. I sparingly glopped some BubbleJet Set (BJS) onto the fabric, smoothing it out until it was thoroughly moistened. I placed a dry piece of fabric on top of that, again, smoothing until it looked like it had picked up most of the excess BJS, then glopped a little more. I’m being quite stingy with the BJS, actually, but do want to make sure that the fabric is sufficiently soaked. I repeated this until all four sheets were saturated.

I lay down some towels underneath my improvised clothesline in the garage (some say you can put containers to catch the extra drips, but I didn’t have that much excess) and hung up my sheets of fabric until dry. In our summer heat, it only took about an hour. Meanwhile, I washed and thoroughly dried my container, and when the fabric was dry, put them in the container until I could get to them. I read one blog where the crafter cautioned about letting too much time pass between treatment and printing. I had a space of about 4 days, and that was fine.

In yesterday’s post, I talked about how I created my art conceptually, but what I did technically was begin with a good photo of the square in Budapest. I overlaid the baseball backstop photo, sized it, then took it down to 20% transparency, and used the Eraser tool to start erasing a space to let the statuary shine through. I could have created a Path and selected it, but sometimes I think the Erase Tool does just fine. I did change out the size of brush I was using, from 1 pixel in some places to 75 pixels in other places. I did the same with Ted and Maurice, first flipping them around so they faced the other way, as that’s where I had some space to put them. I merged the layers, as I know from experience that when printing on fabric, it’s wise to pump up the Saturation of colors (enhancing the image without making it garish), and to Lighten/Brighten the entire image.

For the border pieces, I sized each combination of colors to four inches, then pasted them into one document so I could print all the colors at once, first flattening, then then increasing the Contrast/Saturation and then adjusting the darkness through the Lighten/Brighten menu.

When I was ready to print, I backed the prepared fabric in freezer paper, ironing it thoroughly but using NO steam at all — I wanted the freezer paper to really bond with the fabric. I trimmed it to exactly 8 1/2″ by 11″ inches, and used a High Quality photo setting to print.

It worked like a charm! I let it set for the recommended 30 minutes then peeled off the freezer paper. I let it set some more to let it thoroughly dry–a caution I read on many blogs.

I put four capfuls of Bubble Jet Set Rinse in my container, then added about a gallon of water (about 3 inches) and set the first printed sheet in the water. I kept it agitating the whole time of two minutes, as you see above. I held up the sheet to let it drain and in the other sink, I rinsed the sheet well and laid it out on towels that I had set on the counter. I did the same process with all the other prints, agitating them (apparently to keep the dye from the printing to re-settle back onto the fabric — they cautioned several times to keep it flat, and to not let it crease!).

This was the color of the rinse water after I did all four sheets. The Bubble Jet Set Rinse is a mild detergent formulated to remove excess dye. In my reading, many said that Synthrapol would work also, but I had this so I used it.

I blotted the sheets gently, pressing out the excess moisture. I did not wring or crumple the printed fabrics at all, working to keep them flat.

I hung them in the garage again to let them dry, again taking only a short time. I was pretty happy with the results. The colors were vibrant and the fabric was soft and I knew it was washable, although there are cautions about what type of detergent you use. I never wash my art quilts so it wasn’t a concern, but if you plan on doing so, here are some good websites with information on their experience with using BJS:

http://vickiwelsh.typepad.com/field_trips_in_fiber/2009/04/bubble-jet-rinse-whats-the-point.html

http://quiltbug.com/articles/bubble-jet-set.htm

http://www.bryerpatch.com/faq/bjs_q&a_page.htm

http://www.cjenkinscompany.com/Frequently_Asked_Questions_s/25.htm

The C J Jenkins Company manufactures the Bubble Jet Set, and I thought their page on printers was helpful, although I swear by my EPSON with their Archival Inks.

After this, the construction was pretty straight forward, although I had to do some cutting and stitching to get the dimensions correct around the central image.

I sashed the central image because I felt it might get lost in the tiny square borders.

I quilted it, using matching threads (mostly lots and lots of gray). Detail below. I didn’t want to “over-quilt” this, but did want to emphasize the various elements.

And that’s it! I’m pretty happy with how the BJS and BJR turned out, and glad that I had this little art quilt to nudge me into trying that preparing-fabric technique.

Next up? The third block in my Circles English Paper Piecing Sew-Along. I’ve remade this thing twice, so I’m ready to put it up and move on to the next block. See the above tab if you haven’t started yet.

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Quilts

Ted and Maurice at Lorinc Pap Ter, a Four-in-Art Quilt, August 2014

August 1, 2014July 22, 2014 Elizabeth E.20 Comments

Ted and Maurice at Lorinc Pap Ter

No. 4 in the Urban Series

It all started here, in a small square in Budapest right outside our hotel, on a recent overseas trip. We walked through it several times a day, enjoyed a lovely dinner at the Matryoshka Bistro in the background, sat and ate ice cream on a bench the night before we left. “Why don’t we have small squares like this?” I wondered outloud to my husband. “A place where you can get an ice cream and enjoy the evening, and see your neighbors?” for several people had greeted each other as they walked through. Another group gathered at the pub (just out of sight) for an end-of-the-day gab session.

Then the next week, trying to recover from an extended case of jet lag, I went walking at our local park — part walking path, part baseball fields, part tennis courts, with lots of benches.

I chatted with Ted and Maurice, two regulars that we see walking in the morning.

And these three men who walk together, who do have names, but who I refer to as The Retired Guys.

And on Saturday mornings I see the Little Leaguers warming up to play their early morning games. It was after talking to Ted and Maurice one morning (both retired) that I realized that while my “square” is a contrast to that sweet little Lorinc Pap Ter in Budapest (“ter” means “square” in Hungarian), it is also fundamentally the same. Of course, I want to go back to Budapest yesterday, but I’m content to notice the contrasts and take what I have.

Some of the obvious contrasts are the commercial enterprises: we work really hard to separate them in the United States, but interestingly more and more shopping centers are trying to recreate that “square” feel, setting out benches, have shaded trees to sit by, and playgrounds for tired children and their shopping parents. Another obvious contrast is the size, and the purpose. I think that Lorinc Pap Ter was meant to pay homage to Count Zichy (who is atop the statue, being honored by The Common Man, and The Neighborhood Priest, for the church is right behind me in the photo) and while the park where I walk in the morning is named for a local land donor, there isn’t a bit of statuary in sight.

I first thought of contrasting the differences felt in times of day, how many people were there, and certainly the colors do provide some visual interest, but I felt it was really a cliche, and didn’t point up the contrast like I wanted to. So I got the idea to merge the two parks and some of the people, overlaying the backstop and adding Ted and Maurice. It’s a jolt to see a Little League backstop in a Budapest city square, and certainly most ballparks don’t have statues holding laurel wreaths. By mashing them together it pointed out the contrasts in a quick sort of shorthand.

I felt like I’d lucked out to get a photo with the tricolor bunting on the backstop (it’s gone now). I now was much happier with the outcome, and didn’t let the colorful square of squares go to waste: I shrunk them down and used them for the border.

And to end it off, here’s Ted and Maurice, holding my quilt. They were thrilled to be honored that way, and told me about more regulars (they get there earlier than I do). Ted took photos of my creation having never seen something like this, and we all laughed and joked around, especially as The Retired Guys came loping around to join us. All we needed was some ice cream.