Three Tall Trees…..

August 26, 2015August 26, 2015 / Karen Lane / 4 Comments

At long last, after making 3 small quilts for the David Hockney Challenge and promising Mary from LINQS I would make a large one, I have finally made a start on it! It’s going to be a scaled up version of the quilt I made at the Cranwell Group earlier this year with the theme “what Winter means to me” (20″x 15″).

What Winter Means To Me

Last Winter had been all about trees as far as I was concerned. Researching Hockney’s work led to me developing a fascination of my own for trees and woodlands and I began photographing them wherever I went. This quilt is based on a photograph I took while out walking in the woods at Woodhall Spa.

The woods at Woodhall Spa

I began by soda soaking my fabric prior to dyeing with Procion from Artvango. Unfortunately I think I must have used too much soda. Although I covered it before ironing I still managed to burn the entire area of fabric above the tree tops! The dyed area was fine, just the white space above was burnt. I decided, rather than start again, to cut out the trees, back them with Vilene and make a huge piece of appliqué. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise as it was so much easier to handle under the machine than the whole cloth would have been!

Coloured with Procian and Inktense.....prior to burning!

Coloured with Procion and Inktense…..prior to burning!

I’ve layered organza and netting and machine stitched the background trees in various coloured threads, the same way as I did for the smaller version, but this time using more variety of colours.

Layered organza and netting.

The next step was to add the woodland floor before layering my appliqué woodland, sky fabric and wadding. The foreground trees have now been tacked in position and can be machined once the finer branches have been hand sewn.

Foreground trees tacked in position

I’m not particularly looking forward to quilting the three tall trees in place as the quilt sandwich is already very bulky. With hindsight I should have sewn the three trees on to the “sky” layer before I started quilting……..another lesson learnt!

Woodhall Spa Art Quilt…..

April 24, 2015April 25, 2015 / Karen Lane / 8 Comments

My latest art quilt has been made in response to a challenge set by the Cranwell Contemporary Stitch group. The challenge was set in January and the theme was “what Winter means to me”. Being a new member meant I didn’t have much time to lose as the deadline for handing in the finished work was going to be the second week in April.

Since signing up for the David Hockney Challenge last year I have become very interested in depicting trees in my work and all through the Winter I have been noticing trees like I have never done before. With this in mind I knew immediately that I wanted to create another tree themed quilt so took my camera on a walk through the woods in Woodhall Spa. This is a beautiful spot and I came home with dozens of images which will provide me with inspiration for a long time to come!

The image I chose to work with is the one shown below.

I began by painting a very pale grey sky and a grey/green backdrop for the woodland using Procion dyes. I bought a starter kit of Procion dyes when I visited Artvango and this was my first attempt at working with them.

The next step was to machine sew the background trees in shades of green and cream thread. I then added torn strips of green sheer fabric and a little black netting to create shadows. Silver embroidery thread was hand stitched to make the tall thin silver trees in the mid-ground.

At this stage I machined the thin branches of the trees, added grey sheer fabric in patches over the top and held it in place with a criss-cross of hand stitches branches.

The woodland floor is hand stitched silver thread over dyed muslin which has been roughly cut and layered with small snippets of gold organza.

The three main tree trunks were formed from iron-on Vilene which was coloured with Procion and bark detail was added using Inktense pencils.

The finished piece measures 15″ x 20″ and unlike my last “tree” quilt, which was done with free machine stitching, all of the machine work on this one was done with the feed dogs up using a walking foot.

Designing with Fractals…..

February 9, 2015February 10, 2015 / Karen Lane / Leave a comment

Royal Crustacean by Rose Rushbrooke.

I recently came across this photograph of a beautiful art quilt by Rose Rushbrooke which has been based on a “fractal” design. Not knowing what that meant I googled it and discovered a whole new world of amazing images created using “Fractal” apps. I won’t attempt to explain the mathematics behind this process, there are lots of websites that explain it better than I ever could, but I did download a free app and after a few minutes of playing with it I came up with the following designs. The app I used is Fractile Plus, it’s simple to use and quite addictive. I don’t know if I will get around to doing anything with any of these but it they were fun to create and have the potential for inspiring future textile designs.

My first attempt with the Fractile Plus App.

The Finished Quilt…..

February 8, 2015February 8, 2015 / Karen Lane / 6 Comments

My Riverside Trees art quilt is now finished and just needs to be edged. This 30cm x 40cm quilt was done as trial ahead of making a larger version at 30″ x 40″ for the David Hockney Challenge. It’s just as well I had the dummy run as there are a few things I have learnt while doing this project.

Firstly, I must start using a sketchbook…..I tend to launch straight into something and make it up as I go along. The sky would have been different, and I would have been happier with it, if I had planned it before I started.

Secondly, I naively thought that using iron-on Vilene would mean I didn’t have to sew the trees in place…….yeah, right! The more I handled the quilt the looser the trees became so they all had to stitched down. This leads me on to the third thing I learnt which is “remember to breath” while free machine stitching!

The fourth thing I found was that organza and net, although looking very effective when layered, can also be problematic as loose fibres sometimes migrate between the layers and are very fiddly to remove. My fabrics were simply laid in place, pinned and stitched, I’m guessing that if I had ironed them onto Bondaweb before stitching I could have avoided this happening.

The finished quilt

Riverside Trees…..

February 4, 2015October 12, 2015 / Karen Lane / 2 Comments

I’ve finished sewing the smaller branches and twigs onto my David Hockney inspired quilt and have been giving some thought to the reflections on the water. The simplest way would be to create a mirror image of the riverbank, but my original photograph didn’t show the trees like that. The tree trunks were distorted by the ripples on the water, which I am finding harder to replicate.

I’ve tried roughly sketching a few wiggly tree trunks onto paper and layering them with organza and netting. The intention is to draw directly onto the top fabric and cover this with strips of sheers. If it’s a failure, which I half expect it to be, it won’t matter as I’ve left the wadding and backing loose at the bottom in case I need to patch it in with a second attempt.

Riverside Trees update….

February 1, 2015February 1, 2015 / Karen Lane / 7 Comments

The trees are now painted and ironed in place on the riverside. As I thought, there was too much of the darker blue in the sky so some of it has been removed. There are lots of smaller branches/twigs to embroider and I still have to figure out how to create the water and reflections but that can all wait till next week.

Riverside Trees…..

February 1, 2015February 1, 2015 / Karen Lane / 2 Comments

Having damaged my toe on Friday I’ve had the perfect excuse to shut myself away in my workroom and start on a new project. I wanted to create an art quilt based on trees and reflections so last week, while out walking my dog, I took a series of photographs along the riverbank. The aim is to make a 30 x 40 cm quilt as a prototype for a larger version as part of the David Hockney Challenge. The thought of doing one 30″ x 40″ straight off was a bit too daunting! The finished design isn’t intended to look like a Hockney but the influence is still there i.e. trees and reflections in water.

I particularly liked this image but decided to simplify the layout for my quilt and position the riverbank “straight on”.

Yesterday I painted a wash of colour on my background fabric, layered it with organza and netting and machine quilted it to create the sky. I’m not sure if I did the right thing by making it this colourful….I wanted a bit of drama behind the trees but might have gone a bit too strong with the blues! We’ll see when the trees get added.

For the riverbank I remembered I had an old scarf which was the ideal colour so this was cut up and distressed using a heat gun before being sewn in place.

The background is ready for the trees to be added.

I figured an easy way to create the trees would be to draw them onto iron-on Vilene and cut them out using a craft knife. With the branches criss crossing it enabled me to cut it as one piece rather than fiddling about with several individual trees. I like using Vilene as it gives a crisp edge, it accepts paint really well and using the iron-on type means there’s no need for Bondaweb or spray adhesive.