Fabric Jewelry Ideas

Saturday, I took a class from Dawn Grunwald on making fabric jewelry. She shared a couple ideas that help make free motion machine stitching easier. First, use an embroidery hoop. It helps to give more control in moving the fabric. Use small stitch setting on machine. Move the hoop slowly with fast speed stitching. The results are smaller stitches and a better way to create your design.
She layers sheers over fabric, cuts the stitched forms out and makes a necklace. See how Alisa Burke takes a similar idea using M and J Trims here.
We also made pins with layer of reclaimed silk fabric, felt, a little needle felted yarn and a button on top.
For the pin back, we cut a piece of felt into a circle, made a couple slits to feed the pin back and glued the felt and pin back to the layered pin. It's a great idea and the pin back will not come off.
This makes me want to get out fabric scraps and play.

Quilted Cat Portraits

My friend, Marianne, has two wonderful cats. I wanted to create a quilted cat portrait of them for her birthday. They like to sleep on her bed. The background pieced fabric represents her bedspread.

They also spend a lot of time outdoors in her beautiful garden. The second sheer layer of fabric represents their enjoyment of her garden.

Obsidian thinks she's the Queen, regal and knowing.

Frankie hunts, sleeps and eats. He spends more time outdoors exploring and overseeing the estate.

Here' the composition that I created to feature them both together. Played with their photos in Photo Shop and gray scaled it to get a better idea of the values.
Since Obsidian is sleek and black, she's made of ultra suede. Frankie is furry and thus felted onto Lutradur. I machine stitched their expressions, eyes, whiskers, outlines, attached a quilt binding and sleeve for hanging. This is the second pet portrait I've made. Go Here to see the other one.

"Remains of the Day" Shabby Journal Cover

A couple art friends signed up for Mary Ann Moss's "Remains of the Day" shabby journal online class. I wanted to join in the fun and joined the class last week. For our first assignment, we made the journal cover with a paper template, scraps of fabric and lots of machine stitching. The tie wraps around to keep it all together.

My fabric selections include some from France and Japan. I love the French toile. My overseas vacations usually include a trip to a few local fabric stores.

Here is the cover laid out with both front and back.

I made the tie with duopioni silk and sewed on strips of Japanese fabrics that I used to make my sewing machine cover last year. I highly recommend Mary Ann's online classes. She demos with lots of videos, offers PDF files for each lesson, lots of resources and you receive all with a great sense of humor and fun.

Art & Soul Wing Keeper Necklace Workshop

The past week, I saw many friends and took some workshops at Art & Soul in Portland. Deryn Mentock's "Wing Keeper Necklace" class really got my creative juices flowing. Check out her blog Here for more examples of her work and her teaching schedule. I wanted to learn how she makes her fabric, wire wrapped beads, attachments to ribbons and other cold connections. Her design combinations of wire, chain, beads, antique jewels and fiber make beautiful necklaces and bracelets. Here's my necklace-

the fabric, wire wrapped beads-

the clasp and dream catcher beads-

I'll be adding posts for other workshops I attended during the next week.

Stairway to Heaven- Last Nature Gathered Piece

Heavens was the last theme for our Nature Gathered art challenge. I made another art quilt using a sketch, fabric, hand and machine stitching and acrylic paint for the clouds and stairs. It's entitled 'Stairway to Heaven". Below is the sketch for this piece.

The Nature Gathered art challenge offered many opportunities to experiment with new techniques, work with my sketches and photos to develop a theme and share ideas and inspiration with other artists in the group. Doing one piece a month sometimes felt like a lot of work- to create a vision and then implement it with an 8x8 inch format. The rewards of doing this challenge are numerous- stretching boundaries, playing with new ideas, being attuned to the natural world, making new friends and creating a body of work. Our show at the Sixth Street Gallery in Vancouver ends tomorrow. I want to thank everyone who participated, especially Jan and Tracie Lyn for getting us all together.

If you want to see the two other art quilts that I made for the show Click Here and Here.

Fiber Jewelry- A Kimono Fabric Bead Necklace

This summer, I learned how to make these fabric beads at Mary Stanley's Charm School. Here's the necklace that I completed. One of my goals for our Portland Art Collective Open Doors Show in December is to make more fiber jewelry. It's light weight, different and fun to create.

A Banner Day- How I Created It

Today is our Portland Art Collective picnic and we made banners to exchange. I cannot wait to see what everyone created and to hang them in my studio.
I started with a collage of my drawings and sketches combined in Photoshop.

Added a layer of dyed paper towel sheets (pulled apart, one sheet becomes transparent).

Sewed on a couple strips of fabric

Stenciled a flower (cannot get away from stenciling after Mary Ann's online class).

To embellish the banner, I added a free-motion stitched flower & button, canvas printed 'Blossom' text, 3-D gold fabric paint flower center and sheer ribbon sewn around the edges. Hope you have a banner day, too.

ArtFiberFest Charms and Paverpol

Here's my work from two other ArtFiberFest workshops. Ty and Marcia Schultz taught us how to use the fabric/textile hardener called Paverpol to make sculpted forms. I used it to transform crocheted dollies into little bowls.

To sculpt figures we made armatures of wire and aluminum foil wrapped in Paverpol-wetted strips of cotton T-shirt material. This product can be used with any natural fibers- even bird's nests.

A paper clay face, gauze hair and paint completed her look. She needed something to add more interest and color.The next day, I attended Mary Stanley's Charm School and made the little bird that sits in her hand.

Here's some of the other fabric charms and beads that I made. Mary inspired me to create fabric jewelry and gave many ideas to use in future projects.

Soft Sculpture Elephant from ArtFiberFest

ArtFiberFest exceeded my expectations this year and I came away from this retreat inspired to create more fiber art. Teesha and Tracy Moore organize this art retreat. You can check out Teesha's AFF photo slide show on her blog here. I enjoyed all of my workshops, especially Jen McGahan's soft sculpture class.

I still need to finish this character- add tusks, feet and his Indian magic carpet.

The drawing below inspired me.

Here he is in fiberfill, wrapped muslin before being transformed with fabric.

I was planning to make soft sculpture animals for our PAC Open Doors Show this December but think they are too time consuming- maybe smaller versions. It's fun to work in 3-D for a change.

ArtFiberFest Journal

Preparing a journal is one of the pleasures of going to an art retreat. I've wanted to make a fabric art journal for some time and decided to create one for this conference. I stitched small pillows, hooked a variety of fibers, ribbons and fabric strips onto a canvas mesh spine and embellished it with trades, beads and printed images. The signatures are made of drawing paper.

The first page highlights the ArtFiberFest 2009 theme- Orbs (thus the fabrics with circles).

One page includes the fabric inchies that I received from our swap. Thanks to everyone who participated. I like the different creations all in one inch size.
I add notes, information and handouts from my workshops, artist contact information of new and old friends, future teachers and ideas for projects.

The back cover contains a couple more trades.

Now I have all of my retreat treasures in one place. In upcoming posts, I'll share what I created at ArtFiberFest.