Wrinkles in my "Crinkle Quilts"

There has been much curiosity as to how I get the wrinkles in my "crinkle quilts". I'll take you through the process using "Circle Round". That piece is the first of five pieces in a what I call my sliced series.
I started out with four 8" squares of pieced together scrap fabrics. I make these up whenever the mood strikes. Up until this series they have all gone into quilts that I make for sick children.
I had layered the four 8" squares right side up and then sliced them diagonally into four pieces. Because the four pieces within each square are the same shape they are interchangeable. I rearranged those pieces to achieve a better balance of colors. Here you see those pieces pinned onto a large square of black fabric on my design wall. The next step was to sew. I machine top-stitched around the cut shapes with a small zig-zag appliqueing them to the black fabric. I then cut away the black fabric from behind the pieced sections (the first step toward making a series).
I then saturated the sewn together piece with spray starch and then stuffed it firmly down into a coffee mug. I use my fist and a wooden spoon to pack it firm. It then sits in the mug for about a week. By then it is nearly dry and the wrinkles are well set.
I gently stretch it out to continue the drying process.
After it is dry, I pat it into place over a layer of batting and backing fabric (these two layers are flat). The three layers are basted together and ready for quilting.

My next posting will be about the second piece in this sliced series.

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Out of the Rubble

 "Out of the Rubble" - 38"x70" - 2002

"Out of the Rubble" hung for several years in St. Paul's Chapel which is located just east of where the Twin Towers had been.

The Land of OZ

Frank Baum summered in our community, Macatawa. He had a cottage just down the beach next door to a little girl named Dorothy. It is said that this area was the inspiration for the land of Oz in his story "The Wizard of Oz". There were many, and are still a few, brick walks and roads that reflect gold when the sun hits them just right. The brick path to our deck overlooking the beach is gold only a few days in mid-September when the sun sets directly in front of us.
I don't have a digital photo taken in any of the woods of this area in which you really do feel you are in an Emerald Forest. The canopy is very high, the floor is quite open and the light is greenish. We have many huge old Beechnut trees as well as a lot of Maple and Oak trees. I think the undergrowth is limited because this sand dune country, meaning that the sands shift and the young growth has a difficult time getting established.
Our bedroom reflects the "Land of Oz". It's on the third floor and the peak of the roof is our ceiling. To lighten it up I had painted a sky on foam core and decoupaged hot air balloons to it. This gave my husband the idea to float paper balloons from the ceiling. Each one is themed. There's the ol' coot balloon (includes Santa and Ghandi), Garfield and his friends, blond-blue-eyed-bimbos (not saying who all is in that one), old bags (Queen Victoria and Mona Lisa are two passengers), Elvis has his own, and of course there's one for Dorothy and her friends, as well as a number of other balloons that have flown out into the hallway. The room is also decorated with Oz figurines and cows (our cottage is called MaCowCowa).
The quilt I made for our bed looks like it belongs on a bed in the Emerald City. Sorry I couldn't get a full view photo of it. I hung it on the curtain rod for the large window that overlooks the lake to get this one.It features many of the stack'n wack pieces that were made from the border fabric. I had purchased just one repeat (6 layers) and made about 150 various sized circles that have been used in quite a few projects and I still have some left. Note the curved corner. The quilt has a knife edge finish. I chose to make circles out of the hexagons because I love (and have collected) kalaidoscopes.
The hand quilted stitches in the circles and border are wrapped with metalic thread. I had written about the this technique in a previous posting, "The Whipped Quilting Stitch".This is as much of the back side of the quilt as I could get in a photo with it on the bed ... about a quarter of it. As you can see, I like to piece the backs. Quilts are sculptural to me and the the back is just as important as are the fronts. Also, I had thought maybe I'd display this side up once in awhile, but never have.

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Circle ' Round

This is my first "crinkle quilt" mounted on acrylic. I love that the piece isn't flattened out, the shadows, and how it appears to float off the wall.

"Circle 'Round" - 24"x24" - 2006

I came up with the presentation as a result of a comment made by a friend who was holding this piece that was still in the process of being quilted while I was showing her some of my framed "crinkle quilts". She asked, "Why aren't I seeing what I feel in my hands?" Her reference was to the soft and flexible cloth she was holding as apposed to the hard and stiff pieces in the frames.

This got me thinking and wondering how else I could mount these pieces to better present the qualtities of cloth. Somewhere in my thinking was the tradition of "tied" quilts. This led to the thought of tying my quilts to a surface. My solution was to drill evenly spaced "buttonholes" into the acrylic. The quilted piece is tied onto the surface with 6-ply strands of floss. The knots show on the back, while on the front there just appears to be another stitch.

I had to come up with a different way to handle those thread ends that frame my "crinkle quilts". I didn't want to loose that aura of color around the piece. However, I couldn't figure out a way to control those threads. Dots of glue on the acrylic just made a mess. On the day that I was really struggling with what to do with all those long floppy threads I had been describing Dottie Moore's short spiky hair (along with her other amazing attributes) to a friend. It suddenly occured to me that look was my solution. Dottie surely had to use a product to get her short hair to stand up, so I used gel medium on my threads for the same purpose. (Dottie got a kick out of this story).
The piece before mounting on acrylic, adding paint, and controlling the thread ends.

"Circle'Round" was purchased and is hanging in Holland, Michigan.

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Joyful Noise

The title for this piece comes from one of my favorite cd's, "Joyful Noise", by my favorite quitar player, Bill Mize. Click on his name to get to his home page and you can even hear a clip of that particular song. Much of my work is influenced by music. I listen to NPR classical and jazz music as well as to cd's in my studios.

"Joyful Noise" - 14"x17" - 2006

This is a whole cloth piece. It began as a clean up cloth for another fabric painted project. I reuse my clean up pieces of fabric until they have interesting patterns of paint. Then they go into my stash of fabrics. That is unless I'm so intriqued with them that they immediately inspire me to make them into something RIGHT NOW. As had happened with this piece as well as with the center piece of "Into the Light" the background for "Doors", and the whole of "Burning Tree".

Even though I had very much liked the original serendipitous pattern of paint, "Joyful Noise" demanded that I add up swinging arcs of many colors to it. I used paint, oil stick pastels, fabric markers, and crayons. Of course, I was listening to Bill Mize's "Joyful Noise" while doing it. The aura of threads around the outside just had to continue those "smile" lines, too.

The black fabric mat was painted. I pounced the square end of a make up sponge to the beat of music as well. The striped border fabric just happened to be part of my stash. I couldn't have found any more perfect if I had gone shopping for it.

This piece is in the gallery at Good Goods in Saugatuck, Michigan. It is the last "crinkle quilt" that I have mounted in a frame. Next posting I'll describe my new way of presenting them.

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Morning Moon Set

This photo was taken this morning about 6 am. I love to watch a full moon set into Lake Michigan. My husband and I donned heavy terrycloth robes and carried hot steaming mugs of freshly brewed coffee out to the deck overlooking the beach. Since it's after Labor Day, there were no boats on the lake at this hour. Most of the summer the fishermen have been out there at least by 5 am. So peaceful with just the sound of the waves and those made by the critters in the woods and beach grass.

I'm intriqued with this copy that happened when I punched the "enhance" feature a second time on my iPhoto program.