Gold vein

And here is my 2nd quilt for this year called 'Gold vein'. No hand dyed fabrics this time, but all commercial ones.

Precious metal and stones

It took several months before I came up with an idea for this year's theme, but I finally found one. And coming up with the idea, is the hardest part, don't you agree with me? Here is my first quilt called 'Turquoise'.

I used my own hand dyed fabric for this and covered it with a layer of zapped lutrador. Second quilt is also completed, now I have to find it again to take a picture. It is somewhere in the luggage I brought home with me this week.

What I am working on

During the month of May I will be talking about stamps and stamping on the Fire-blog, a total of 15 blog posts. As I want to have them all done before May starts, I am in the middle of those posts at the moment. Most of the text has been done, but I still have to stamp a number of pieces of fabric. You will understand that I cannot show you any pictures of what I have done.

Complete

The inspiration for my 4th quilt of this year was the cattail. Not the animal part, but the water plant:-). And as the theme is abstracted nature, I gave it a twist. Here is how my version looks like:

I used my own hand dyed and snow dyed fabrics, plus Ugandan barkcloth for the stems.

Originally I had posted a greyscale quilt as the first one for this year, but I made a replacement for that one. Here are the other 3 quilts I made for this theme:

Peas in a pod

Here is a picture of my 3rd quilt for this year:

I have called it 'Peas in a pod', although I admit I have never seen peas in this color :-), but is that not the fun of an abstracted nature theme. All fabrics used are my own hand dyed / hand printed ones.

Cotton

For my second quilt this year I focussed on a seed pod, and more specifically a cotton seed pod. With Photoshop I was able to make an inspirational photo more abstract and that was my starting point for this quilt. Fabrics used are my own hand dyed ones and some discharged fabrics. Funny enough, for the white cotton in the pod I had to use raw silk as real cotton was too smooth for the effect I wanted to create.

Taiwan

Here are the pictures of my Taiwan quilt:

I is a combination of hand dyed/painted and commercial fabrics with added plastic and rusty objects. Title is 'Be careful with your trash'. 

Abstracted leaf

When I started working on this quilt, my intension was to use it for our theme for this year. But I am not certain and the main reason for that is that I am wondering whether it will fit it with the other quilts I intend to make. I know that question cannot be answered before I have completed the other ones  :-). So for the moment this is my first quilt for this year. Maybe I will change my mind and switch it for another one later in the year. The fabrics I used for this abstracted leaf are my own hand dyed ones.

Glacier

One of the aerial views I wanted to do was a glacier. A diffcult one, but the pounded fabric I created last month was the perfec starting point. I unrolled and split a cotton ball and added this to add a bit more white to the quilt. Covered everything with a black tulle and stitched through it. This is how it turned out:

Shoreline

My most recent aerial view is of the beach. For the sand I used a piece of rust dyed fabric, for the sea several blues. The breaking waves are made from thin strips of scrim stitched down with seed beads. Some time ago I had bought a set of buttons in the shape of shells and starfish. I cut off the shank and glued them down with E6000.

Old Amsterdam

Old Amsterdam is inspired by a 1593 map of Amsterdam. The title has two meanings as Old Amsterdam is also a cheese with a rich flavor. The cutting out of the many canals was a fiddly task, I used an interfacing as this would not fray. Ink was added to give it some color and lots of stitching to represent the buildings. The blue and green fabrics are my own hand dyed ones.

 Detail of the city centre:

Saltmines

The creative juices are flowing in abundance :-). Don't get nervous if you have not yet made a quilt this year, I am on a roll here. This picture - an aerial photo made by George Steinmetz -:

inspired me in making my 3rd quilt. This is how it turned out:

 

Some time ago I had bought a textured black felt. Not knowing what to do with it at that time I put it into my stash. It was the perfect background for this piece. I applied bronze and gold paint to it to get it more in the color I wanted. To create depth in it, I glued two layers together. The holes were cut out in a random way. The bottom layer slipped a bit while cutting creating a kind of shadow line.  

There is a lot of fabric in my stash, but I was not able to find one to my liking to resemble the mines. So I decided to apply paint to batting. This way I could play a bit with the colors and the texture would be visible. Here is a detail picture which shows this:

Tulip fields

 Here is my second quilt for this year:

I am focussing on aerial views and this one is a view of the tulip fields we have here in the Netherlands. The flowers are not yet blooming, it is too early for that but when they do it looks so ful of joy. All the fabrics I used for this piece are my own hand dyed ones.

Eagle's view

My first quilt for 2014 is completed. My plan is to use aerial views of the Earth in some way or other. The first one is a view of the river Nile close to Murchison Falls in Uganda. All fabrics are my own hand dyed ones. Title of this quilt is Eagle's View.

replacement

As my first quilt for 2013 decided to remain in it's hiding place, I had to make a replacement. It is roughly based on the same idea but a bit simplified. Here is the picture:

And now no quilt can go missing :-). They are all packed in the box ready to go to the post office.

Happy holidays to you all.

Abstract Autumn

And here is my 6th quilt for this year called Abstract Autumn. Background is a snow dyed piece of fabric and the trees and leaves are made from scraps of hand dyed fabric. Technically speaking I have completed my quilts for this year. However I cannot find my first quilt anywhere and I see no other option than to make a replacement knowing that the missing one will show up of course after I have done that.

Birches

Here are my latest trees. I used a multi layered background fabric and paintstiks for the trees. And yes, I admit I should have ironed my piece before I took the picture :-)

Night and day

I am one of the (many?) who is behind on making the quilts, but here is number 4:

For the background I used two snowdyed pieces of fabric. The stylized tree is made from commercial fabric. I was lucky to have this spickled fabric both in white as well as in black. And to catch up, I plan to start working on number 5 today :-)

Our first show

In a couple of hours our first show will be finished. Shoshi took a lot of pictures and will post these later. Lots of positive comments were made about our quilts and how they hang at the show. To give you a short impression of the show, this link will take you to a video made by the regional tv:
http://www.omroepbrabant.nl/?video/83985982/Quilt+geen+truttenhobby+maar+kunst.aspx&action=media
At 1.28 you can see some of our quilts hanging at the right side. I admit, it is not a good look or a long one, but it is something :-)

After I posted the above, I discovered that there is another video posted on the website of OECQ which gives a much better view of our show. Check out this link:
http://www.textile-festivals.com/oeqc2013/videos/

Six trees

My recent quilt for the theme trees. Background is hand dyed pieced strips. The trees are made from mulberry bark darkened with a bit of paintstik.