Some Serious Study...

That means notetaking. And that means a notebook. Which of course means a notebook cover. You follow my logic, right?

Our guild's Art Quilt small group is doing a book study of "Fabric Embellishing" by Ruth Chandler, et al (shown above). For our upcoming meeting, each of us explored the sections on fabric manipulation. Some of the samples I made will go into a journal size piece and placed in a study notebook. But not all of them. The small notebook cover above was made using fabric that was wrinkled in the manner of the old-style broomstick skirts. I wet and slightly pleated the fabric first, then twisted the daylights out of it until it knotted back on itself. Then it went into a knee-high and hung to dry. That took a long time since the fabric mass was so dense. You can see a piece of it on top of the book.

We also tucked and bubbled fabrics. Two tucking samples here show even tucks, and less planned ones with both wide and narrow tucks. The bubbling below was done by poking wet fabric through a grid with a chopstick or other tool, and allowing it to dry before removing the fabric from the grid. The texture was secured by ironing fusible web to the back of the piece.

While enjoying the various techniques, I was also thinking about how they might be used in projects. Certainly in purses is one idea. Then a Christmas catalog arrived (*sigh*... yes, on October 29th.. a holiday catalog). But inside were some jewel-toned Christmas stockings made using tucked fabric with a faux-fur cuff. Lovely! So I'll be looking around for these manipulated fabrics to see how they're used.

To add yet more quilty fun to the weekend, this afternoon our local art museum presented a film called "A Century of Quilts". A PBS production, it reviewed some notable quiltmakers and their quilts. Beautiful photography and interesting interviews and background. Several of us in the audience were struck by the man who made mosaic quilts containing thousands of tiny hexagons in the early 1900s. His day job was as a dynamite handler! Steady hands were his gift. Watch it if you get the chance