Category Archives: Art Making

Protect Your Mat from Decorative Blades

Posted on by

Are you using decorative blades in your rotary cutters? Decorative blades make wonderful embellished edges for your fused art quilts. They come in wave, scallop, and, my favorite, the delightful pinking blade. 

But beware! Decorative blades can damage your cutting mats. Here you see a cutting mat on the right that has been scored by decorative blades. See how the decorative blades have gouged into the mat?

When you cut with a decorative blade you have to push a little harder to cut cleanly into the fabric. This means the blade will etch into the mat and mess up your grid lines.

Save the grid! Flip that mat over and cut your fabric on the wrong side of the mat. You’ll save your mat and you can use a pinking blade to create fun fabric edges like these.

Check out how I’ve used the pinking blade to create this decorative fused binding here.

What to Do with Your Loose Threads

Posted on by

Need to clean up your studio? Have threads thrums or blobs of thread to get rid of?

Then why not use your loose threads to create a work of art! Here you see three silk baskets I’ve made. They are stitched by hand and machine using even more stray threads that were hanging around the studio.

The baskets are holding a decade’s worth of thread blobs. These blobs or thread ravels were collected after washing fabric I’ve dyed over the years. The couched threads on the baskets are short clips of thread I kept for some reason. So you see it was time to clean up my studio!

Bridge House Process #3

Posted on by

I’m happy to say that I have a vague idea of what I’m doing.

The elements of the bridge house composition are first stitch-tacked into place. Or at least the bridge part is. The house and water (that blue fabric on the side) will be attached later.

Blanket stitches made with a size 12 Sprouts thread anchor the clouds to the green silk background fabric. Then I fill out the bridge with scattered seed stitches using a size 8 Lime Frappe thread and French knots using an Oranges size 8. This “bridge” has a garden of plants growing on it. Or so I’m told.

Now the house shape is stitched to the top of the bridge with that same size 12 Sprouts thread used before. The water fabric, a blue felt, fits under the bridge shape. The water is stitched with a size 12 Aquamarine thread and rows of wavy stem stitches. What a great place to live!