Quilt Festival

I went to Quilt Festival last week and had a lovely time. I went on Thursday, Friday and Sunday. On Thursday I went by myself, Friday and Sunday I met people and wandered with them.

The main thing about the International Quilt Festival is that it is overwhelming: the number of quilts is overwhelming; the quality of quilts is overwhelming; the vender room is overwhelming and I haven't even tried taking classes there yet.

I spoke to Terry White who wrote "Thread Painting" at the Festival. And I spoke to her a lot... first I wandered by and watched her thread paint. Then I got lost and wandered back by accidentally and she helped me get turned around again. Next I helped find her booth for one of my friends and last I went back and actually bought her book. She was nice every single time.

She sews slower than I would have guessed, her needle was going up and down maybe twice a second. Obviously she was moving her fabric slowly too.

Fractal Fiber Trading Cards

I made some Artist Trading Cards to bring to the International Quilt Festival tomorrow. The way I did it was this. I created fractal images using the program Ultra-Fractal. I printed them onto cotton fabric; then I free-motion embroidered them using my sewing machine.

I made about a dozen, and I expect I will be able to trade them to get ones made by others.

Artist Trading Cards are small pieces of artwork that are the same size as Baseball cards. They are created for trading by artists and craftspeople. They can be made either with paper or with fabric. I usually prefer fabric ones. There are swaps set up, both in person and online where you can trade ones you have made for ones others have made. This will be my first time for an in-person swap but I have done quite a few online before.

Printing to Fabric Sheets

Well I printed my picture from last time. The fabric sheets I am using are Cotton Poplin sheets from VV's Victorian Prints. I bought a package last year at the International Quilt Festival.

It came out washed out compared to the image on my computer, so I messed with it to make it have more contrast and printed it again. This time I asked for heavy ink. The second one came out a lot darker. Then I rinsed them and let them dry. I thought the color softened a little bit too in the rinse too.

Here are the two prints

I was hoping to make trading cards with these and exchange them at Festival this year...

But I remembered belatedly that I needed to use a holiday theme. So I decided to make them green and red and try again. I also decided that a softer image would work better so I am trying to soften my image a bit. I'll try to report on that tomorrow.

The URL for festival is

http://www.quilts.com/

The URL for the printer sheets I am using is

http://www.vvprints.com/

And the URL for QuiltingArts which is sponsoring the trade is

http://www.quiltingarts.com/

ATC for International Quilt Festival

Today, besides getting my roof replaced and taking the dog to the vet and other such mundanities, I've decided to make some ATC's to trade at the International Quilt Festival in Houston. I am printing off one of my fractals on fabric sheets and am planning on embellishing it.
Here is the one I'm using.

I am planning on adding some machine embroidery probably in gold. And then maybe a light layer of Angelina across the top. I might do a little painting too.

Fractal Class

I've mentioned a couple of times that I'm taking a class in creating fractals. Well it is coming to an end and I thought I would explain it some before I was done...

You don't draw a fractal yourself, you tell a computer program what to do and it actually does the drawing for you. The program I am using is Ultra-Fractal and you can get extremely elaborate in what you tell it to do. Because it is so elaborate many, many different things can be drawn.

It also makes it complicated to use -- therefore the classes. The ones I am taking are by Janet Parke. They are quite interesting and useful and I recommend them highly.

Here are some links:

http://www.ultrafractal.com/

http://visual-arts-academy.com/

The academy gives classes in more than just Ultra Fractal although I haven't taken any.

Here are some of my recent images.

More Pretty Pictures

More Fractals

My knee is better, my darling daughter is off to college and I've survived Ike. So now to make art. I am taking one of Janet Parke's classes on Ultra Fractal. So here are some more fractal pictures.