Summer in the City Charm Quilt

I found the charm pack fabrics for this little quilt a couple of years ago and it has been hanging out in my cabinet, waiting its turn to be put together. Yesterday it got its turn and it was worth the wait! It measures 12.5" x 12.5" and is a great size for the following: Doll Quilt, Tabletop Quilt, Placemat (great for if you are single!), Vintage Decor item, and just to have fun quilt! If you are interested in purchasing this quilt, you can find it in my ArtFire studio, Studio Jules.

Small Projects

This past Saturday I participated in a workshop put on by the Dallas Area Fiber Artists group. Lisa Renner was the guest instructor and boy did we have fun! It was a great way to let loose and experiment with inks, dyes, spray paints, rubber cement, gesso, stencils and rubber stamps. We learned a lot about layering color and had a great time encouraging each other. This is a great group, I'm so glad I finally decided to make the drive to Dallas once a month to join this group. It is well worth the drive!
Here are some pictures of my "Painterly Book" that I made. After I got home and embellished it some more, it just looked too flat. I added the fibers to the front, back and topped off my pen. I also added fabric to the pockets and the front and back. I just have to add fabric!

I couldn't resist making a little Art Quilt out of the scraps from my workshop with Frieda Anderson and Quilting Adventures. I just wanted a small quilt to explode with color with a few hidden items. A few of the men my husband works with proudly graduated from Texas A&M, and my brother and his kids proudly attended and attend The Univ. of Texas. Being the great sister that I am, I hid a longhorn in the quilt, and loving my garden the way I do, I also planted a flower in one of the corners. This little quilt will be in my ArtFire Studio if you are interested in it!

Two Belles and a Bead on ArtFire

There is an awesome shop on ArtFire ~ 2 Belles and a Bead. I just looked through all the jewelry and it is awesome! I may have started my Christmas list!
Two Belles and a Bead is just one of the wonderful ArtFire shops that is part of Texas ArtFire!
Enjoy!

Mexican Sunflower in Batik

Finished! This is the first quilt in my Sunflower Series. The pattern was made from a photograph I took of one of the Mexican Sunflowers in my garden. I decided to create this quilt in batiks, the next one will be in hand painted fabrics. My goal with these two quilts is to show the difference between using the batik and hand painted fabrics and to use a new technique on each quilt.
The next two pictures show the detail of thread painting (my favorite way to quilt) in the leaves and petals. I used the thread to create the detail and movement of the leaves and petals. I really like to extend the movement outside the lines and into the background. Somehow it helps create the flow of the flower into the background.
I did minimal quilting in the background of the quilt. I wanted the sunflower to keep the focus, so I used the horizontal lines of the fabric and quilted with matching thread.
My new technique on this quilt was the use of hand painted cheesecloth in the center and then beading the seeds into and on the center of the quilt. This was a fun process. I hadn't used cheesecloth before. I first selected a brown batik looking fabric (my brown batiks are limited, so I had to punt). Next I hand painted some cheesecloth with different browns, bronze, and copper paints. While the cheesecloth was drying I created free motion embroidered circles on the center piece of fabric. I didn't put circles all over the fabric; I wanted to leave room for more circles after I laid the cheesecloth down. After the cheesecloth was dry I manipulated it by stretching and scrunching the cloth to make vacant and dense areas. Then it was time to free motion embroider around it and hand stitch the beads under the dense areas. Taking my time, I let my eye and follow the lights and dark areas of the fabric create the areas that were beaded.

Two New Shops on Artfire!

There are two new shops on ArtFire that have joined the Shops with Less Than 10 Sales Quild.

Bean's Boutique has great jewelry and some of her things are perfect for Halloween and the upcoming Fall! She has earrings and necklaces for all ages!

Made for Me by Oaklie has beautiful knit scaves. Very stylish and awesome colors!

Don't forget, Christmas is just a couple of months away, so start shopping now with Bean's Boutique, Made for Me by Oaklie and StudioJules!

Final Two Days of My Birthday Sale

Today and tomorrow are the last two days of my Birthday Month Sale on Artfire! All Fat Quarter Bundles and Fabric by the Yard 50% off! All purchases are 10% off and Yes! that includes the Fat Quarter Bundles and Fabric by the Yard! Perfect two days to start your Christmas shopping! I've even modified my shipping charges for multiple items!And don’t forget, if you are on Facebook, you can access StudioJules via my ArtFire Kiosk!

Day Three Quilting Adventures with Frieda Anderson

Today was our last day with Frieda Anderson and it was a complete joy. Frieda is a wonderful teacher and quilter and I feel blessed to be able to spend the past three days with her and the wonderful group of women who joined me with Quilting Adventures.
Frieda did a wonderful job of explaining and showing us how to start, progress and complete our machine quilting. I will admit, machine quilting has not been my area of expertise in the past, but from this day forward, it will improve! It was refreshing to listen and watch and then execute what we were learning today. Heck, I have needles that are self threading in my stash and had no idea what they were or what to use them for! Now I do and they are now my favorite notion!

Frieda, thank you, thank you, thank you for the wonderful learning experience and encouragement on stepping out of the box with fusing, quilting and sharing your beautiful hand dyed fabrics.
To all my new Quilting Adventure Friends, I hope you all arrived home safely and are ready to practice...practice...practice, and fuse...fuse...fuse. The time we spent together was so enjoyable and I love making new quilting friends! Mona, I hope you feel better!
To Barbara and Alice (Quilting Adventures), I will treasure the conversations and the encouragement that each of you shared and gave me. I admire your drive to allow us to learn under the best teachers in the quilting world. I'll be back!!!
To my blog followers, if you want a great group of ladies to retreat with, Quilting Adventures is the best! I promise, if you go on your own or with a friend, you will go home with a lot of knowledge, fabric and friends!
Happy Quilting!

Day Two Quilting Adventures with Frieda Anderson

Today was a great day. Freida had us put away the projects from yesterday and design our own project from the pictures we brought. Last night we had to complete some sketches from our pictures. I did two tree sketches that I really like, but to be able to complete the process in a day, I selected the easier one, duh.... Anyway, when I started placing the fabrics for the sky, I really liked the way it was developing, so I lost the idea for the ground and just did a beautiful blue, green, tan and purple fused background. It is always hard for me to start of selecting fabrics, I always end up changing my mind 100 times. This one turned out way different than I first expected.
After I was real happy with very excited about the background it was time to audition the tree fabric. This was just as hard as the background, but once I layed down the brown and turquoise fabric, I was pretty sold on it. This is one of Frieda hand dyed pieces and it is just beautiful, it actually looks like leather with turqouise layed on it. I just love to hold it!


The pink fabric you see in the corner is the fabric I picked to be the oak leaves of the tree. I'm anxious to finish this piece after I get home. It is really going to be stunning in my entry way!
Tomorrow will be our last day, Frieda is going to have us quilting all day and learning her techniques for beautiful and fluid quilting. Today she gave us a slide show of her studio and quilting examples.
It was a great time today. This group of ladies are the best. We have ladies here this week that are doctors, lawyers, CPA's, retired and fiber artists. All very supportive, genuine and challenging themselves to use the right side of the their brain!

Day One with Quilting Adventures and Frieda Anderson

Sunday and yesterday were great. Getting to know Frieda Anderson and meet the other ladies who came to the annual Fall Quilting Adventures has been a blast. Sunday we had a gathering to get acquainted and show what we have been working on and/or have finished from the last workshop. Then we had a "get to know" session with Frieda and saw a lot of her quilts and hand dyed fabrics, beautiful colors! Yesterday we had our first full day of creating a tree quilt. This picture above is how mine turned out. I love the vibrant colors. It is all hand dyed cotton except for the tree trunk, stems and roots ~ that is hand dyed silk. All of the hand dyed fabric I used today was from Frieda's stash (kit) that she handed out for us to use. We all opted to skip our break yesterday afternoon and continue working. Here are some pictures of our group.




We had homework for today. We had to create a few sketchs to create our own tree quilt today. We'll also be using our own fabrics...and what we want to buy from Frieda!