Day 4 Book Review and Giveaway

Review of “Create your own hand-printed cloth” by Rayna Gillman

I love to dye fabric and clothing!  I began my tie-dye business in 1998, and spent several years focused on just dyeing clothing.  But in 2007, I took a class in Surface Design techniques, and my direction shifted to include fabric, primarily for art and landscape quilts.  I was intrigued by the various aspects of Surface Design, and when Rayna Gillman’s book “Create your own hand-printed cloth” came out in 2008, I ordered a copy from her and it has become one of my primary reference books.  Rayna was not the first author to write a book of this type, and she won’t be the last, I’m sure.  But she has created a thorough, interesting and inspiring book that I never tire of browsing for ideas and information.  Rayna covers such topics as stamping and stenciling with found objects, soy wax batik and screen printing with thickened dyes, among others.  Thanks to her recipes, I have finally learned how to mix sodium alginate so that it is not full of lumps, and my thickened dyes come out with much better color intensity than I was getting before. 

Rayna has produced a collection of instructions that covers the basics of each technique in an easy to follow, step-by-step description, combined with photos that work with the text to help the reader to see the process clearly.  I highly recommend “Create your own hand-printed cloth” for anyone who is new to Surface Design, but also for those for more experienced in the techniques to use as a  frequent resource.   Rayna’s book can be found at amazon.com and C&T Publishers.

http://www.amazon.com/Create-Your-Own-Hand-Printed-Cloth/dp/1571204393/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1349445750&sr=1-3&keywords=Rayna+Gillman

 http://www.ctpub.com/productdetails.cfm?PC=1211.

Leave a comment here and you will be eligible to win a copy of Rayna’s book compliments of C & T Publishing!  I will put all participating names in a basket and draw the winner on December 11th.  Then I will post the winner’s name  here so you can contact me with your mailing info.  
Be sure to come back tomorrow for Judith's Book Review and Giveaway!

A Late January Post

I know.  I know. January is over and I should be discharging things.  I'll be doing that tomorrow.  But first I want to show you the un-quilted so not completely finished third piece I started in January.  As a reminder, I started off with this intermediate piece from a Nancy Crow workshop.

Then I showed you this piece that showed some slicing and dicing.

Here is the finished piece,  "Building in Space"

Now I am off to discharge and then use the fabric to make a sketchbook cover using Beth Berman's tutorial.

I'll post pictures when I am done.

Finished!

When I talked to you last, I had what would normally be a finished quilt top; but had decided to do more - so I slashed through the top, and added some inserts to make "Shattered" which would be of a piece with my burgeoning "fractured" series. 

I was pleased that it fit in so naturally, and pleased too, to try something out of my comfort zone.  

This was a really fun exercise - thanks very much to Rayna and Judith (for introducing us to Rayna's technique) - a great start to a new year. 

A Peek at the Third Piece

Rayna will be posting her tutorial this week but till then I thought I would give you a  peek at my third piece from Rayna's book.  Here is the 3 x 4 foot top that I started with.  It is an intermediate piece from my first Nancy Crow workshop.

I cut it into 12 blocks which are roughly 12 inch squares and then started slicing and dicing the blocks.  Here is where I am at now.

I think it is 5 or 6 blocks on the design wall so far.  I make no guarantee that the arrangement will stay the same for the finished piece. We'll see what the rest of the blocks have to add to the composition.  But so far, so good!  --Judith

Sometimes I Hate Blogger

Because it won't let me post comments.  For the past week.  So I'm putting up a post with my comments.  In the previous post, Beth from Maine, my wall and floor are covered with strip-sets that I've sewn in the past week.  I'm trying to find the motivation to go work with them.  I do like your purple blocks.

Kit!  I know you found the book -- but I tried and tried to post a comment -- my friend, Cathy Neri, of QBU Books has a special limited time offer for "friends of Karen" for Rayna's book -- it includes free shipping.  You can reach her toll free at: (877) 315-7131 or at QuiltingBooksUnlimited@gmail.com.

Quilter Beth -- I love those colors -- I'm wondering, after looking at yours and Beth from Maine's posts, if I need to ditch the soft colors and go back to my brights.

Judith!  Your pieces are just fantastic.  Again, I think I need to ditch the soft colors -- it's so cold outside, I must need brights!  Although, my son liked the dragon fabrics I used.

So now I'm going to go downstairs to pull some COLOR from my stash and see if I can perk up all this blah.  TTFN...

Saving a UFO

Unlike Beth, I rarely finish anything before I am lured away to new interests.  I used to beat myself up about that but now have accepted that free-spirit part of my personality.  Because of my habits, I have tons of UFO's to choose from but I have decided to combine three pieces I created in my first Nancy Crow workshop.  None of them are worth finishing on their own but could come together nicely in a free-form quilt.

 The first assignment was to create a black and white motif sized at about 2 x 3 ft. 

 The second assignment was to use that motif to create a 2 x 3 ft piece incorporating whites, off-whites, black, and greys.  

 The third assignment was to create a 3 x 4 ft piece using the same motif and incorporating browns along with the previous whites, blacks, and greys.

 To join with them I found these orphans from another quilt that will begin to give some color to the mix.  These were cut back before I quit using a ruler to cut my fabric.

WISH ME LUCK!

Second piece from Rayna's book finished

Well, not finished finished but the quilt top is done!

Contain the Light

Commercial and Hand-dyed Cottons

38 x 47 inches

Progress on my white blocks

I first showed you the white 4 1/2 inch blocks that I am slicing and dicing in this post. The plain white blocks were slightly changed and marginally more exciting when I started.  I have continued working with them and have gotten far more free with my rotary cutter.  Here are some of my newer revamped blocks.

 I have started joining the revamped blocks with strip sets to create a new art work--my second from my experiments from Rayna's book.   I am very excited about this new work!   I'll show pictures of it as it gets closer to being finished.

Stripping Therapy

I got Rayna's book yesterday afternoon.  I opened it up and it was like she'd been spying on me in my most private moments in my studio.  I've been doing a form of this piecing for a couple of years and using the bits for bags and as backgrounds for art quilts.  I've even been calling it "free-form piecing."  But I never thought of cutting up those old orphan blocks and using them in quilts.  I wanted to run right downstairs and paw through my boxes of scraps and blocks and get stitching.

But, alas, on Fridays I am just exhausted, so I had to content myself with reading the book (yes, I read the whole thing) and going to bed with visions of strips dancing in my head.  I was really taken with her quilt, "Strata," and took a few moments to analyze what I liked best about it so I could create something with that feel in my own manner.

So this morning, after I fed the darling husband and myself, I divorced myself from the rest of the family and boogied downstairs to commune with the scraps.  I got down the two boxes of strips that I had been saving (cleverly labeled "cools" and warms") and ran my fingers through them feeling like Midas with his coins.  Then I got out the laundry basket of scraps and the box stashed under it.  Then I excitedly got out the box of orphan blocks and discovered the finished pieced baby quilt top and another bag of blocks.  Then I sat down on the floor, feeling totally overwhelmed with all this stuff.   How was I ever going to sort through all this stuff?

Okay -- maybe I should just forget this for a while and go to the grocery store.  But then I remembered what Rayna's friend said, "When all else fails, sew strips."  So I pushed the box of orphan blocks, the overflowing laundry basket, and the boxes of "warms" and miscellaneous scraps away from me and picked up the box of "cools" and set it next to the ironing board.  I realized that what I liked best about "Strata" were the cool greys, blues, and greens and the soft golds punctuated with the bits of reds and purples.  The reds and purples are arranged in such a way that they look like structures in an Asian landscape.  Very appealing.

 So I pulled the lighter colors from the box and started stitching them together.  I found a half of a block and some strip-sets from other projects, so I sewed them together too. Then I started pulling the darker colors from the box and sewed those together.  I stopped when my bobbin ran out and the needle needed changing.

This is where it stands.  I'm going to the grocery store now, but I think when I get back, I'm going to get into my stash and pull out the soft golds and greys and start sewing together strips of those.

Who knows, I might even find a use for this ridiculously ugly piece.  I've kept it for years because it is a really nice piece of fabric (good-quality sateen), even though, in a spectacularly bone-headed moment, I stamped on it on the wrong side.    Not that it matters, it's still staggeringly ugly.  I guess I should admit, I don't love all the bits I sewed together today, but none of them compares to the piece above.

Sorry about the verbosity of this post, I usually try to save that for my own personal blog, but there will be only one post from me today and this is it.

I've Picked My Project for January--Quilter Beth

I'm SO thrilled that Rayna Gillman is our guest blogger for this month. I have been a fan of hers for quite some time; and I have several UFOs, orphan blocks, and other miscellaneous quilt pieces from which to choose a project.

I'm hoping to do more than one piece, but I'm not sure whether time will allow it. I have, however, chosen a piece to start with. It is a piece I made when I worked through Lyric Kinard's "Art + Quilt" book. As I worked through each exercise, I documented my progress on my blog. (If you'd like to check that out, you can see it here. Enter "Lyric Kinard" in the Search box.) It is a project I did when I was working on a Value and Hue Exercise from her book. It met the requirements of the exercise, but it was nothing I actually would use.

I'm thinking I will like it much better after some manipulations using suggestions from Rayna's new book "Create Your Own Free-Form Quilts." I'm excited to see how different it will look.

Read the Comments

Dear Readers,
During January Rayna is going to make comments and answer questions in the comment section of our posts.  So, please check the comment sections of posts this month to catch her.

January is all about Free-Form Quilts!

Happy New Year!  I don't know about you but I am starting off the year with super excitement knowing that Rayna Gillman, author of Create Your Own Free-Form Quilts, is going to be a guest on the blog! In Mid-January, she will be posting  a tutorial on the chapter in her book titled "Reinventing UFOs with strips and bits."

Until then we are preparing by playing around with other chapters and techniques from her book.  Here is the finished top I created with strip sets from an earlier chapter in the book and my double F motif.  It is currently about 36 " square but will shrink when quilted.

Now I am moving on to Rayna's chapter on "A square is a square is a square." So,  I found these white blocks that I prepared for who-knows-what.  How convenient! 

Notice the little bit of pink dye on the corner?  I am hoping it won't show.  If it does then I will make it a design element. LOL  Anyway, I have been trying some of  Rayna's variations for spicing them up.  Here are my first squares using the white blocks and some left over strip sets.

I'll keep making some more spicy squares and trying more variations.  I'll post pictures as I progress.

Working my way Through Rayna's book

I don't know about you but I am so excited to have Rayna leading our experiments in January!  She will be leading us in reinventing UFOs.  

I have already gotten started on a different chapter in her book.  An early chapter is on making and using strip sets.   Here is a picture of an art quilt I am working on using strips sets and the Double F motif I have used before.  It is not finished yet but I am really excited about it.

 

 Not all blocks are created equal.  I made some ugly ones that did not make the quilt.   Lucky Me!

 You will get to see them again in January when I use them as my UFOs.

And the BIG WINNER is...Lynn from Alamosa Quilter

Lynn!  You won Rayna Gillman's new book, Create your own free-form quilts.  Congratulations!!  Please email me at quiltordye@ftml.net and let me know where to mail it.  If you do it quick, you can have the book in time to start on January 1 as we reinvent UFOs with strips and bits (pg 66).

Create Your Own Free-Form Quilts Give Away

  Only hours left before Rayna Gillman's book, Create Your Own Free-Form Quilts, may belong to you!!  The drawing will be at noon Christmas Day.  For more information about how to enter to win, read this post and leave your comments there.  Good Luck!

It Arrived Today!

When I got home from work there was a package on the doorstep waiting for me from C&T Publishing.  It was Rayna's new book that we are giving away on Christmas Day!

"What?" you say, "You are giving away Rayna's new book, Create Your Own Free-Form Quilts?"  Yes, we are and all you need to do is  post a comment here to be entered to win.  If you grab our Fire Blog logo for your blog, and leave us a comment to let us know, then you can be entered a second time. 

I bought Rayna's book a few weeks ago and have been  thrilled with it.  It really is book that I can and do use.   In fact, I am combining the double F motif I used in Nancy Crow's workshop with some strip sets I learned how to make from Rayna's book.  No peeking yet but I think it will be a winning combination.

One Year Anniversary and a Present for You!

January is our one year anniversary and we want to celebrate!  Rayna Gillman, author of Create Your Own Free-Form Quilts, has agreed to join us as a Guest Blogger in January.  She will be giving us a tutorial on her chapter on "reinventing UFOs with strips and bits." (This is just so fabulous!)

To help you prepare we are giving away an autographed copy of Rayna's book on Christmas day. Just leave a comment here for one chance to win.  For a second chance, grab our blog button, post it on your blog, and leave us another comment with the link to your newly embellished blog.

Good luck to you!  I am so excited for our January celebration!!  I love Rayna's book!!!

Judith