Learning New Tricks

Quilting

I have been quilting a bit lately.

Really…!

Not caught up, but feeling a little self-satisfied.

Anna’s Quilt

About a year ago, the daughter of one of my best, and oldest, friends graduated from college.  She loves dragons so I decided to embroider a bunch of dragons and make her a quilt from them.  Good plan, right?

Yea, best laid plans….

Anna took up quilting and asked me to embroider her some dragons so she could make a quilt of them…

Back to the drawing board….

I found a pattern for an appliquéd dragon at a sewing/quilting expo.  It was way out of my comfort zone, but I figured that I needed to make her something pretty spectacular since I was already way overdue!

I have not actually given the piece to her yet – her mother has seen the picture – so hopefully she does not see this post until I have a chance!

Here is the picture:

Each scale - and all the other little bits – are cut from batiks and sewn down with a small zigzag stitch in a 60 weight (light) thread.  The color scheme – purples and yellows – is based on Anna’s love of purple.

Block of the Month

I have also finished the block of the month from last year from Twin City Quilting (top only).  I chose not to sign up for it this year so that I could catch up on some other things.  I will post a picture when I have one.  Maybe some of my quilting group who also did the project will send me their pictures so I can showcase them all here and show how varied they are!

I am now working on a sort of planned/sort of scrappy quilt from all the partial blocks and leftover pieces of fabric from the project!  I will let you know how that goes too.

Glass

I am still spending most of my time with glass.  Fabric will always be my first and most true love when it comes to artwork, but glass is pretty cool to play with.  I am learning to anticipate what colors will do when heated and playing with patterns and designs.

My regular routine is to go to the Studio after work on Fridays and stay until close.  Then, I go to dinner with my hubby and daughter Ana, usually bringing with the days booty from the kiln and demanding attention and praise.

Wave Plates

I wrote before about my wave plate that I copied from a pinterest board.  Karen (Studio owner) has the slumping mold for the wave, so I am starting to play around with it.  Every couple of trips to the glass store, I treat myself to some extraordinary pieces of glass (extraordinarily expensive too….).  One time it was the green/orange glass that I made into a leaf bowl and several other pieces, including a LOT of jewelry.  The next time it was a mauve piece that I also make a leaf bowl out of (I like them… what can I say!), and the last trip was a less expensive, but cool piece that was greens and yellows).  I did not make a leaf bowl, but did make a circular plate.  This means that I have wound up with curved pieces leftover of each of these glasses.

Since I don’t want to waste ANY of the glass, but also want to do more than just putting it into a mold, I’ve started making the wave plates out of the longer scraps.  Here are the two wave plates that I have made so far.

As you can see, the scraps dictate the direction of the strips!

Honoring Mondrian with a Plate

After finishing the wave, there were still a few pieces of the green/yellow glass left.  I came up with the idea of a Piet Mondrian style of design… at least that is what this plate says to me….

Each piece is “bordered” by a thin strip of black glass.  I did not quite have enough of the focus glass.  I suppose that I could have started cutting every piece to squares/rectangles.  However, as you can see from the center, I started to get smaller and smaller.  I think I could have come up with enough little squares to fill in the whole piece, but it would look weird – large pieces on one side, getting smaller and smaller until I hit the other edge.  I instead chose to go with adding in some complementary green pieces, and I think I made the right decision!

  

I liked this plate so much after pulling it out of the kiln that I am making another one.  I started working on it tonight with green scraps.  Instead of cutting thin strips of something else (which is really a little tough), I am using noodles (glass strips that you buy in a tube and they look just like fettuccine!) for the dividers.  Much easier.  That plate is on a 12 inch square.

My next plan is to make one out of purples.  That will be MINE… all MINE… (Yes, I love purple!) 

Fusers’ Reserve Glass

This is what Spectrum says about this glass:

“Fusers’ Reserve is an exciting, new limited edition line of fusible glass from Spectrum.  The line presents a great opportunity to obtain unique runs of tested compatible System 96 sheet glass, in an ever-changing combination of standard quality colors, mixes, and occasional experimental solid colors.”

My description is that its sheets of wavy colors mixed together in fun ways.

I took my hubby with me to the glass store the last time I went.  He was actually the one who discovered it at the end of an aisle and got me to buy a bit more of it than I planned.  I bought three full sheets and a few scraps from the scrap bin (large scraps actually). 

• 12 inch square – turquoise/orange/white
• 12 inch square – red/orange/white
• 12 inch square – clear/white/orange/yellow
• Number of pieces of purple/yellow/white – the largest being about 6 inches

Sheet 1 - The pieces that I have made from these sheets have been quite simple, as the glass speaks for itself.  I have cut up each two of the 12-inch sheets into square and rectangle shapes in order to make the most of them.  Here are pieces made from the turquoise/white/orange piece:

This is an 8-inch plate.  It is molded into an offset “square in square” shape; the base square is turned a number of degrees from the outside edge.

This is a small – 4.5 inches square – “sushi” form plate. 

This is my favorite – and will stay MINE – of the pieces.  I cut an 8-inch square from the 12-inch sheet.  This left me with a 4-inch strip.  The mold for this platter is supposed to be 4.5 inches wide.  Because this piece was narrower than it was supposed to be, it made the edge much closer to the depressions which resulted in the kiln pulling in the sides a little.  I sort of expected this kind of result, and was happy to see it happened!

I also think that I lined up the coloring/swirls in a pretty cool manner….

Sheet 2 - The red/orange/white piece ticked me off.  I started to cut it down, and it cracked diagonally and curved through the center….

Dang it!

I tried again, another bad crack….

I managed to cut a couple inch wide strips off the sides without incident (I wanted pieces from each to use for jewelry), but had a cracked piece…

Since I now had it trimmed to 10 inches square, I decide to lay it on top of clear, and border it somehow.

And, it kept getting bad – usually cracked pieces will “knit” back together.  My green/orange leaf bowl is a perfect example.  That hand rolled glass broke oddly in a couple places as well, but you cannot see that at all.

This piece – not so much.  The cracks are apparent. 

It’s kilned flat at this point – so I do not have a picture yet.  I decided to mold it into a “square in square” and hopefully that will make the design flaw less apparent.

Actually (in thought mode now), maybe I should try something else… something deeper…. I am going to the Studio again tomorrow… I will look through molds…..

Pieces - Lastly, I cut up some of the purple/yellow/white pieces.  Most went to jewelry pieces (more on that soon….) but here is one piece – a small plate (five inches)

Jewelry

Jewelry is one of my favorite things – both to make and to wear.  I have made fabric jewelry, yarn jewelry, glass jewelry – both fused and lampworking, have done bead stringing, bead weaving, set beads with headpins, enameling on copper, etc.

Before I talk about the jewelry in detail, I have to share about my newest “toy(s).”  The Macy’s store in downtown St. Paul has closed and they sold off a lot of furniture and sundry items.  Have you ever seen those display stands for necklaces that are a partial “bust” – neck down – and simulate the wearing of the piece?  You’ll see pictures of them a few inches down in this article, but I just want to brag that I got two of them, for a dollar a piece and that they are fantastic for taking pictures!

Ok, back to talking about creating jewelry…. 

Now that I am an empty nester and have tons of time on my hands…

(Cue hysterical laughing)

Yea, not so much time….

Nevertheless, since I can go elsewhere in the evenings, and since the Studio has TONS of jewelry classes, I have been trying new techniques.  The three classes I have taken in the last few weeks are:

• Resin jewelry (I do not have pictures yet – I will do that next post)
• Flame painted copper (another excuse to play with torches!)
• Wire Wrapping

Flame Painted Copper

Basically, we took 6-inch pieces of flat, 16 mm copper and alternated applying flame from a mini torch and dipping it in water until it turned pretty colors.  Other than melting the side of my plastic water container (I did not watch the torch aim well enough), there were no injuries.  Do not worry; the container was a used yogurt container so I did not ruin a good storage piece.

Once the piece of copper was conditioned, we then cut it into shapes and also used various tools and implements upon it to create fun things.  I personally used: 

• A punch (simple holes)
• Metal stamps (small ones – 3/8 inch or so – to create patterns rather than a discernible design)
• A base with half round holes and tools with a spheres in matching sizes (to create “dimples”)
• Circle cutter
• Crimping tools 

Some of these pieces (the one with three round circles and the one on the far right) are complete.  In the far right one, I have attached dangles (of copper) and stacked beads on headpins.  Other pieces (the heart, the crimped one next to it) are unfinished.  I will be selecting beads from my own stash and maybe other little bits to them to complete.

These will most likely be gifts.  They really are not my style, but were fun to create.

Wire Wrapping

I have saved the best for the last.

I must tell a story though…

Over the years, I have collected bunch of gemstones – mostly larger amethyst and ametrine.  I once looked into having one of the larger ones set, and got an estimate into the hundreds.  My next idea was to have them wire wrapped.  I approached some artists who did wire wrap about trading for a quilt for some services.  A couple were interested but nothing ever came to fruition.

A few weeks back, I picked up some wire and tried my hand at it.  After all, I have made lots of spirals, loops, waves, etc., that I have incorporated into glass…how hard could it be?  I am artistic….

Yea, right… famous last words….

After a little bit of trying, I crumpled up the wire and threw it away.  It was pretty pathetic an attempt.

A couple weeks ago, I noticed that the Studio had a wire wrapping class.  I signed up.

Long story short, the instructor taught some basics, I learned where I went wrong, and I am taking the advanced (square wire) class in another week.

Back to the longer story….

So, I brought the gems with me.  And promptly found out that those need the square wire (hence the advanced class).  I just happened to have a bunch of little pieces that I pulled out of the kiln that day.  Incidentally, they were the pieces that I cut from the fusers’ reserve glass for jewelry.  They were good sizes to use as cabochons for the wire wrapping and I went with it. 

They were absolutely perfect for wire wrapping and make spectacular pieces!  I have put more of the fusers’ reserve into the kiln to make more.

Here are some pictures:

This was done in the class… inside of THREE hours of learning the techniques!  It is not perfect, I can see every mistake, but I like it.  That’s the display stand I was talking about.

This is one of the latest pieces I made.  It is a “scrap” pendant made out of one of my treat pieces of glass – the same glass as in my wave plate.

And the rest.  I am practicing with different colors of wire – copper and coated craft wire, I have not graduated to precious metals yet.  I like the metal colored wire – copper, brass, silver, gold – but am not really happy with the purple.  I had to get purple since it is my color, but just am not pleased.  Chris suggested that it is maybe the glass/pattern on the glass that I am objecting too.  I am going to try again with something simpler.