Thursday, March 29, 2012

Jackie's Art Quilt

When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt.  
--Henry J. Kaiser

I am very fortunate that I am surrounded by many talented art quilters.  As I mentioned earlier this month, I am part of a group mixed media art exhibit at a local gallery.  One of the other exhibitors, Jackie,  is a retired art teacher and over-all extremely talented woman.  I love using her hand-dyed fabrics in my work.

Jackie has an outstanding art quilt in the show (a piece of art that definitely speaks for itself!) that she made from using the gelatin/fabric paint printing method. Below is her final piece and a close-up (the piece is approximately 60" tall by 36" wide).


So, so beautiful! The color is amazing! Makes you feel like you are at the bottom of the ocean with all of the beautiful sea life.  I am not sure if my pictures show it clear enough,  but the quilt is made of of smaller individual quilts that were assembled into the large quilt. 

Jackie has spoken about the fun she had creating the colorful pieces with the gelatin process.  Conversely, she talks about how time consuming and frustrating  it was to sew a satin stitch around the edges.  I have had the same problem with satin stitch edges.  I was fortunate to find an inexpensive sewing machine foot that fits my sewing machine called Satinedge.
Below is the foot on my machine.  There are two things that make this such a handy tool:
  1. The white arm on the right, as you look at the foot, is the guide to make sure your stitching is  aligned up with the edge of your fabric.
  2. There is a wire that goes down the center of the foot.  This wire stabilizes the edge of the fabric so it does not pucker and it also creates a smooth edge of stitches.

Below on the left is stitching without the specialty foot.  You will notice that the stitches are inconsistent and the fabric puckers a bit at the end.
Below on the right is the stitching using the Satinedge foot, a much more consistent look.
The first picture below is the top of the foot; the second one shows the bottom of the foot and the wire that goes down the middle of the foot.


Thanks so much to my friend Jackie for letting me share her fabulous piece of art!




2 comments:

  1. I love Jackies's art! I need to get all my photos edited and blogged. You have some pretty amazing pieces in the show, yourself.

    That foot is really interesting. I've never heard of it. It really seems to make a difference. Cool!

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  2. The foot is really easy to use. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete