Monday, September 15, 2014

DESIGN: Taking My Art with Me! and Giveaway

Being creative is not a hobby; it is a way of life.
I love making art quilts, but what I love even more is using my art quilts in wearables. I have used two of my 12" x 12" art quilts to adorn my iPads.

This is a challenge quilt for the theme incandescence. You can read about how I made it here.
This second challenge quilt is for the theme Celestial. You can read about how I made it here.
For both of these art quilts, I created custom iPad skins for the outside from a photo of the quilt. I love how both the outer skin matches the wallpaper.   
With the same photo of the quilt, I went to Spoonflower and created custom fabric.  If you have not read about Spoonflower, you can read more about it here. With my custom fabric, I made a heavily quilted mini quilt for the outer case and another mini quilt for the inside of the case.  I adhered the two mini quilts together to create a strong and durable case.
Below are the insides of the iPad cases.  The key to making these tablet cases are two-fold:
  1. Both mini quilts must be heavily quilted.
  2. I use wax on the outside to help the fabric weather anything it could encounter.
When iPads first came out, I made a case for my first generation iPad  , I still use it today and it has very little wear on it (the photos below were taken after I had been using the case for about two years); you can read about it here

Thanks for reading my blog today.  Leave me a comment and I will pick a person to win these three fat quarters that I hand-dyed (2- cotton, 1-velvet). Check my blog Tuesday at 5 pm (EST) for the winner!
I have another blog posting today about Quilting Arts Holiday 2014.  I talk about my love affair with homemade ornaments.  Though most of the ornaments I show on the post are for my pre-art quilting years, I wrote the post more so to talk about our holiday traditions.


5 comments:

  1. I love your ipad covers made from small art quilts. The use of color and the extensive quilting are beautiful. I think using Spoonflower to create the initial cloth is smart - your designs can be used and reworked on each project. thanks for sharing your work.

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  2. Unique IPad covers, I love them. I have been reading about Spoonflower.

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  3. Your iPad covers are unique, and the colors luscious! Spoonflower is intriguing. Thank you.

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  4. I love the idea of incorporating art into useful objects. It just makes life more beautiful. And your artwork is awesome. The color, the lines, the embellishment, and the stitching come together to make something most people couldn't keep their eyes off. Thanks for sharing the story of the ipad covers, and thanks for the chance to win some of your beautiful fabric!

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  5. So sad I missed your give away:-(
    Great work as always Kathy!

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