A Day For Photography

 This is a tulip that got nipped off by a rabbit in my backyard so I put it in my kitchen window which faces west.  I took this photograph in the late afternoon sunlight which made it tranluscent.  How beautiful is this somewhat taken for granted flower when fully open.

 My magnolia tree now in full bloom.

A soft pink fuchsia given as a gift from my daughter Christy for Mothers Day/Birthday.  So delicate, I love it.

HUMMERS

 "Hummers"

35" X 27 1/2"

An original design art quilt 

Raw edged fused applique

Machine Quilted

Bound in the traditional manner.

Finished "Hummers" last night.   I am happy with the outcome.  It was fun to work on….took my out of my comfort colors a bit but it was fun to work with a different palette.
I love the Hummingbird….it is mysterious in ways since it moves about so quickly  and you sometimes just catch it with the corner of your eye.   So what better subject matter to capture in flight forever.

Hope you enjoy this piece as much as I did creating it.   It is available for purchase in my
Etsy Shoppe:    https://www.etsy.com/shop/BSLArtQuilts

NOTE:  This quilt has sold and is going into a private collection.

Hummers

Finished the small Hummingbird….added the border….some leaves to add depth as well as interest.   Now will finish all the quilting and put on binding.  The size of this piece will be approximately 28" X 35".  

Construction of Hummingbird

I have discovered that Hummingbirds are not the easiest birds to construct.  It has been a slow and easy progression but….it is getting there little by little.  That is why I have not posted a lot.  However the second one should go a lot faster after working out all the kinks on the first one.  I do this all on a teflon sheet and will peel it off when complete.

 In the meantime it continues to be quite cold here in November.  That garage roof is normally black but has a heavy coating of frost on it this morning.

Here in the studio it is definitely a "dogs life"!

Flowers

I have been steadily working on my fuchsias.   Now I am at the stage where I must decide if I need to add more or just add the birds and crop the bottom edge a bit.
What I think I will do is finish quilting what is on there now and then make the birds.
Once they are finished I will just pin them on the surface and re-evaluate then.

Here is how it will look if I crop it……we will see when the birds are finished.

Quilting and Adding

Work continues on my Fuchsia piece.  The larger flowers are all quilted down and the smaller ones hopefully looking behind the larger ones are finished and will be quilted next.   There is a lot more to do but I am happy with the progress so far.

We spent a weekend in Chicago to see all of our children.  Two of our girls live in Indianapolis so Chicago makes for a great midway point for us to get together.  It was great fun and here are some photos of us enjoying the Windy City.

Progress

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I have discovered that Fuchsias are fun to make......I am really enjoying this piece.  It is time consuming though...takes a lot of time and patience.   Keep watching....hopefully more to come soon.

Fuchsia Construction

 I have all my drawings finished....took quite a while....did some while watching the Packer Game.  It helps me to not feel guilty about not working for 3 hours!  Once finished on tracing paper, I like to roughly lay then out on my background to see if I have enough for my composition.
In this case I needed two more fuchsia flowers so I did those before proceeding.

 Once I have all my "parts" I start with one and number each petal, leaf, bud, etc. and then trace the reverse side, singling out each one,  with fusible paper.   All of my fabric selections have been made in advance so I fuse each piece onto the fabric that I have selected for that particular petal or leaf.

 You can see above that these are all the darker fuchsia colored pieces.  Now they have to be cut out individually and then the fusible paper is peeled off leaving the heat set glue on the back of each piece.

 Once that is finished I use my tracing paper drawing again.  This time to place each piece where it belongs.  Once it is lined up correctly I fuse it down to my teflon sheet.  The teflon sheet allows you to construct the entire flower on your ironing surface.  Once it is finished and cooled you can peel it off and place it on your background and refuse it there.

 The flower continues to grow.  Always remember, the quilting will add a lot of texture and detail to this flower but that comes later.

 Now the fuchsia is finished and ready to place on the background.

 I start another one immediately.  Once you are "in the groove" it is good to keep working.  Things will move along much smoother and the second one will go together a lot faster because of it.

Here are the first two on the background.   These two took me from 9AM until 4PM to construct so it is not as fast as it may look on here.  I did take a few breaks to do laundry and grab a bite to eat in between though. It is good to rest your brain and move around a little and stretch when working in the studio most of the day.

Hope you are enjoying the process.   Stay tuned as there are lots of fuchsia to come along with leaves and stems and then two beautiful ruby throated hummingbirds!

Sketching

 I have been sketching fuchsia much of the day today.  I love sketching this flower partly because I had fuchsia on my front porch so had numerous photos to choose from.

 You will notice that some are larger then the others....this is to add depth to the flower arrangement with some looking further in the background.

Then I sketched out two hummingbirds...here is one of them...his beak is short because this hummingbird will have his beak inside a fuchsia.  Lots of color changes on its body so had to label the sketch to remember them all.

So now you know what will be added to the leaf background.  Stay tuned as it all comes together.