Judy S. "Sewing Machine Beauty"

 Beauty. I thought a lot about this word. There are so many things that I feel are beautiful, but during my lifetime a sewing machine is one tool that I can say can and has created beauty. Our sewing machines create beauty by making quilts that are used to cuddle up with, to comfort, to delight by having memories sewn into them. They make art that we hang on our walls. They tell a story.

Sometimes our sewing machines make quilts for those less fortunate. A neighbor had a fire at their home and when I gave her a quilt she knew someone cared. That’s what the Linus project does for children when they are given one. The Quilts of Valor project give quilts to veterans who have served our country. So many of them haven’t been thanked and when they drape those quilts over their shoulders it warms their hearts.

The sewing machine also helps us make clothes that we can feel good in or make clothes for our family members. They repair favorite clothes, and alter new clothes so they fit better. We use our machines to make gifts for friends and families.

The sewing machine is a beautiful piece of machinery that creates beauty that you see and feel.

I don’t know what fabric company or designer the sewing machine fabric is made from other than it is a quilters cotton. I only have a fat quarter of it and there is nothing printed on the selvage. If you look closely there is a cute little mouse on the sewing machine.

The background is blue silk and I used a bright pink thread for the quilting. I used one layer of 80% 20% cotton/polyester batting and one layer of wool batting to give more texture to the quilt. To answer the question of how long did it take me to make it, I only put a timer on when I am doing the actual quilting and on this 11” x 14” piece it took me 1 hour and 23 minutes. I do make it a tad bigger especially when I am doing intense quilting because it draws up quite a bit which means I have a few scraps with the quilting on them.

                                        

 

Andrea's Beauty Quilt

The Beauty of Simple Shapes

11"x14"

Fabric paint, freezer paper stencils, hand dyed cotton, 

commercial cotton, screen printed.

inspiration photo

 I took a series of photos of a single peony in one of my favorite Natalie Blake (natalieblakestudios.com) ceramic vases, with the hope that at least one would inspire my Beauty quilt design.  I am a bit obsessed with shadows and I love how they simplify and distort. I have been wanting to make a shadow quilt for 

awhile.  My first photos were of just the vase and peony, but as I moved "my model" around the room at different times of the day, they were casting the most fascinating shadows.  So my focus then shifted from the simple beauty of a classically shaped vase and single blossom to include the shadow.  I am most pleased with the outcome and this might be the beginning of a series of shadow themed quilts.  It was also great fun and very satisfying to build this quilt on my favorite Kaffe Fassett fabric background..

 

"FOR THE BEAUTY OF THE EARTH"

                            

                           FOR  THE  BEAUTY  OF  THE  EARTH

                           FOR  THE  GLORY  OF  THE  SKIES.

                           FOR THE  LOVE  WHICH  FROM  OUR  BIRTH

                            OVER  AND  AROUND  US  LIES:

                            LORD  OF  ALL,  TO  YOU  WE  RAISE 

                            THIS  OUR  HYMN  OF  GRATEFUL  PRAISE."

When "BEAUTY"  was given to all of us as this theme,  one of the first things I thought about was the much loved and appropriate hymn,  "For The Beauty of the Earth."  This seems so appropriate considering the many, many months of living in isolation, distanced from each other, and longing for everything to get back to "Normal."

This quilt was constructed using a Google image of our beautiful Mother Earth in the shape of a Heart.   The image has been machine appliqued to the background fabric that might resemble the sky, clouds, sunlight, and shadows.  The background was quilted in what I hope looks to all of you like gentle clouds !

My best thoughts, prayers, and gratitude to our Gracious God for providing all of us with this beautiful planet, our "Mother Earth."

 

Nedra’s Beauty —Angel Trumpet

 I loved this theme but had a very hard time choosing how to represent beauty.  Far too many possibilities!!!!  I finally decided to focus on the beauty of flowers, which some think of as nature’s angels.

My parents were avid gardeners and my mother worked part time as a floral designer.  She often used flowers from her garden to create beautiful bouquets and arrangements for friends and family.  I have inherited her love of flowers and their natural beauty, and a little of her skills.  Some of my favorites are peonies, nasturtiums, hydrangeas, foxgloves, zinnias . . .  ——  the list is long!!!  Another favorite, because of it’s shape and simplicity, is the angel trumpet.  I chose to represent the beauty of nature with a close up of a brightly colored angel on earth!

Limited supplies in my Maine home forced me to use only 2 batiks, one a stripe, and some acrylic paints to create the wonderful shading and texture of the flower.  The flower is fused and machine quilted.  Three trumpet flowers are machine quilted in the background.  I wanted to embellish the flower more but my sewing machine here is a basic Bernina.  I plan to add more definition with stitching when I can use my other machine.

Alice's Beauty: Say it with Flowers

As soon as I learned what this theme was, I thought of all the beautiful blooms featured in the Kaffe Fassett Collective fabrics.  Alas, most of those flowers are hugely out of scale for one of our little quilts.  But I persisted and searched through my scraps and my stash of KF fabrics and eventually found some that would work.  

I adhered Wonder Under to these scraps and fussy-cut many flowers out.  For the background I constructed a crazy quilt type square, using different sections of one of the wonderful ombre fabrics I'd had such fun with for my last quilt.  I then free-hand cut out a vase and began the fun of arranging my bouquet of flowers.  I ironed these down onto the crazy quilt background.  I bound the quilt conventionally with the darker purple.

I laid my quilt aside for many weeks and then brought it with me to Michigan.  Yesterday I had fun embroidering the six sections of the background with a few different embroidery stitches, using Perle cotton I had brought from home.  I failed to bring my handy little embroidery stitch book so I couldn't try as many different stitches as I had planned to use.  And looking now at the photo, I wish I'd used a contrasting thread for the dark purple areas!  Alas, the deadline approached so I had to be content with what I had done!

Jane's American Beauty

 American Beauty

 As I approached the subject Beauty, I thought about Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Art is also in the eye of the beholder. Trying to be a part of the world of beauty by creating art has brought me much pleasure for the past 20 years. Being a part of the Material Mavens group has changed my life in a positive way. Being an American has given me the freedom to pursue happiness. 

I found this piece of fabric in my stash. It started as a commercial fabric, but I transformed it with paint. Even with the paint, it was just lying around. It was one of many experiments I have done on fabrics. With its red white and blue palette, I named it American Beauty. Quilting it gave new emphasis to the stenciled design. I finished it with a traditional binding. I used red thread to bring out the red in the print. 

A

Tricia's Beauty

 

Tricia's Beauty

The word "beauty" can be looked at in many ways. A few weeks ago my youngest daughter was married on the top of a mountain overlooking Lake Willoughby in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. There are so many beauties in the picture. The beauty of marriage, the beauty of the bride and groom, the beauty of the vista, the beauty of the flowers and the beauty of my four children gathered together for this moment. The beauty of all the family and friends that have gathered to celebrate their marriage. I can go on and on!

I created this quilt with a photograph printed onto fabric. The flowers from the wedding were so spectacular I wanted to create flowers for the corners of the quilt. I used Terial Magic on the silk to keep it from fraying. ( This was one of those products that one purchases at a show and never uses it ;) I finally used it). I cut out the petals, sewed them together and added beads for an embellishment. The colors for the wedding were blue and purple. I sewed blue and purple silk ribbons onto the edges for the border.

Karen's Beauty Bella Rosa

 Bella Rosa

The Language of Flowers is a favorite book of mine. Pink roses have lots of wonderful meanings. 

Fuchsia represents appreciation and gratitude. 

Dark pink, expression of thanks, admiration and gratefulness. 

Light pink, happiness and joy. 

My roses are a combo of all. 

Admiration for friends going through difficult times. 

Thankfulness for my family and friends. 

Happiness and joy from the "youngsters" in my family!

Appreciation and gratitude for the life I have. 

BEAUTY

The rose petals were free hand cut from various batiks. Layers and layers of petals that are stitched down approximately 1/2" away from the raw edge. The blossoms were sprayed with diluted Elmer's glue. I rigged them so they would hang upside down to dry. The petals dried stiff and standing up. 

They were originally stitched onto a rectangle for a class sample a number of years ago. 

I cut the blossoms out of the wall hanging, padded the centers with wool batt to create a rounded shape, and stitched just around the outer most petal, close to the inside to leave the edges free. Leaves made from the original background.  I spritzed with water to fluff up after 10 plus years on a shelf. 

Much better than the original. 

Carolyn's Black Beauty

I was born and grew up in El Paso, Texas. When I was a young girl, our Dad bought my brothers and me a Shetland pony. He was a reddish-brown color with spots scattered on his rump, so we named him Strawberry. Although I never had the opportunity to become a real horsewoman, I have always loved and admired horses. Years ago as the sun was setting, my husband and I were traveling in beautiful Wyoming. As we drove along, we were thrilled to see a herd of wild horses running through the meadow. Far ahead was their leader - a beautiful black stallion. He ran parallel with us with complete freedom until we finally passed him. It was one of those once-in- a-lifetime experiences.

 

One of my favorite childhood books was Black Beauty by Anna Sewell. So when this theme for our final Material Maven Challenge was announced, I knew I would have to create a black beauty quilt based on the book and this memorable experience. 

 

I used scraps of hand-dyed cotton by Mickey Lawler for the sky, hand-dyed cotton by an unknown artist in a bold brass for the mountain range, and a hand-dyed lime cotton by Freida Anderson for the meadow. I added batiks for the grasses in front of the mountain range. 

 

I created the scene from memory. I applied Wonder Under to the back of fabrics for the mountains, cut them out free-hand, and applied them one at a time on top of each other to build the distant mountain range, ironing them lightly to a piece of light-weight resist paper as I went along so that they could be removed in one piece and permanently fused. I prepared the batiks the same way. The next step was to fuse the sky, mountain range and grasses directly onto cotton batting. Then I searched the Internet for photos and drawings of horses. I chose one to enhance to use as my pattern. Then the large grassy meadow was fused, cut out and applied to the foreground. 

 

The final step, and the most critical, was creating the horse. I chose a combination of two different black batiks for the horse - a solid for the horse and a patterned black for the mane and tail. These were then carefully fused, cut out and ironed to the meadow. 

The quilting was done with variegated Polyneon thread with Bottom Line bobbin thread. I combined two different embroidery patterns on my Bernina and simple machine quilting to complete the quilt. The back of the quilt and the binding is a batik in traditional southwestern colors.