Wednesday, August 26, 2009

I've Been Quilted - NUDE

Every now and then in life we do something crazy - I posed NUDE. Ferret mentioned she needed a "real" woman's figure to do as a quilt - so I volunteered. It took lots of guts to get the robe off, but once I did, I got comfortable. My daughter Heather took the photos - as an artist she knew what to look for. My only worry was sending nude photos via email. I made sure the photos went to Ferret's home computer - it would NOT have been funny had they landed on her work computer, ha, ha. Of course my girls tell me my nude photo is somewhere out in cyberspace - so much for "quilt porn", ha ha.

See the full quilt (in all my glory) on Ferret's blog
http://www.ferfab.co.uk/portfolio/quilts/ (about half way down the page)

The quilt was hung proudly next to the quilt she did of my daughter - from a photo which I had been trying to make into a quilt. Here's a link to the photo Ferret used for Carly's quilt.

http://bonniequilts.blogspot.com/2009/01/new-portrait.html

Ferret's quilts were displayed in her gallery space at the Birmingham Show in England. My quilt of my daughter still hangs on the wall unfinished.

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Creativity Spark - Take an Internet Walk

I have just discovered an amazing way to really *Spark* a creative slump. I call it taking a walking on the internet. So here's how it goes:
1 - Go to Google and select the Image search
2 - Pick a design word to search - a couple of my favorites are Decorative, Floral, Swirls....
3 - This will display a bunch of images. I quickly scan to see if there's anything inspiring. When I see something that sparks something I click on it.
4 - Once I have a larger image, I right click the image and Save to a folder I set up called Inspirations.
5 - The go back to the search page, click next and see what else you find.
6 - When I get tired of this, maybe 30 pages in, I go take a look at my Inspiration folder. I print out a bunch and then go doodling using the printed designs ONLY as inspiration.

So where did this lead? On one of my searches on the word "Rosemaling" I found a bunch of images.
Here's a couple doodles I did. I decided to create some design elements that I could combine.














Then I enlarged the designs and played with them to create a full size design that I traced on a piece of Pellon Decor Bond. This was fused to the back of a black piece of fabric. The design was stitched out with Candlelight in the bobbin (like my DigiBobbETM).

Then I plan to paint in some of the spaces with DecoArt SoSoft Fabric Paints. This is like a class I teach called "Stitch N Glitz" (which BTW I'll be teaching in Vermont and Long Beach, CA).

So here a peek at a the stitched design I have in the works. Wait till you see what else I'm doing to it......


Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Sliding Design Wall

There's some talk about design walls on QuiltArt and I wanted to show you mine. You can see that I did not bother to neaten up before taking the photo.

The great thing is my 2 design walls are mounted IN FRONT of my sliding door closets that hold all of my fabric. The beauty of this is that the wall serves 2 purposes - fabric storage AND design wall. Keeping fabric behind closed doors helps prevent fading (if you can remember to close them that is).

Here's how I did it:
- Covered to sheets of insulation with felt.
- Mounted these to paneling the same size (this gives the sliding door wheels something to screw into
- Installed 2 sliding door kit rails to the ceiling (in a line to create the longest possible continuous rail)
- Hung the design walls on the rails

Sunday, March 15, 2009



Pine Needles Technique

Someone on QuiltArt asked about a textural technique to create pine needles. I remember experimenting years ago - and I keep my experiments in a notebook (in plastic page protectors). So I dug this sample out to show. It's not the best colors - it's more about the technique - and it also looks a little messy, but you'll get the idea.
In this example the pine needles were added to a silk ribbon done with my "Twisted Branch" technique found in my "Fantasy Floral Quilts" book (which is out of print, but there a few copies left on our website).

1 - I used YLI Pearl Crown Rayon thread. I pulled off a couple long pieces (maybe 1-2 yards) and pulled them under a medium temp iron to remove the coiling. I wound the thread around a my hand to get a bunch of threads lined up. Tape the threads together temporarily until it's stitched down.
2 - Then cut the ends so the thread tails are free giving the look of pine needles. I'd love to see photos if you try this technique - bonnie@bonniemccaffery.com.

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Hey,

I'm a Guest Blogger at Quilting Gallery's Blog.



If you ever wanted to hear more about my quilting career and see a sampling of some of my quilts, here's the place to see it.

Enjoy,

Bonnie

Friday, January 30, 2009

Portrait Quilts BOOK Reprint

I am SOOOOO excited to announce that we have finally reprinted the "Portrait Quilts: Painted Faces You Can Do" BOOK. It has been out of print for quite some time and I have heard from so many people that they would have loved to have owned the book. And so we spent the money and reprinted the book. http://BonnieMcCaffery.com


If you have ever wanted to learn to paint a face on fabric, this is the book for you. It shows you step by step how to paint each of the features. EVEN A BEGINNER CAN DO THIS. The secret is a tracing of a photograph under the fabric so you can see exactly where to paint each of the features.


If you're a visual kind of person and need to see the painting in action, we also have the "Painted Face for Beginners" DVD.


I would love to see photos of faces you've done using this technique.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

A New Portrait

I'm home for a nice long stretch of time - which is very refreshing. Being on the road all the time does not leave time for any creativity, so 10 weeks home is a good thing.

I had a chance to play and felt like painting a portrait from a photo I took of my daughter. It's a gorgeous photo. I decided to flip her the other direction and use a different head shot, but I absolutely love the painted draping.

I'm not sure about the background or the hair yet, but I'll play another day. Just in case you wanted to trying painting a face, you can check out my "Painted Face for Beginners" DVD (yes BEGINNERS can do this) on my website.