Rhonda Bracey: At Random

I drove to Perth yesterday for one of the regular ‘bees’ for the Community Quilts participants. There was a great turnout — about 40 people by my estimation. Much of my time was spent out the back with about 5 others, sorting donated fabric.

After lunch Gwen, the Community Quilts Coordinator, thanked everyone and shared with the group the award she won at the recent Australian Quilt Convention in Melbourne for her contribution to the Western Australian Quilting Association. And shared with us some of the recently finished community quilts. To top that off, she shared a cake that the lovely Janice had made (designed as a quilt block, of course!) and some bubbly.

It was a lovely day, spent with some lovely people. Despite being the middle of winter, my 3-hour round trip to Perth and back home again was dry and uneventful, with clear sunny skies all the way.

When I was in Michigan last October (2014), I took some photos on my family’s farm in the crisp early mornings. The one I most liked of the corn ready for harvest I had printed onto fabric at my Quilting Adventures class in Texas this March (2015).

I finally got around to stitching it, doing something a bit different, which was fusing it to a piece of hard felt. I’d bought this piece of orange felt for another purpose, but had decided not to use it and when I pulled the cornstalks photo from my design wall to see what fabrics I could use as the background, it landed on the felt and a new idea came to mind… Prior to fusing it I decided to keep some of the white fabric the photo was printed on to add a quarter inch border between the photo and the felt and thus set it off like a mounted piece of art.

I only stitched the cornstalks, not the sky, and not the very fuzzy cornstalks in the background. It took several hours to do the stitching to enhance the photo, and I used quite a number of different threads in the process. I did this stitching on my domestic sewing machine, using the spring-loaded free motion foot.

I even like how the back turned out 😉

The photo is approx. 20 x 25 cm (8 x 10 inches), and the finished piece on the felt backing is approx. 25 x 30 cm (9.75 x 11.75 inches).

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

See also:

• Thread painting the beach: https://rhondabracey.com/2015/06/16/thread-painting-the-beach/
• Thread painting Fabulous Mr Fox!: https://rhondabracey.com/2015/07/08/thread-painting-fabulous-mr-fox/

Back in March 2015, I attended Quilting Adventures’ Spring Seminars in New Braunfels, Texas. The workshop I did was on digital photos for quilts (run by Lura Schwarz Smith and Kerby Smith). Kerby printed off several of my photos using his printer and special fabric ‘paper’ and it’s only now I’ve got around to doing anything with these fabric photos.

Here are the printed photos on fabric, plus some of the other exercises I did in class:

The first photo I decided to tackle was one I took in December 2014 of Buffalo Beach, near Bunbury, Western Australia.

I covered a piece of Floriani Stitch ‘n’ Shape with the background fabric, then fused on the fabric photo. I used several threads of various blues and browns to thread paint the sky, the ocean, the rocks, the sand, and the water.

The photo is approx. 20 x 25 cm (8 x 10 inches) and the finished piece is approx. 30 x 36 cm (12 x 14 inches).

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

Update: That raw edge butted up to the background fabric bothered me, so I added a quarter-inch silver bias binding to it to separate it. I’m happier with it now.

See also:

• Thread painting the corn: https://rhondabracey.com/2015/06/27/thread-painting-the-corn/
• Thread painting Fabulous Mr Fox!: https://rhondabracey.com/2015/07/08/thread-painting-fabulous-mr-fox/