Next Challenge

well, I almost forgot in my haste to get to bed before midnight!
I have noticed with interest that the goup twelve x twelve have used colours for their next round of challenges, and am keen to not replicate other challenges however great the temptation.
The next challenge is FLORA, that is not floral, but 'flora'.
The size is 12" x 12" or something like it.
Good luck.
Jane

Mandala

Once I started it went very well. I made a small sketch. The quilt consists of different types of fabric, pieced in circles. On top orange-red fabrics and stamped fabrics. Done by hand and then quilted with the machine. To really finish it I dyed it green. (The whole process is on my blog: http://textielverfenderest.web-log.nl/ )

Inner Landscape

Here it is! Woo - hoo!

I am quite pleased with it.

Here is how I created the picture.

And then I printed it on light blue homespun.

Then I quilted it, and kept quilting it.

If I don't tell you it comes in at 11 x 11.5" you will never know.

Hope you like it.

Jane Mandala

I have had many pleasurable hours watching the monks make mandalas in Hobart at the museum, however when it came to my own mandala, I had trouble getting started.

Last year I bought some Shiva Sticks, and spurred on by a plain piece of black fabric, some chocolate wrapper shrunk by my friend Carmel, and some yummy new thread I got started. It just sort of grew as it went along, I had intended to use a piece of Angelina, however it did not look right. The beads were bought on the Gold Coast and the Chinese Lucky coins in a wonderful Chinese shop- which was a treasure trove of fantastic smells and finds!

I really love machine stitching, so this was the basis of the outside of the mandala.

The edges are zigzagged and have a gentle wavy curve.

The off centred lucky coins a little like my lop sided world!

I will post the next challenge this afternoon, just a few more hours suspense!

MAGnificent* Mandala

Surfing the internet for mandala illustrations I got inspired by some mandalas using human figures. When I was designing my MAGnificence quilt I made lots and lots of screenprints of gymnasts and I decided to use some of them for my mandala. I first tried a multi-coloured design but in the end preferred the one shown above.



The gymnasts were fused to the background fabric (one of my hand-dyed ones) using fusible web. For the batting I used fast-2-fuse, so the quilt wouldn't be floppy. The gymnasts were secured by free-motion quilting with a metallic thread and the edge of the quilt was satin-stitched with the same thread. Here is a photo of the back of the quilt (click to enlarge):



I enjoyed this challenge and again managed to use only 'recycled materials'.

Happy New Year to all readers of this blog!



* MAG = Men's Artistic Gymnastics

Centered

I think that I have looked at more than 1000 pictures of mandalas on the internet over the past couple of months. I borrowed books from the library and studied them as well.

I'm in a 'black and white' phase at present, most things I've tackled lately have been black, white and one other colour.


The colours in this picture don't show the true red.

The design just evolved as I worked and is not copied from anything.

Bird Mandala

This mandala, my prayer of thanks to Mother Nature, was inspired by the honey eaters that visit the Geisha Girl bush and bathe in the bird bath in our yard. We spend many relaxed moments watching from our patio where we often eat at this time of the year.

The green fabric is artist dyed . The Geisha flower is quilted with silver thread, the birds are cut from felt and were appliqued from the back and then cut out.

Tulips

In the last week of the year, I managed to finish the mandala for this group:


We were asked to show the mandala we started from too, which is this one:



As you can see, the inspirational mandala has more objects in it than the quiltlet I made from it. I thought it much to crowded, the flowerlike shape in the center distracted from the tulips and the four flowers in the corners distracted from the circular shape of the mandala, so I removed those.I executed my quiltlet in 'mock' shadow applique, meaning I just drew the thing on with textile markers, put organza over it and quilted the thing (like I wrote before, I was running out of time). I kind of like how it has turned out, though.

Butterfly Mandala by Lynn

Butterfly Mandala

made using velvet from Chris' Dye Candy ETSY store.

It was easy to felt these cut up bits using my embellishing machine by Babylock.

They gave me no sliding troubles at all.

I top sewed them with gold metallic thread.

And added glass beads glued in place on butterfly's wings. Swirls free motion sewn on plain muslin that I painted with acrylic paints first.
Double click to see close up. You might even be able to FEEL the soft
texture of the velvet, and bumpy texture of the swirls.


First photo taken indoors at my sewing machine.
Last photo taken in the outside sunshine.
It shone in my solo show last month!

Imagine

I am posting a bit early, but this month it is a choice between too early and too late, so here it is!
Another thought provoking challenge theme....I started with the idea of the impermanence of the Tibetan Buddhist mandala, where they will spend days or weeks creating a beautiful, intricate sand design, then blow all the sand together before ceremoniously pouring it into a water source such as a river. The streamers of fabric at the base of my mandala represent the sands in the moment of blowing together.
However, the actual mandala design is based on the centre of a Turkish, Islamic design.


Despite using my trusting Kent set compass to draw up the design, it is far from regular. But then, isn't God the only one who achieves perfection?? I quite like the idiosyncracies.

The completed design reminds me of s stained glass window in a Christian cathedral, or a Native American dream catcher.

The colours in the photo are not quite right - the yellow is waaay too bold, but when I tried playing with it, I just seemed to make it worse!

The title is from John Lennon's song.

This is defenitively not what I had in mind

After procrastinating for a long time about this challenge, I finally found a mandala I thought I would like to use on the internet, so I could begin making my quilt.

My first idea was to paint the mandala with transferdye on paper and iron it on evolon, so I did and I got this, which I do not like at al:


I have pondered about ways to rescue it, but the problem is that there the pencil lines I drew first to see where the paint was supposed to go, somehow also got ironed on the evolon (this has never happened before), so I decided it would be best to just start over.

And because I am just not able to just toss my failed experiments, which then get the nasty habit of lurking in my sewing room indefinitively, I ironed some more color on the lutradur, cut it into pieces and made AMC's out of it:

For the mandala for this group I have a plan B, which is already being worked on, I have good hopes that this one will be more to my liking.
I wish you all a merry christmas and a happy new year!

Greetings

Seasons Greetings to Everyone, hope you all have a wonderful time and a safe and happy New Year.
I'm looking forward to the unveiling of our mandela project.

My right arm

At the moment is this my right arm so not much quilting for me. I don't think my quiltlet is ready for decmber 31st, because the next appointment is at december 30.
I wish you all a merry Christmas with your relatives and friends.

Starting out

I have been playing around with photoshop and have come up with a design I like.
This is the photo I started with taken from the tower at the Otway Fly Walk in Victoria Australia.

and this is one of the images after I had fiddled with it, not the final one though. When this one was printed it was far too dark and muddy. I may need a better printer as this one is 4 years old.

My mandalas

My mandala is finished! Here is a sneak peek of the front and the back.

In the end I did not use the discharged fabric I showed here a while ago, but embarked on a very different journey... I'm very happy with the result, but you will have to wait until December 31st to see it!



I also made this small mandala (about 15 cm) for an international art exchange - you can read about it here.