Friday, August 28, 2009

Crayon Painting and Machine Embroidery

Back in July, I began to work on the samples for this fall's classes. I wanted to do something different...mainly I just wanted to fool around with some things that have been floating in my head for a while. I've always liked crayon painting-I love giving it such a fancy name-(its really just coloring!) and wanted to do something a little more "serious" with the technique.

I got out a Mountain Mist pattern for embroidered blocks that I had used before for my big embroidered quilt...these floral blocks looked perfect for crayon painting.
The top is now sewn together but I'm not sure if I want to add a wide floral border outside the narrow green border or just, once its quilted, use the floral for the binding-sort of a narrow 1/2" border. For once, I do know what I will do with this small wallhanging-its going in the guest room! The walls there are crying out for decorating!
This blue block is just crayoned-not yet embroidered. Actually this block I hand embroidered. I want anyone interested in trying crayon painting to participate in the class and not not take it because of the machine embroidery...personally, I like hand embroidery and I'm not sure it takes that much longer to do on small blocks likes this. (If you enlarge the quilt top pix, you'll see the blocks with the embroidery)

Here's a close up of the first block I did-only one flower has been machine embroidered. I changed the MM pattern a bit-redesigning the basket and how the flowers go into it so that the basket could be appliqued rather than crayoned.


Here's the whole block...if you compare it to the block in the quilt top, you'll see I added some more leaves, etc. to make the block look more balanced.



This was as much fun as I expected...let the artist in you flow-try crayon painting!



9 comments:

Karen said...

How do you get your crayon colored areas to have such deep, vibrant color?

Miri said...

Hi Karen, the secret to deep color is really very simple...layering.
I color lightly then press to remove the wax and then color again...this can be done as many times as you want to get the color and depth you want.

Lee D said...

wow that is amazing. you are so artistic!

Bea said...

I love working with crayons and fiber. These are just wonderful. And, don't you LOVE the smell of warm melting crayon wax? lol I do! :)Bea

PS Those patterns would be perfect for a wool applique quilt too. I do my wool applique flowers with the button hole stitch, very relaxing to do.

Carrie P. said...

I have done some coloring on a few projects and it is fun and different.

Barb said...

That is so lovely. I taught a group of girls to crayon paint one time, they seemed to like it but I think the embrodery adds a touch of clas to it.

Martha said...

I've done several of these crayon embroidery quilts and I found on one of them where I applied several layers of color to get that really saturated look, the block became unpleasantly stiff and I just didn't like the feel of it. Probably this was because it was a pretty solid design -- on a more open pattern like your beautiful flowers, it obviously works just fine. They're really lovely.

YankeeQuilter said...

These look great...thanks for tip on getting the deeper colors!

Personalized Sketches and Sentiments said...

goodness! so many beautiful quilts! do you have fabric and needle in hand, wherever you might be?

Oh, how do you decide which quilts to use in your home?

Blessings & Aloha!