More Progress on the Kousa Dogwood Piece

The commission for the Doctors' Lounge at CMC Mercy Hospital is moving along.

One of the largest leaves is set up for stenciling in the first photograph. Between the white stencils, you can see the hand-dyed cotton sateen fabric that is the fabric that I am stenciling my design onto.The colors in the fabric seemed well suited to the colors in the doctors' lounge where this piece will hang when finished.

I purchase the hand-dyed fabric from a dyer from Germany, Heide Stoll-Weber. She is the only fabric dyer I have found whose hand at the dye bath results in a subtle fabric to use for stenciling designs. You can see that I have already inked the veins in the leaf.

In the second photograph, I replaced the stencil over the veins to protect them from the inks used on the leaf.

The bottom half of the leaf has had some ink added in the initial stenciling process. While more ink will be added, the colors of the fabric will come through the semi-transparent inks, giving a watercolor effect to the finished piece.

You can see a bit of stem and some other leaves at the upper right of the bottom photograph.


Nancy

Progress Continues on the Kousa Dogwood Commission

Progress continues on the commission piece. here are some additional photos. The photo at left is where I am transferring the design onto freezer paper. I cut my stencils from the freezer paper. This slick sided paper will stick tightly to fabric when heated with a hot iron. Getting a close contact makes for crisp images when stenciling. The second photo is of the Kousa berry after a number of edits. Still more to come. A couple of the leaves have been inked as well. The red orange berry is really popping against the green leaves.

Enjoy.

Nancy

Burr Oak Coming Along, GYST Software

The cap is now surrounding the acorn. Just the top of the cap and stem to do.

The top of the cap is a typical Fibonacci arrangement of pointed scales coming down the cap to the tendrils.


Got some new Fabrico ink pens in this past week. I needed them. Several of the ink colors were exhausted.

Look forward to completing the inking process early next week.

I have a commission with a local hospital that I will begin as soon as this is inked. I plan on quilting this while inking the commission. That will be a challenge to arrange the studio for two production steps being done concurrently.

Thanks to the commission I have been able to finance a part time studio assistant to help with some of the business of the studio. Have uploaded GYST documentation software and getting my quilt business into it. That should make future applications and entries go easier.

Any tips from current users?

Nancy

Making Progress on the Burr Oak

My progress on the Burr Oak acorn is continuing and slow. Yesterday I finished the bottom and underside of the cap and the acorn itself. At this stage the acorn is looking a bit fleshy. I am using the markers to color in the stencil cut out areas in this first photo.















You can see the freezer paper covering the top of the cap in the second photo. That is where I got to on June 7. And you can see the final progress I made at the end of June 8 in the last photo. I will be ready for a simpler design by the time this is done! Happy Quilting!

Nancy

Bur Oak Underway II

This cap is going to be a real challenge to ink and then to quilt. I have between now and May 14 to get the top inked. Then I may be beginning a commission piece that will take a very long time to complete before I can get back to this one.

The last blog entry included the enhanced photo that I created and used for both my working sketch and to help in planning out different shades and colors for inking. I use Tsukineko inks in their various forms to do the inking. The cap threads are being done with Fabrico markers. The cap is being done with the small stamp pads.

Shading makes all the difference in getting the cap threads to lay one over the other. My first step is to ink in the treads with Autumn Leaf Fabrico.




The next step is to go over each thread and make sure that the lines are continuous and filled in. Autumn Leaf is a great color that can be double inked to increase the intensity and begin defining layers.











Then I used Sand to create a bit different and more diffused coloring. Lemon Yellow added highlights. And Chocolate added the depth of shading.













Here is another section that has the cap showing behind the cap threads.

Please let me know if this interesting to you.



Happy quilting.

Nancy