Zentangle Addiction

It was pointed out to me that the Zentangle® name is a registered trademark and I was concerned enough to remove it from all my posts, however, I visited the Zentangle® legal  page and found that it is OK to say my work has been inspired by the Zentangle® art form.
 The Zentangle® art form and method was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas and is copyrighted. Zentangle® is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc. Learn more at zentangle.com.

I think I have a Zentangle addiction. I have been doodling on every piece of paper that is on my desk. An idea pops into my head and I have to put it on paper. I have been trying for 2 days to put things away in my sewing room but I sort through some papers and find something I want to sketch or a sketch I want to improve.

Today I traced one doodle/sketch onto release  paper and then I ironed it very lightly onto a piece of fabric with fusible web on the back and and yesss!!! the design did  transfer to the back of the fused fabric. I cut it out and fused it to a square of light lime green fabric.

Here is the original sketch and the fused  piece. I think it looks like an iris. I am at that point where I am eager to begin to do some stitching on it and yet I am hesitant to start because I don't want to  mess it up.

I am also ready to to scan my sketch of my right hand and print it on fabric. I will then trace over the lines with a black Pigma pen and quilt it. I think I will  fix that  dark area on the thumb first. I like printing it on fabric and then tracing the lines. For one thing, if I really mess it up I can print another one and start over. It is also kind of like coloring in a coloring book. I just have to stay within on the lines. I  figure it is not cheating since the original drawing is my own.

I plan to do my fish the same way. On the left is my first fish. I liked it until  I realized the fin on the side looked more like a birds  wing than a fish part. The one on the right is better but not sure I like it well enough to make it in fabric. I have a few more fish but they are all pretty similar. I think I am fooling around with the hands and fish so I can avoid admitting I am reluctant  to work  on the iris and on the bigger one that I made the sketch and pattern for. I guess I will do the hand and see what I want to do next.
Laura Wasilowski  posted today on her blog how to do a wrapped binding on a small  piece with Timtex in it. I think I am  going to  give that a try on my right hand piece I am also going to put a layer of batting between the quilt  top and the Timtex. The left hand could use a little more dimension.

Play Day

Thirteen of us met yesterday to play with the Zentangle concept and it was a fun kind of day. We first got to know a little bit about each other and I  shared some of my explorations, several people shared some  books that they had , there were a number of sketches and doodles,which were all pretty impressive. We talked a little about supplies and then we all traced our hands and doodled all over them.

I did get a new camera and spent an entire afternoon figuring out how to get the pictures from my camera to my computer. Then......I did not take one photo at our get together. However, one of the ladies sent me a picture of the one she did. She drew it  right on the fabric and then colored it with markers. I am not sure what kind of markers she used but I am pretty sure they were something new that she was trying out. When we get together again I think we will all exchange ideas about what we used and how we liked it and what we would do differently or the same way. If anyone else sends me pics I will  show them and I will remember to take pictures next time.

I had a tracing of my hand that I had done when I first starting playing a few weeks ago.

Someone mentioned on her blog about a group tracing their hands (guess where I got the idea to do that). I think she then traced it on to cloth because she said she could have printed it on her ink jet printer.  AHA.......I had some treated fabric already ironed onto  freezer paper. I could do that! I scanned it and I did print it out first on paper. The first one was teeny tiny, about 3 inches square. The second one was from my photo program and it was too big the third one was printed from Paint and it was just right; so I printed that one on fabric. The original on paper was never meant to be used but I liked it and cleaned it up a little but it was not nearly as nice and clean as the work the ladies were doing yesterday. I am still just experimenting and I decided that though it is not perfect I would do something with it. I traced over all of the lines with a black Pigma pen to sharpen them and I did a little "fixing up" also. I laid it on a piece of fabric that I was going to cut for the back and I liked the way the pattern showed through on the white background so I fused the pieces together then I fused them  to a piece of Timtex (remember I am experimenting). I fused the backing on the other side of the Timtex and quilted on the line outlining the hand with black and then echo quilted with white over the background and added the binding.

It is very stiff and will stand on a little easel if that is what I want. I have a sketch of my right hand too so I guess I will  do the same with that one.

BTW, Jack had a look at my old camera, he went on line looking for a solution and found one, so now he has my old camera. It used to work the other way around; every time he bought an new (more expensive) camera I got the old one. My new camera is not expensive but has better features than the old one. It worked out well for everyone.

Long time no post

I just realized how long it has been since I had anything to say. Not having anything worthwhile to say doesn't usually stop me so I guess it must be that I had no photos to post.

Our little group at church has been getting ready for quilt camp. We cut up a lot of donated fabric into 2 1/2 inch strips and let the kids pick there own fabric strips. A lot of our donated fabric just appears in our closet and we now not from where it came. Much of it is older fabric and not current colors or designs but still good fabric. Of course it is not color/value coordinated and there are more small prints than anything else. The good thing is it is FREE. This is the quilt the kids will be making. This one was made from a Jelly Roll. After the kids were all finished picking their fabric I picked out a bunch of strips using the pattern suggestions as a guide. I decided  I better make this one myself if I am  going to help someone else make it.  I picked out red/pink, blue, and white/light. The dark blue horizontal strips in each block, that are supposed to coordinate everything, are from my stash. We are having the teens buy that coordinating fabric themselves.

This is what I have so far; it is still  in thee parts. No matter how much I work with scrappy blocks and move things around I always end up with some things that are closer together than what I  intended. I guess when I concentrate on one fabric something else I am not paying attention to gets moved also.  I am  going to use the blue fabric for the inner border as well and then a piano keys 4 inch outer border.

I cut my strips sets into 7 1/2 inch segments instead of 91/2 as the pattern calls for. Some of the strips were not long enough to get 2 - 9 1/2 inch sections. I think I like the shorter sections better and I can get 4 1/2 inch sections for the border from some of the strips sets. I  think the hard part for the kids will be deciding on which strips to sew together and then arranging the sections will probably take a long time. It should be an interesting week and there are always surprizes.

The other thing I have been doing is doodling. I want to make one or two more small pieces before our play day in July. This particular shape/doodle has caught my interest. I  think the "pods" are called mooka? of course they look different when drawn in order to interpret in them fabric. Some of the background stuff is not what I intend to put in my piece but just there to practice drawing a small shape. I think the main shape looks like an iris.  I decided  to add some color to this  other drawing. I  am lazy and don't really like coloring inside the lines with colored pencils and my markers are drying up. I guess it is time for new markers. I'm sure the great grand kids will agree; they seem to think the markers are for them. Well........ I guess I really did buy them for the GGK's  to use

Doodle done

I finished my practice piece today. It measures 14 inches across at the widest part and 11 inches up and down at the center. The colors here are not quite right on but it is pretty true except for the blue which is  more blue green and it shows here. Everything is fused except for the flowers. I found these felt buttons at Joann's. I went looking for something to  use instead of cutting them from fabric.  Circles and petals were not easy in this small  size. I  had intended to use a lot more small circles/dots all over as fill ins but after cutting a few I changed my mind.
After I stitched some of the  elements  down I covered the whole thing with tulle and quilted it.  This is the first time I have covered a piece  with tulle and because it was inexpensive I found 5 different  colors to experiment. I ended up using  navy tulle. I  used the tulle because of the small fused pieces that were too small  to stitch around. The tulle doesn't change the color but it did darken everything a little. I think maybe I won't use it when I make the bigger piece.
I used a facing instead of a binding and finished it on the back  by hand. After everything else was finished I added the felt  buttons/flowers. I suppose they are buttons because there are button holes in them but I don't know that they would make very practical buttons.
The flowers were probably the hardest to sew. I sewed them on by hand with lime green perle cotton. I sewed through the button holes and then one stitch at the end  of each petal. I did it so the perle cotton did not show on the back and it was difficult to pull the needle through.
All in all it was a good learning experience. I think it looks a lot like the same technique as my blog banner quilt. It some ways doing the drawing was similar. It was easier doing the doodling as the zen tangle shapes are repetitive. For me this was different than using printed fabric because that is where my inspiration has always originated.
In July a  group of us a going to get together and just have a play day with this. It will be fun to see what everyone does.

Not so easy!

I ironed all  my fabric from the freezer today and applied the Wonder Under to some of it. I did a lot of reading from  Melody's helpful stuff about fusing and Laura Wasilowski's article in quilting arts and some other things I had in a notebook. Eventually you just have to start.

This is a lot more work than I thought it would be, starting with removing the release paper in one piece. I finally got the  hang of it about half way through. I found out it works best if I pull the fabric off of the paper instead of the paper off the fabric. This is not the first time I have done any fusing and I  am sure that information is in all of the stuff I have been looking at but for some reason I never knew that.

This is my little pile of fused fabric. Not very impressive but I worked hard at getting it ready. This is the only neat place in my sewing room everything outside of this cropped photo is disaster.

Overlay



No name yet zen doodle



 Melody said in her helpful  notes that she  uses an  overlay  for placement when working from her patterns. I traced mine off on tracing paper and I can pin it to my background. It is helpful when placing all of the pieces. This  is what I have so far. At this  point I like the black and white tracing better. I am undecided about what colors I want to use in the next part and not even sure what I will  work on next. I know the flowers and all the little circles/dots will be last as cutting them will  be tedious. I'm happy I decided to make a smaller piece first because it took me all day to  get just this far. Of course there were times for coffee breaks and iced tea breaks and computer breaks and fixing dinner.