Monthly Archives: April 2014

Bike Boys and Road Trip

This has been a BIG week.  I traveled to Paducah this week with my parents, Willis and Dixie, for the AQS Quilt Week festivities.  I received a first prize in the Small Wall Quilt, Pictorial category for my “Panning for Gold,” and met lots of wonderful quilters.  We were actually in Paducah for just over 24 hours, but, thanks to Dixie on a motorized scooter, we barely stopped moving.

Lunch on the Curb

Lea with parents in Paducah

In spite of the out of town time, I still made progress on thread painting the Bike Boys.  I now have the first 2 guys stitched.  With a win at Paducah, I’m energized to get this piece done in time to submit to the show in Houston in November.

This is the front man.  I’m not totally satisfied with his face.  I’might give him a mustache.

Here is the second man.  I rather like him, but I will need to do some additional shaping of the hat after I stitch the background figure. Below, see the 2 guys together.

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Adam and the Paperectomy

Finally, it’s time to begin work on the people in this composition.  I’m going back to the beginning, the first image that I fused with

The vest in cool reds

fabric, the man in the background on far right.  Since he is first, I’m calling him Adam.  Because he is a less significant figure, I’m using him as a warm-up to the big buys on the bike.  I started with the vest, using cooler reds than in the bike frame so as to push it into the background,

I move next to the face, again selecting a group of cool grays that will fall back from the warmer tones I will use on the actual bike boys.

The face emerges

Finally, I work on the coat.  This is where I find that the dimensions on the arm are messed up.  I will try to redefine them with thread by making the upper arm wider, and shaving off some of the lower edge of the fore sleeve with darker thread that will put it into shadow sooner.  Check back later to see how this works out.

Got to fix that sleeve

Stitching people is a bit intense. when I have only a short period of time to work and don’t want to dive into the details, I move to the background and begin filling it in.  I discover that this too, presents problems.  While stitching, I begin to hear a clicking noise.  Investigation reveals that I didn’t remove a piece of backing paper before assembling this portion of the work.  I need to go in and get it. I declare the need for a “paperectomy” and prepare for surgery.  See this delicate operation below.  The important thing is to make incisions through the layers at various places.  Once done, I can stitch over the area and seal up the cuts that I’ve made.  The patient will survive with no permanent scars.

Horizontal cut through tulle

Scissors under tulle make vertical cut through fabric.

Loosen and remove paper.

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Bike Tire

This week, I’ve managed to finish the bike frame and the tires.  I’ve taken a series of photos of the back tire to show how I progress from the lightest threads to the darkest, and then add accents (bits of black) and highlights (bits of white).  Aside from the white and black, I used 4 values of thread, but chose 2 threads for each value.  One was slightly warmer and the other cooler.  I’ve set up my threads and a reference photo on the laptop.  Now, I’m ready to get started.

I work my way around the tire using both threads of each value, but use more of the warmer thread in the back, lit part of the tire, and more of the cooler thread in the front, or shaded side of the tire. Here is how it went.

scissors point to trouble spot.

On may way around I discover trouble: the lines of the tire don’t line up well as they appear between the parts of the frame.  I’ll have to keep this in mind and make some corrections with the darker threads.

I use the mid-value threads to blend the edges of the tire trouble spots with the background.

scissors point to blending away of bad edges

I use the darker threads to redefine the edges so that they line up.

edges redefined

Now, I consult my photo from several weeks back showing the strings.  I use this to select key spots to add white and black to create highlights and accents at just the right spots. (see blog from 3/1/2014).

A mere four hours later, and it’s all done. Hmmm, what to tackle next…

 

 

 

 

 

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