Welcome!

Thank you for visiting artful embellishments. This is the third year for this blog and I am so happy to keep publishing. I started in 2011 and began with a quilt of the week, this lead to the leaf of the week for my newly designed paper tree that is located on the wall of my garage in 2012.......2013 is going to bring a lot of excitement and positive change. As a personal challenge for 2013, I plan on designing a artist trading card each week to be featured on the blog.
With so many interests, there will be quilting, art quilting, leaves (and more leaves), as well as experiments in thermofax screen printing, fabric dying, and tons of DIY recycle projects. I may even enter that altered fashion scene. To a happy and healthy 2013, may we all find happiness in those things we create....thank you for stoping by artful embellishments.

Saturday, December 28, 2013

Quilt-UFO (Unfinished Object)


 As the year draws to a close I decided to try and finish some of those UFO's. I am famous for starting large projects and then getting stuck on a part of them that I don't like as much. Quilts are a classic example. I love piecing the top of the quilt, and am not as interested in the pinning to prepare for quilting. So I often have multiple quilt tops waiting to be quilted.  This is one that I started about a year ago. I finished it last week by using a quilting technique that I hadn't used before.  Using designs from my embroidery machine, I managed to finish the entire quilt.  I typically am not that colorful so this was a quilt that I used coordinating bright fabrics. This quilt definitely
adds a pop of color to my neutral decor.


Monday, December 2, 2013

Klimt Relief

Gustav Klimt had a "golden period" and it was my favorite. I am absolutely fascinated by the bold colors that he used.  He also added jewels which for embellishment purposes is right up my alley. For our 3D design class we had to take a 2D image and turn it into a relief. I chose a portion of the Stoclet Frieze.  You may remember me dying my own wool a while back!  This is 24" X 36" and took approximately 5 weeks to finish.  Wool is not as easy to work with as fabric and due to the thickness of this piece, it was a challenge with my felting machine.

 I used two types of wool carded and scoured. Carded wool has been processed. It has a soft texture and is really soft to the touch.  Many posts back I talked about Rug Works, and they sold scoured wool. That is wool taken directly off the sheep and then washed and bleached. It is then dyed. This wool retains the curls from the sheep. Carded wool actually is the step that occurs after the scouring and has a very finished look.

The woman's face was hand painted using fabric paint and a very tiny brush.

The piece is embellished with beads, buttons, and colored foil.  All of the embellishments are hand sewn and that is what contributed to most of the time. Below is taken from the Gustav Klimt website describing this mosaic. It was completed near the end of his life as he passed in 1918.



"The Stoclet Frieze is a series of three mosaics created by Austrian painter Gustav Klimt for a 1905-1911 commission for the Palais Stoclet in Brussells. The panels depict swirling Tree of life|Trees of life, a standing female figure and an embracing couple. The mosaics are spread across three walls of the Palais' dining room, with the two larger, figural sections set opposite each other on the longer walls of the room. A smaller, geometric panel occupies the short wall separating them. The designs are formed from a variety of luxury materials, including marble, ceramic, gilded tiles and enamel along with pearls and other semi-precious stones."Taken from www.klimt.com