Happy Villages & Accidental Landscapes Demo

no watch shows thank you for being here and let me show you my art quilts and I'm actually going to demonstrate how my accidental landscape and my happy malicious go together you might be surprised if I told you that when I made my first quilt I didn't have a cell I had to get the instruction booklet out for my sewing machine on how to thread the machine I had no idea but I had taken art lesson since I was six years old and so I figured I can draw how hard can this quilting stuff and well that was 30 years ago so I taught myself how to sew in order to make my first bill now before I start I'm going to just go over some just a basic definition and I might throw out some things that you don't know what I'm talking about I might use a term that you don't understand we'll just save those questions for later and then I can explain them but a quilt just the basics is the quilt top that's the part you see sometimes it's just one piece of fabric like this is a piece that I've hand-painted it might be pieced or some of you know it as a patchwork or it's patched or it could be appliquéd but that's the part you see and then underneath is the part you don't see this is batting this is cotton batting that's what I like to use for my wall boots because it hanging nice and flat if I were making a vet coat I wouldn't want that I want something nice and fluffy so that's what's in between that you don't see and then the very underneath part is the another piece of fabric that would be the right side wrong side there and what makes it a quilt the stitching it can be hand stitching or convenience Christine stitching but that's what officially makes it a quilt because that holds all three of these layers together you will see a lot of this kind of fabric in my landscapes and my happy villages because that's what I like to do it's painting with a Sun sensitive fabric and color tissue paper but that's a whole other workshop so when I taught myself how to sew I really I didn't like to do anything that was normal I've had to be out of the box it had to be curves it had to be something that had the illusion of movement and so for ten years or so I did what was traditionally called curved piecing some templates and it took a lot of time to do it very labor-intensive and after the ten years of doing that I said you know this is my hobby this is not fun I want to have fun and so I said to myself that's very dangerous what if I just took my rotary cutter and this is the pizza cutter of the quilting world it's a round rotary blade very dangerous and we all have scars to prove it I would take my cutting mat and I have a cutting mat it's self-healing fat so big and I would just do that blade just cut whatever felt good to me and then I would I heard those edges under and I went top stitch them together and I would create a whole bunch of these kind of things I call these a wavelength and I could make some that were water and some that were sand and just a whole bunch of things like that and most of times they went together to create something very abstract okay after a while I was teaching this and at the end of it class we be you know making these waves for six hours we hold them we'd be like anyway anyway so we put the our fabric so that the lines were oriented horizontally I just want to fold this I can hold it up and show you and what happened was all of a sudden we got an accidental landscape we even have an accidental moon or a Sun in there not planned and that's what hats how they started now that could be that way it looks mighty fine that way too I mean that's not your typical color for a river but it looks like a river that yellow orange river running through there so I started making a whole bunch of these landscapes and I bring them to a lecture like this and guilt and I'd say this is what you can do with my top stitching technique and then if I said well where's the pattern guys that they're accidental I have no idea how I did this and so I was on Long Island and that's the extent of my Long Island accent they said Karen you have to do a pattern for that I said I can't if I said could I write the guidelines and they stood yes you should and so I did I accidentally got into writing patterns okay so I have a whole series of these patterns and the point is it's the hardest thing I ever did I have to figure out the colors the proportions the values the measurements etc so that when I tell each and every one of you to cut a curve because it's all going to be different then it's going to work mm-hmm and it does because I've been teaching this move 14 years and everybody does fine so this is your first little lesson or the first demo I think if this is the most fun duty of the beach sing it just break it down into Skyy I'm going to do three strips of water and eleven strips of sand you say why 11 trust me it's just a good proportion within them so this is how it starts its have a nice little piece of sky fabric this is what I call a commercial fabric the clouds are already printed on there a lot of times on this one I'll paint my own fabric and it's fun to do too all right and so the first thing that goes down is our dark water strip now the water are all cut they're the same width is the sky but there are two inch strips so they have the risin line is straight I get seasick so I want that line to be straight and it should be straight anyway that's done that goes down it just covers that bottom raw edge of the sky then my other ones they have just a very little bit of a curve there and always you consider the back edges you ironed under so it's no raw edge and so the next marriage cake pop up I go like this that way everybody can see better and I'm going to put that real close like that I'm going to put the next one down like so then I'm going to be so cool oh yes oh that's a future Island okay let me get my piece of hair so I have all my sand fabrics there cut there a little deeper there four inches and the only thing I'm doing as far as perspective is normally if you look at a landscape you have dark in the foreground and it gets lighter and greater in the background in this beach scene once you learn a role in my class you break it right away so we're going to do it the opposite we're going to have the light source here in the foreground and it's going to get a darker as it gets to the wetter darker sanity okay that's our thinking there okay so let's just pick one of these up so they weren't you can do them left or right with an angle one I'm just going to do it really quickly here it's best if you talk to somebody while you're doing that good that way you don't think about it too much because when we think we'll get trouble and that is actually how quickly it goes on like so actually here's one this that's actually I would put a mat around there it doesn't take any longer than that to put it together and once it's pinned I mean once you have it like that you know what everybody does you take it apart at least 10 20 more times the thing is you have to just say it's fine that way and then you pin it you do something like this all right so everything is all together it's like a magician time everything is pinned okay not accidental pinning and then you top stitch it so all the infants is the time that you're using your sewing machine and the only thing that you cut away some things back here underneath okay and then you square it up and then you decide to add details when you add a peach do a fence or a sailboat and other things like that let me just do one other just another variation to show you you could something like this you can add a distant island there okay strip there we could even have a little bit of lace in there okay then I'm going to break the rule I'm just going to pick these up in any old order because I said I could we could break through although I like a little more contrary okay now but it's going to be big dunes okay we're just going to go really crazy here you see it's really hard really really difficult do you catching that it's really playtime and you see why I still have such fun with it how many all sticking like that this is cotton sticking to cotton I just print this stays that way this one is it hard to iron down the curb so that they're not really do is you've got the concave you've got the bias of the fabric working with you okay so there we could also put a lighthouse on something like that let's see here's one at the bottom I'll show you just a couple variations because once you know the basic see it's just a matter of changing the colors so here we changed it we made it horizontal that's a typical landscape format and we put a lighthouse on so same basic idea just different proportions something smaller here we have a low horizon instead of a Haida risin it's one of my painted fabrics and just doing the sea oats and a little seagull in there this is our daughter what is it 32 years ago older which you is due to Europe on the beach I'm taking a photo transfer and putting that on to your scene and these are actually shells that we collect on the beach we used to go to Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands and here you can add some beach grass an umbrella beach chairs just try to personalize it this is these two are kind of what I call my accidental accidental landscapes when I've made a couple landscapes I have all these strips laying left over so I can't throw them away can I so you throw them together and they get a little life of their own and I think they're almost cuter than whatever I started out with smaller gets cuter and cuter so that's kind of a synopsis of our our accidental landscapes and something very different but just as playful are the happy villages ah this is what I was looking for later because when you when you do the scene and you really didn't see it and I'm sorry because I had it SOPA organized up there once you put the mat on there and sit it up you really can see what you have better late than never okay so happy villages here's a happy village there's a happy villages those RS there they start out as squares okay and then I cut those squares into these silly little shapes I never it was like the landscapes I didn't mean to ever do landscapes I never meant to make a village either they were leftover shapes from something and long story short they turned into villages and I've just gotten addicted to making them so what happens is we cut them into the shapes that's not a an accident at all and then we make a mess it's like if you remember Colorforms when you were a kid yeah this doesn't look like the village right it's not supposed to okay and when I teach this class this is the hardest part of the class because everybody starts the wine you can still paint it down like really okay little mamas you it will so what happens is our contractor has limited knowledge and he or she only knows how to do half circles trapezoids and some triangles for rooftops so here we've taken that mess okay and we've started to add rooftops all right and then once you do that then you start to add windows and steps and then then you get to the point where it's got to be all blue and then you put to a lot but another version has had and will actually do one together is I always highly recommend that you add some sky and some water because then you have less real estate to do village is done a lot quicker and then I can't ask your students okay so let's show you how something like that would would happen so that's that's what we're going to work on this afternoon work I should use the word work if it's it's it should be white what happened for this is it's something we're not going to go this far but this would be the same thing just taking it a step further unintended and I make sure that I know where my quilt stores are in my library that's important so okay I should mention while I'm Emma at this step I use this fabric glue it dries clear it washes out if I were to wash these they're not meant to be washed it comes out a little tiny dot and I can just slide things under here like that press and glue so I don't have glue all over my fingers so that just holds this in place that's just lightly held there now where do I put a roof top any any of those horizontal lines would be a prime candidate for that so I've got a just kind of pre-cut some of these so you can have to sit there and watch me do all that and so if I put long handle tweezers come in handy for this we've almost got a castle already isn't cool now there was a sale on these stripe rooftops the people on location Location the people on the beach they have the cool very cool rooftops here so we've got some triangles we've got trapezoid I think this is my observatory up here here's a half circle or could be a museum I don't know this one just I'm going to just go to put a couple move tops on just so you can see what I'm up to here sometimes people can't decide on the color of you know the house so this is a duplex so we put a roof over lavender in the yellow that's okay we can do it ever we want are those pieces ironed under no these are all raw edge so that's different than the accidental auntie a random window okay maybe a couple more rooftops but you get the idea right all of a sudden something that didn't look like a village starting to look like a village so now it's time to put a couple windows in or now that o'clock we're going to make this into a clock tower just good and maybe we'll do a couple more those oh wow these are fun they either call these the roman aquaduct or the bridge gets us to our private island over here you can have something like that or I kind of like to have it as a pier where it comes in and maybe that's a really cool restaurant and we sit out there and once you cut one of those you have all these little leftover see you can throw anything away so we'll just start picking those up there see now my hiking friends new know what I'm doing when I'm not on the trail with you and maybe we'll have a couple of other different colors here they've got their lights on your meetings no Damon oh yeah I got a library sign I think that's the library and all these buildings who can't get into them we better make sure we have a door doesn't help if we don't have door I'll stop soon I always I just get carried away just keep playing and playing get a little warning and then we would continue with that and I was doing like super fast we can start to plant trees and what where we put the trees is in place you don't like it's up I don't like that's a funny little place there and so then we just start to plant some trees and we can do palm trees we can do just these little evergreens which are fun that's a funny little shape there just cover that it's very scientific okay and that is how the village would progress okay so once you get it to that stage of course you would have to glue it but I'm going to show you you an audition different color tool on there so this one is the one that's ready for that and what is to tool is this fine fine knitting like brides wear okay thick it comes in any color you can imagine and so that goes over the whole piece and the right color is the one that you don't know is there okay this one has a little shimmer to it and if anything I think it dulls it a bit don't you think from there the nudes okay if you say yes or no I think adults so let's just try I have a blue one that was a like a lavender now right here notice my think that's a pretty good one yeah it's absolutely okay that that would that would be a contender let's try just for fun let's try a red one and you know what's going to happen I want to change the time of day it misses out the red mixes with it Luke it's purple sky it softens the yellow cut becomes more orange and so it's totally different type of day there isn't a right or wrong it's just whatever one you like because when I first started teaching this I taught in a pill store in Virginia health stores don't usually carry this and the owner was so excited I have black tulle for you I might do another well this this class is going to be ruined but what happened is we realized black is mighty cool too it pops the colors totally it dulls the yellows a lot it makes it a little bit more stormy but otherwise it really pops it so once you decide um then that's when the sewing machine comes in and so people just don't want to do it young kids in in New Zealand the teacher taught in construction paper and glue um you could do this and it's called a fusible you've got iron or fusible you iron it on and frame it so you don't have to know how to sew in order to do that so it's just I take everything that I do is really like an adult kindergarten class why not we should have fun as adults we just forget that works for artists so here's a comparison this one has lavender tulle this is black they're both the same color palette but they look different and again one is it right or wrong it's just whatever you like and then you can see the quilting this is simple quilting that's something I could do in an hour just outlined quilting that holds everything together or this is where I put the bricks in the mortar and okay the bricks and stones and the shingles and everything is quilted on that here are a couple other variations here's the one I'm more Italy inspired to pour Tara area what do you have on that works this one has probably a medium blue and here this one was actually Austrian village I think was inspired but it can be anywhere you want it to be and you can put a photograph in your village just like I did with the landscapes this one has a in photo transfer from Regensburg that plant husband Walter took and then making the villa building your village around that so you have a little realism a little perspective and the rest is wonky it's just supposed to be nothing straight just very childlike speaking of childlike this Hillary you are with this or the silly or I am anyway the more fun you have so this was fun you know a witch's hat for a rooftop well yeah why not pumpkins and jack-o'-lanterns for eyeballs and and doors and that kind of thing so you can see I don't take myself too seriously was it a year or so ago we lost power for a couple days and I had to do something so I did a mini mini millage get my liking a headlamp out just to see what I was doing so that was the same shape that you saw the big ones but I started with the two inch square my husband's not but it was fun so that's medieval or it's five o'clock somewhere too even got our two kayaks they're yellow no that's how my villages and landscapes go together my other pieces of like the this is the same technique the layer top stitching so that's more than abstract work that I do most of my work is this size and more abstract but I'll use that fabric also in wearables too and this is a bigger village that we've already talked about so I'll answer any questions and then your you know I'm excited for you to see all my pieces out there and again it's just a sampling it's a small sampling of over 30 years of work I mean I think I must have at least 300 pieces any questions if you answered already but actually he was full of grass in the data phone records and background the mountain air with them or is that claw yes claw no not dr. Scott yeah that this is just a clone piece of fabric again flying the fabrics is is having fun of this or we were painting it will you paint when you see your paint you pay you with acrylic you pay you with I'm painting with it it's been a color by Pepe oh and it's a Sun sensitive water-based paint so if I painted with blue paint yesterday you wouldn't still see it on my hands because it washes off which is my group we're kind of dragging with you you like a cotton batting the hundred percent or a cotton bamboo for wall hangings because you want it to be string like that nice and I can use about the sewing part of it are you going around the edge are you going to do like an abstract pattern alone which even I can do real simple like that just outlining the shapes or you see it more of this one you can see I've done some release in circles I've done stone work these pieces I killed like yeah and that's all that's all machine is called free motion quilting if you're not a store even I think you can imagine the machine if you feed your fabric in it will sew a line if you disengage the mechanism that makes it feed it's free so I I just do this kind of thing and so I'm basically drawing with the needle and thread and that's what I like to do because I like to draw are they lost straight stitch and not successful I was just saying it's free motion okay so your lunch is doodling I'm a big doodle or you'll see up yeah you'll see and this is doodling and you can't see if you're smart even professionals you put busy back in my sewing that maybe this bag it happens the phone rings or my daughter texts you those but yeah it's all the freeform machine filthy what color Fred use how do you decide on which color they will stand out well sometimes I wanted to stand out it depends whether I want it to blend or contrast like here I got it red thread against the yellow to contrast so you're changing on changing but there's some threads that change color that's called variegated thread so your zones yeah I mean do you ever put the tool over the landscapes no cuz there's there isn't any reason to because they're secured Wade yeah the edges are all these edges are already tough turned under I'm in the landscapes yeah so the only the tool is just holding those raw edges so they don't fray more and so on top of any so on top of the tool so all that cruelty goes through that and you don't catch no it actually makes it easier the tool makes it a nice smooth or sewing surface put your glue each piece yeah just a little bit just a little bit so help yourself there's on that the little programs are up here I've got a book if you want to see other things that I've done back to 1995 a book that I did for Bedford Village elementary school there's all sorts of stuff in there and in the books - there and the quilts are waiting and we've got some wine and goodies are you teaching any workshops locally I'm doing a random roses which is that up in both of you in New Hartford next Sunday I think there's room and I highly recommend you taking a workshop there she makes it very accessible and very easy oh did I say you

Channel: Karen Eckmeier

Views: 56,855

Rating: 4.9593344 out of 5

Keywords: iMovie, quilts, quilting, fiber art, landscapes, happy villages, karen eckmeier, quilted lizard, layered waves, accidental landscapes

Id: gUqtM8bIVi0

Length: 30min 0sec (1800 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 11 2016