December 09, 2009

Meet Candy!

A guest post for you! I totally admire Candy's sense of color and style, and wanted you all to meet her - enjoy!

ETA: And the winner is -- Mombrose aka Heather!
Amazing art! So beautiful! :) I love the Ocean Surf Scarf colors! :D They are all so beautiful but my closet is fairly monotone in the blue family :D!
You should have an email from me - Congratulations!!




Hi There! My name is Candy, an art quilter working exclusively with my own hand dyed fabrics – they’re “Candied Fabric”! Amy’s asked me to tell you folks a little bit about what I do, and I’m honored to share a bit of my process with you.

With the roots of a traditional quilter, I LOVE taking smaller units and composing them into larger pieces. What I’m enjoying most these days is making small quilts that can be arranged and rearranged for display, rather than having to commit to just one arrangement and sewing them into one large unit! (You know - that stage where you’ve got the blocks on the working wall and you keep rearranging them ‘til you go insane?)

My latest series is inspired by the work of the awesome Skinny LaMinx, whose 2 color silkscreen designs often feature a sketch on a large, irregular patch of color. I had a lot of fun picking 2 different palettes of colors to work with (the “Jewel Tones” and the “Warm Colors”), then cutting nicely irregular patches from pre-fused fabric and ironing them onto a backing fabric. I then centered these over 6" x 8" layers of batting then peltex (used to stiffen baseball cap brims). I wrap the background fabric around to the back and carefully fuse it to the back. The peltex adds a bit more definition to the quilting, and makes the quilts stiff enough to stand propped up anywhere, and hang nice and flat.

Then comes the funnest part (is funnest a word? Spell check says NO! but I say YES!), the sketching! I free motion quilt a botanical motif on the quilt, going over the quilting 2-3 times, purposefully trying NOT to follow the lines – this gives me a nice bold line that emphasizes the fact that this indeed is a sketch done by hand, even though a mechanical tool was used. Here are videos of me doing 2 of them (apologies for the random sounds, on my LONG list of things to do is to learn how to set music to a video…)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7A-P_0eZAM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K93h7cClcbE

I had these playing in my booth at one of the art shows I did this Fall, and the videos got lots of attention. Here are answers to some frequent questions I got:

1. The speed of the video is not altered, it’s in real time.

2. There is nothing sketched on the fabric, I lower the feed dogs, decide what I want to sketch and go!

3. Practice Practice Practice! ;-) I’ve been doing free motion quilting for 15 years. Harriet Hargrave’s book got me started; a weekend with Melody Johnson at QSDS 11 years ago set me free.

4. A Juki TL-98 Q. It has a bit more space under the arm than regular home machines and is super fast, but it’s a pretty simple, straightforward machine.

After the quilting is done, a layer of fabric on the back covers it up, I then stitch on a hanging loop. And then the fun begins, playing around with arranging them. Although they could be hung directly on the wall in a grouping or individually, I had envisioned them hung on a mini clothesline, and luckily, I love the execution as much as I had imagined it.

As this is the giving season, I’d love to share some Candied Fabrics with you. Go take a look at all the different palettes I use for dyeing my scarves and pick your favorite one. Come back here and let me know and you could be the lucky person to win either a Habotai scarf or ½ yard of fabric custom dyed by ME for YOU!

It’s been fun sharing my sketches with you, feel free to drop by and visit my sweet spot on the internet when you have a free moment!


**Amy again - you have a week to leave a comment to win a beautiful scarf - I will select a winner December 17!



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38 comments:

  1. Oh gosh,your scarves are gorgeous! I have worn scarves forever and am always looking for something different...while I love all of your scarves, Breath of Spring is so lovely!

    Keep up the good work!

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  2. Beautiful! I think Wisteria or Ocean Surf are my favorites. They are all lovely!

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  3. Nice to meet you Candy. I love your work. Thanks Amy for introducing.

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  4. I love your Ocean City color palatte. I loved watching the clips on how you are able to free motion your designs. I can see that I still have many hours of practice until I am even close to your level. Thanks for sharing the type of machine you have. I have a friend with one of those Juki's and I've been drooling over it for some time. What type of threads do you use? And do you use the same thread in your bobbin?

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  5. It's so hard to pick just one - but I guess my favorite would be Black Orchid

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  6. I have been to your store before, your color palette is gorgeous!

    I love Earth and Sky!!

    SheilaC

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  7. Absolutley beautifuk.....I love the kelp!!!

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  8. Forgot to mention that I love the Ocean Surf Scarf colors! :D They are all so beautiful but my closet is fairly monotone in the blue family :D!

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  9. The colours are gorgeous. My favouite was black orchid. Thanks for the giveaway.

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  10. The scarves are absolutely beautiful - WOW! My favorite is definitely Earth, Wind & Fire.

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  11. Beautiful fabrics and scarves. I love Wisteria and Ocean sky. fingers crossed...and my toes

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  12. Love your botantical sketches! Your scarves are beautiful too!

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  13. Ocean Surf! I love those colors, just stunning!

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  14. The scarves are all so beautiful. I love the lilac colorway the best.

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  15. Gorgeous mini quilts! I love your scarves also. I think my favorites are the chocolate squash and Kelp. Fun names! Thanks for the giveaway!

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  16. I was thinking this year I should start wearing scarves. As beautifual as your scarves are, I would want to wear it everyday! I love them all; but Earth & Sky wins as my favorite. Thanks for showing us. I'm off to check out your Esty store.

    Linda in Calif.

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  17. I love all of your scarves but I think the Kelp is the most beautiful. They are really beautiful.

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  18. Thanks everyone!

    Lisa - for this kind of work I try to use a very thick thread cotton thread that's slightly variegated...YLI Fusions 24 weight (if I can get it in the color I need) and Sulky 30 weight are what I've been using. I use a lighter weight in the bobbin, right now it's a Gutterman 50 weight, but I'll use other things. I usually adjust the tension so the top thread gets pulled just slightly to the back side so I don't have to worry about the bobbin thread peeking through!

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  19. Oh my goodness! Ocean surf of course!!! But they are all beautiful! Thank You for such a great give away.
    Debbie J

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  20. What inspiration!! I love your technique!!!! I checked out your colors and I would have to say my favorite is Kelp! Thanks for the great giveaway!

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  21. How fun to have that explained! Thanks Amy for inviting Candy!

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  22. They are all absolutely gorgeous, but since I can only pick one I'll go with the Chocolate Squash.

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  23. I'm definitely in line with Pantone colour trends because I like all the ones with turquoise in them, like Ocean Surf.

    I found you a while back and I love to drool over your colours.

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  24. I LOVE the Ocean Surf colours. I can imagine it with a jet black top. It would zing. Your work is great and your quilting is speedily brilliant.
    Great giveaway,
    Abbe

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  25. Gosh the scarves are gorgeous, I can't choose between Sunset or Earth, Wind and Fire, they are "my" colours, being a redhead. Thanks for sharing your work, it's beautiful.

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  26. I think I may have found my mom's Christmas gift!

    I like the burnt fire... what can I say? my favorite color is red. :)

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  27. I follow Candied Fabrics with my Google Reader, your stuff is just gorgeous!

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  28. Candy's scarfs were just amazing!! I had a hard time picking a favorite, but "Aurora" really speaks to me! Beautiful work!!!
    Pat

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  29. Amy! what an amazing friend you have!!!

    Candy! you are my new hero! no joke! I got in to quilting because I saw a book about art quilting and thought to myself this would be an interesting new medium to explore! So Ive been doing it for about a year now (Im completely obsessed) and I just started to learn how to free motion sew so I will get there... someday :) Im just so impressed by your beautiful fabrics and how neat your sew sketching looks! Im going to have to give it a try to soon!!!

    p.s. the kelp is my favorite!

    ~candace

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  30. Talk about 'eye candy' Candy. It was so hard to choose, but I love that Black Orchid. It would go perfect with so many of my clothes. A very inspiring visit!
    Thanks!
    Lorna

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  31. Madrigals caught my eye on this visit, but they're all beautiful.

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  32. you have some gorgeous colours, but i think i like the 'sunset' on the best :)

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  33. I agree, quite beautiful! They're definitely gorgeous and would appeal to many different people :-). My personal favorites - based on what's currently in my wardrobe and the colors that I could actually wear - are Wisteria and Wild Rice. Otherwise I would also add Sunset and Ocean Surf to the list [I already have scarves in those colorways, but I think they're fantastic nonetheless].

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  34. I can't decide if I like blue of ocean or the gray of winter...anyway, im working on a quilt for my son using blue and gray so no wonder, huh? lovely work.

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