Dubai art quilts galore

I hope everyone's new year is getting off to a good start with lots of creativity. All this cold weather gives us a good reason to stay indoors and do lots of textiling although I did go out Sunday evening to do some blue hour photography andit was bitter cold. So cold I could hardly feel my fingers to set the camera. A few reasonable shots from it and there could have been more but it will have to wait until it is a bit warmer. Having said that - we are planing to go to Whitby this week to do some evening photography!!!!! Gluttens for punishment. It is forecast to be warmer by then - they said!!!!!

We have taken the plunge and made the decision to have the two settees reupholstered. We are waiting for the fabric to arrive and once they are recovered I can get rid of the throws which are a pain to keep straightening.

Now, as I said I would, the art quilts I have created form photographs I took in Dubai. As I alsways do, I openend the photographs in Photoshop and played around with them until I came up with an idea that I liked.

The first photograph was one of the water taxis tied up and parked on the Creekside.

This is the effect which I liked and used for the art quilt.

This was printed on silk then some surface highlighting with metallic paints was applied followed by free machining.

This is the finished art quilt. I haven't actually applied a border yet but when I do, it will be blue as above.

The next photograph was one of the buildings next to the water taxi parking place. I liked the arched windows.

Again, applying different effects on it in Photoshop -

I quite liked this very colourful effect. I made a pattern and traced the design onto cotton, then painted it with acrylic paints. I free machined the painted design and applied some glitter black pen to ouline the windows.

The next image was of the wooden roof of the fabric souk. there were some incredible fabrics for sale in there but I resisted as I have a huge stock of fabrics and need to use them up. The roof was was created from wooden arches with large ornate lights hanging down.

I simply inverted the colours of this and they turned out to be blue and perfect to make an art quilt.

This design was printed onto silk and free machined.

The next image was taken in the Heritage village. In the foreground there is a part of the original old Dubai fortress wall which has been preserved.

As before, I played with it in Photoshop until I found a design and effect that I liked.

I made a pattern and traced the design onto cotton, then painted and sponged the design ready to free machine.

Another potograph from the Heritage village was a close up shop of a decorative ballistrade which I liked.

I have cloned out the ark lights which light the village up at night. I had to do a lot of work in photoshop in order to create a flat image of just the ballitrade. This too was played with in Photoshop.

I printed this design onto silk and applied some metallic paints and some gold paints.

The final quilt was the largest and so was the most difficult to free machine. It was another image taken in the Heitage village and included a carved wooden camel in a doorway.

I used the same effect as for the old wall art quilt. Red seemed to suit these images and had they not occurred while applying different effects and filters I would not have thought of using these colours. This is one of the main reasons I use these filters. I get colour schemes I would not have dreamt up myself.

Ths design was enlarged with the height being more than a metre. I made a pattern and had to print out several sheets and join them together. the pattern was traced onto white cotton and then I sponged the colour using metallic paints and paper to mask as I sponged. I do not use a long arm quilting machine so it was difficult dealing with such a large quilt.

This quilt was so big I had to photograph it in sections and stitch it together in Photoshop as I had to do with the fabric souk roof art quilt.

That is all six art quilts. I wish I had the wall space to display them all but they are already full with lots of other textile work.

The piece I am working on at the moment is taking a long time as it is all hand stitching. It has turned out to be quite a challenge with a lot of padded leather work so it may be a while before I can blog about it.

So until the next blog

Cheers everyone