Geek Speak Blog

I had a number of firsts this year.

I decided to enter something in my guild's quilt show.  I've been in the guild close to 6 years and was never interested in creating something for the show, but after stumbling across the quilted acrylic canvases, I decided I had finally found something I wanted to submit.

I took the watercolor painted applique last year and wanted to take it up several notches.  I had only been dabbling with it.  Meanwhile, I had been holding onto 3 canvases that I had dubbed Caribbean Waters.  The two techniques suddenly collided. 

Thank you for taking an interest in my quilted acrylic artwork!

I've created this page to give you a better understanding about the process that I use to create my quilted acrylic painted wall hangings.

It starts with the lightest weight cotton canvas and each canvas starts out around 28" x 30".  These are cut from a very large spool of canvas- about 6 feet tall!

The original version of this article was lost when I upgraded my website software, so I decided to rewrite it! I  think it's much better now.

There's a bottom line to this article: There are a several factors and perceptions at work that make it difficult to price handcrafted items.

I see it as an intersection between the art you are making and the person who could buy it.

Forewarning!  This article is kind of dry!

I will go over most of the associated costs to give you a better idea of what it takes to create my quilted acrylic painted canvas artwork.

There was a very large amount of startup cost involved with this undertaking, because I had never tried anything this complex, before. 

I described the acrylic painted canvases that I've been working on over the last several months in a previous blog post.

Several friends have had trouble visualizing what the finished projects would look like.  At least one person was horrified that I chopped the canvases into pieces, even after explaining that they were not the finished project!

These quilted mixed media projects require a great deal of preparation and it can take up to a week of daily work.

I was already shopping at Dick Blick Art Supplies.  They have a great selection of everything, including bulk raw 7 oz canvas (online only) at a really affordable price.

As for acrylic paint, I went with Blick.  They have value, student and professional grade acrylic paints.   I chose the value paint.

I took another very interesting on-line course with the American Quilt Society a couple of months ago: Artistic Painted Appliqué with Linda M. Poole.

I already had watercolor pencils and blocks for another painting project.  I was also deep into Acrylic Painting for Wall Hangings, so I figured why not!

 This is a bit of a long story, but it shows how I decided what worked best for my applique project.

Due to several nasty technical issues, I was forced to rebuild my website this week!

As a result, I was also able to incorporate a number of new features, including a number of photo galleries.

The rating system will return at some point.  There are other technical reasons that prevent me from adding the feature to the new website.

I was searching around the Internet one day several months ago.   I'm not even sure what I was looking for, but I found an outstanding American Quilt Society class that blew my mind.

I watched the sample video for the class, then turned around and bought it!

The instructor, Katie Pasquini Masopust, introduces an acrylic paint technique that incorporates fabric, stamped objects and more.  The end result is amazing pieced, quilted and framed wall hanging.  I will post my currently finished pieces in a blog post later.

A variety of quilted and padded 8" zipper bags are now available in my Etsy Store!

This zipper bags are designed to accommodate 8" tablet and eBook readers, including, but not limited to:

iPad Mini, Kindle, Kindle Paperwhite, Kindle Oasis.

They come in a variety of fabric styles.  Here are a few examples: