Lovely Hand Painted Work by Kate O'Donnell

     Kate O'Donnell is an incredibly talented textile artist who lives in Pacheco, CA. I met Kate several years ago when I became acquainted and involved with a group of textile artists in Sonoma County, CA. They called themselves the Guilded Lilies, and they were an amazing group of women who shared a love of art and all things textile related.

     Over the years, I fell out of touch with most of the group as I live several hours away and time constraints kept me from participating in their wonderful retreats in the Healdsburg area. But a year ago, I ran into Kate at a show and we rekindled our friendship. Kate is a very accomplished dyer and art quilter. She has a special knack with color that makes her work sing with energy and vibrancy. Here is some of her wonderful work.

Kate used Radiance for the main painted panel and her own hand-dyed fabrics for the borders. I machine quilted both of these pieces for her.

      Kate had a very special friend that she wanted to make a wedding gift for. After taking my Stenciling on Fabric class in Fort Bragg, CA, last summer, she decided to hand paint  some Radiance using my Textile Design Stencils, Neopaque, and Lumiere paints.

     She painted the piece on the top first, and she was not quite satisfied. So then she painted the second piece and added the Chinese characters to the border. I love both pieces, and it makes me so happy to see how effectively she has used the stencils.
     I am including some images of the quick trapunto process that I used for the characters on the left border. The problem was that the metallic paint was quite heavy, and I didn't want to stitch through it. In doing fairly dense quilting around the outside of the characters, it would have made the inside of those shapes look really pucker. The extra batting helped to fill out the shapes, and now they look almost like they are embossed metal.

 The first step was to pin a layer of Hobbs Tuscany wool batting to the back of the entire left border. I then free-motion stitched very close to the edge of the 
painting with a neutral colored thread.

I pull back the top fabric and carefully trim away the extra batting on the back side.

This is the finished trapunto from the back side. Now I just layer my backing, batting, and top piece and pin the layers together as usual.

Here is a close-up of the finished quilted border.

I know that Kate put a tremendous amount of thought and effort into creating this piece, and it really shows. The lovely couple that she made it for really loved and appreciated her lovely gift to them.



 

Thank you for stopping by, and please leave a comment if you have time. I know that Kate would appreciate it, and I will pass your comments on to her.