Quilled Borders

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you all have a wonderful day surrounded by family and friends . . . and once everyone has gone home and you recover from all that turkey, you’ll probably start thinking about all of that quilling you wanted to get done before Christmas. I have finally finished all of my special orders and can now concentrate on quilling some fun stuff. I have been working on a really special piece for my best friend, but I'lll save that for another day. What I wanted to talk about today is borders.

I recently had someone ask me about doing borders. Borders are usually placed around something, a verse, a photograph, a wedding invitation, just to name a few. There are lots of ways to do borders, you can run a border across the top and bottom of a piece, on opposite corners (one of my favorites), or all the way around the item you are “framing” with your quilling. Judy Cardinals book B5987 Quilled Borders & Motifs demonstrates borders using themes. An example of this is one of her baby borders which includes quilled baby bottles, rattles, and safety pins. Claire Choi’s book The Art of Paper Quilling has a whole section on borders. In the section on cards, she uses borders (mostly floral) to surround the sentiment on the front of the card, like “love”. The borders she uses on some of the framed pieces are usually in opposite corners. When working on opposite corners, you can keep the quilling symmetrical, using the same flowers or shapes in the same colors so they are “mirror images” of each other. The roses and calla lily border is one of these as is my top and bottom designs, while in the piece with the quilled ribbon the flowers are done in different colors and placed without regard to “matching’ the design on the opposite corner.

I think the borders that are the most daunting, are the ones that go all around the opening or the edge of the frame. I will tell you how I plan these out. If I am working with a rectangular border, I start in the corners. I usually make some shapes and “play” with them while they are dry to decide how I want the border to look. Then I start to work in from towards the center, adding shapes to complete the border. In this way, if your spacing is a little off and you have a gap in the center, you can just add one additional quill. Another tip: if the piece is a rectangle, I do the four corners first and then start working across the top and bottom at the same time; once the top and bottom are done then I start working on the two sides. This is particularly important if the design is complex.

If I am working on an oval border, I start at the centers (top and bottom, left and right) and then work inward. I have included some pictures here, these are fairly simple borders, but if you want to see totally awesome all around borders you need to go to Quillin From the Heart Clareen Bankhead’s borders are incredible! Her work is so delicate and beautiful that I just enjoy going over to her site to admire it all.

Quilling Comfort Zone

Quilling Comfort Zone

Today I’d like to talk a little about punches. Many quillers use punched flowers in with their quilled flowers. I actually bought a book on punched flowers at one of AGM’s I attended. But as I sat and read the instructions, I felt like this was a wholly different thing that what I love to do. I never even attempted one flower from that book. I’ve also seen some pretty neat leaf punches, but there are so many different ways to make quilled leaves, that I just never even tried the punched ones I do sprinkle a few small punch flowers in with my work, some simple flowers made with ¼” hole punches or heart punches. But the bulk of flowers I use are quilled.

Like everyone else, I find that sometimes I get into a rut and make the same flowers over and over in different colors. I am in my comfort zone and it is definitely easier to make what I know than it is to think up new flowers and experiment with them. That’s where books come in. On a quiet day, I make a cup of tea, and sit down with a stack of quilling books and just browse. There are all kinds of ideas and techniques to try, even in the books I am not particularly fond of. The next step is to play around with my quilling strips and try some of the “new” flowers. Some come easily and others seem like they are more trouble than they are worth. That seems like a strange thing to say considering how many roses I make. I make the kind made with rectangular pieces of 3/8” paper. Each petal is a separate piece of paper, and I fill the centers with gently curved ¼” holes. I make them using 3 different shades of the same color making the centers darker and the outer petals a lighter shade. What could be more trouble than making these roses? Well, that’s just it; I don’t consider them trouble because I do them easily and I do them well, but some of the other flowers can be a real challenge for me. For example, I love some of Claire Choi’s flowers in her book “The Art of Paper Quilling.” She has a flower on page 44 of her book which she simply calls “yellow flower wrapped in white strips”. She starts out with two yellow half moons and then places an orange four looped wheatear (or she calls it a vertical husking) between the two half moon and then wraps the whole thing with a white strip several times leaving some space at the tips of the petals so she can pinch it to a point. I LOVE this flower. There are several variations of this flower in her book. Do you think I can make one? NOT!!! This one is so far out of my comfort zone it might as well be at the South Pole. But, I will keep trying; I think I might be trying to make it too small . . . but I LIKE small flowers . . . oh well. There is another book, just out called “Quilled Border and Motifs” by Judy Cardinal. She does some really neat flowers, she calls fantasy flowers. Again . . . talk about comfort zones . . . I tend to try and make my flowers look like “real” flowers while she is having fun. Hmmm . . . I think I need to take a good look at this whole comfort zone thing. Well now that I have completely gone off on a tangent, I really didn’t talk about punches at all but I will next time. Next time I will talk about punches that I have come to love, border punches . . . in the meantime, here is another new book Quilled Wild Flowers by Janet Wilson to give you some more food for thought. Maybe I will sit down with Claire Choi at out next AGM (Annual Guild Meeting) and ask her to show me how to make those flowers.

Quilling Applications (Where do you put your quillling?)

Where do you put your quilling?

I thought, on the heels of my little blog about Megan Wilson, that maybe it was time to talk about some of the many applications quilling has. I think I may have mentioned that my first exposure to quilling was a quilled snowflake. Quilled snowflakes look so lacey and delicate and I still love to make them, hang them in my windows and give them as little gifts. But when I decided to sell my work, I realized that I wouldn’t be able to earn much selling such a small item. Over the years, I have done quilling around literally hundreds and hundreds of wedding invitations, anniversary announcements, poems and birth announcements. These became my “bread and butter” items; there was always a market for these occasions when people are looking for a very special gift. But there are so many other applications for quilling; I usually tell people the only thing that limits them is their own imagination! Here a just a few things that I have tried or seen others try.

I still have a quilled switch plate in the Whimsiquills room that is almost twenty years old. It is a fairly simple design on a wooden heart shaped switch plate that I bought in a craft store and painted to match the woodwork in the room.

I had quilling around a mirror mounted on a wood background with a towel bar underneath in my bathroom for years until just a couple of years ago when we remodeled the bathroom. We did knock a few of the quills off from time to time, but I just replaced them . . . it was kind of neat!
I designed and quilled a chess board to go with the chess men I made from a kit. Once I made the men, I felt they had to go with a quilled board. That design is available in Malinda Johnston’s Book of Paper Quilling on pages 105-106.

Dimensional or free standing quilling can be challenging but very exciting. Jinny Alexander’s Jinisans, my tea cups and saucer, and Christmas tree all pictured here on the blog are just a few examples.

Quilled greeting cards are very popular, especially when you look at the prices for greeting cards in card shops! Why not make a really special card with your personal touch? Several years ago (2003) I did some quilled eggs and Easter cards for Family Circle magazine at their request. They sent me some colored cards with oval cut outs etc. I got a bunch of calls asking where to buy those cards; Family Circle told me they had purchased them from a little boutique in New York. Now those kinds of cards are available in craft stores and on the internet Combine your quilling with rubber stamping, embossing, Pergamano (parchment craft), and embroidery to make some very unique greeting cards. I know others have done this as well, make a removable quilled Christmas ornament part of the greeting card. I make matching quilled gift tags to give to all of my customers with their orders.

One of my quilling friends, Rick Whitman, loves to do counted cross stitch. She will stitch an appropriate Bible verse, then mat it and quill on the mat and frame the whole thing for a very special gift item.

One of the more recent applications is the use of quilling in scrap books.
Quilled jewelry, I’ve made quilled pins, earrings and stick pins. There are a couple of kits and books with jewelry designs, and we are including quilled jewelry in the 2009 Accord quilling calendar. Of course the Quilling calendar (2008 now available) was a really unique application for quilling. The first calendar was done for 2007; each page has a quilling design, the directions are printed on the back of the page, and the strips are on the bottom of the page.

And last but not least we have the Megan Wilson application just in case you missed it! http://www.meganwilson.com/projects.php

I would love to hear what everyone else is doing, I’m sure I couldn’t have possibly covered everything. Share your ideas!

FYI there are two new posts on the Whimsiquills blog, one about a very interesting artist and another on the many applications of quilling. Also for those concerned about the 2007/2008 calendars I have put in a call to Accord publishing, but I really think the two calendars on the web are actually same calendar, the 2008; (even though one picture shows the 2007 box. I was told that the leftover 2007 calendars were destroyed which upset me more than a little.) The publisher has a suggested retail price ($14.99 for the 2008 calendar), but anyone selling them can charge whatever they choose. Mega calendar is just one of the distributors that Accord (Andrews McMeil) sells to. If I find out anything different, I will be sure to post to the groups.

Specialty Quilling Papers/Strips (Graduated/Dark Center)

Specialty Quilling Papers-Graduated and Dark Centers

We get a lot of questions about the specialty papers we carry, so I thought that might be a good topic to cover here. One of the questions we get frequently is "What are they used for?" Let me get some of the basic information about the strips first, and then we'll give some suggestions as to how they can be used. When we first brought graduated and dark center strips in from England, there was nothing like them here in the USA. All of the English graduated and dark center strips are 12" long. That's because they are printed on the paper. The English graduated strips come in 10 colors and in all 4 widths: 1/16", 1/8", ¼" and 3/8"as well as mixed/multi packs. One end of the strip is very pale, (almost white) and the color gets deeper as it goes up the strip. The dark center strips are pale on both ends with the deeper color being in the middle of the strip. The English strips come in pink, orange, yellow, opal green (which is like a turquoise), bright green, blue, red, lilac, brown and black. They are available in single packages or mixed/multi packages with all ten colors. Lake City now has some papers which they call watercolors which are dark center. They are also 12" long, and come in mixed packs only, no single color packs, in 1/8", `/4", and 3/8" widths. They come in ten colors which are quite close to the English colors except they have two shades of pink and no opal green. Paplin Products have also created a line of graduated (although they are actually dark center strips) papers. They are available in all 4 widths , their colors include red, yellow, fern green, peach, purple, orange olive green, pink, federal blue, orchid, and hyacinth (which is like a pale periwinkle) I like the Paplin colors because they "match" their regular papers. For example; the English and Lake City greens are bright almost Christmas green and that's a color I only use for Christmas. Paplins olive green and fern green are the kind of greens I prefer in my work. Quilled Creations also have graduated and dark center strips in the same colors as the English strip, but don't offer them in 1/16".

OK, so what do you do with them? I guess the first thing to think about is how long a strip you usually use. I generally don't use anything longer than 6" for conventional quilled shapes, so for me the dark centers work well; I cut the strips in half and then I have two six inch graduated strips. Then you decide whether you want the lighter or darker color on the inside of your shape, and that's where you start rolling. I especially like to used the graduated strips when I am doing wheatears or alternate side looping, (you remember, that's husking without pins). The quilling in those techniques is much more open so you really get to appreciate the shading differences in the papers. I will use the whole 12" strip for husked petals and love the effect of the petal center one shade and the shade deepens as you finish the petal, with the darker shade wrapping the petal. I also like fringed flowers using the graduated and dark center papers, it is a somewhat softer look than using two totally different colors. There is also a flower that I like to make that reminds me of lupines. It is a series of open s scrolls that get progressively smaller and the shade changes very softly with these papers. I don't remember where I first saw it, probably in one of Jane Jenkins books. On page 36 of her book Quilling Techniques and Inspiration, she has a very pretty arrangement of flowers all made with graduated and dark center papers. Next up we'll talk about two toned papers, and I will get some pictures posted so you can get the effect of these and other specialty papers. I would also like to see what you are doing with these strips. Stay tuned.

Teaching/Learning Quilling Part # 2 (Basic Shapes)

Teaching Quilling-Part 2

Basic Shapes

I begin my first class by showing some borders and designs made with the basic shapes and I tell my students that by the end of this first class they will be able to create any one of the designs I show them. Of course, they don’t believe me. I then show them how to roll with a slotted tool, a needle tool, and finger rolling; I generally pre-cut some practice strips into two lengths, (3” and 6”) just to save time. Each student gets a package of mix/multi colored 1/8” strips and a slotted tool. I would ask my students to bring a small pair of sharp straight blade scissors and a pair of pointed tweezers from home. (I would always have extras on hand in case someone forgets to bring them) I didn’t require them to purchase a work board although I always had some of them on hand as well (especially since we sell all of the supplies), but for the class I would give each person a piece of Styrofoam covered with waxed paper, a damp paper towel, and a fine tipped glue bottle to use. Then they are ready to start.

The first thing I do is ask them all to take a 6” strip and insert it into the slotted tool and roll up the length of the strip. Then I tell them to let the coil fall off the tool into their hand, and to show me the loose coil. This is when I explain to them that different people will have different tension in their coils; just like two knitters can use the same weight yarn, the same size needles, yet one might knit very tightly and another very loosely. This usually helps them relax a little when they realize their coil doesn’t have to be exactly the same size as their neighbors. I go on to explain that the rolled coil is the basis for almost all of the shapes they will use in quilling.

I provide a shape chart for each participant; we go through how to make the various shapes and they can glue them right on a blank shape chart. I often suggest they make the shapes with the 3” and 6’ strips so they can see the difference in size. We have a shape chart for you here, feel free to download them and print them out if you are so inclined, I only ask that you leave the Whimsiquills info on them so people can find us. Although we sell kits and patterns here at Whimsiquills, I don’t use them while teaching. I explain the difference between kits and patterns and show them how to use a pattern, by placing it on a work board and covering it with waxed paper or Mylar. I explain how important it is to make sure the quills are glued to each other rather than the waxed paper, and how to gently remove the finished piece or section of a piece by slowly peeling the waxed paper off the back of the piece without “popping” any of the quills. After everyone has practiced the various shapes, I bring out the finished pieces I showed them at the beginning of the class. I then point out all of the shapes they have just learned in the borders and designs. They are always amazed at how simple the design really is when you break it down into the various shapes. I then give each student a card or piece of mat board and encourage them to create their own design. It is fascinating to see the variety of designs they come up with.

As I said earlier, this is just my technique; I try to encourage creativity but NOT giving them a specific design to copy. Some will go on to purchase kits and follow patterns, while others will just do their thing. I know some teachers who have ongoing classes where each person in the class quills the same design and the next time they meet they will quill another, this is a good way for quillers to stay in touch and helps maintain their interest. Somehow even though I have the same 24 hours in the day as everyone else, I just don’t seem to have enough time to do much teaching anymore. Whichever approach you take, there are now lots of materials out there to aid in your teaching, certainly a lot more than when I first learned to quill! We have some really neat beginner kits and teacher packages here at Whimsiquills.com which include papers, tools, designs, and some extras like shape charts, mat boards etc. I also show my beginner students my two favorite books “The Book of Paper Quilling” by Malinda Johnston (which is now out of print but available in libraries and probably on Amazon and “Paper Quilling for the first time” by Alli Bartkowski. Both have excellent tutorials, Malinda’s book has lots of neat projects from different quillers (including a couple of mine) and a really neat gallery, and Alli’s book goes into great detail on 14 different techniques and also includes some projects and a gallery. We always have both books in stock since they are two of my favorites. Another book which is actually like a starter kit is “Twirled Paper” by Jacqueline Lee. This book comes with a tool, a package of paper, and glue. It is chock full of really cute ideas for the younger set including bugs, animals and aliens. It is a great gift idea for a child who likes to work with his hands and a great way to get our next generation of quillers started.

Stay tuned for part 3 which will be wide quill paper and dimensional quilling.