Pebbles in the Stream

This is my newest 2D quilt and a very bad photo at that. I quickly snapped this as I rushed it out of the house and into the Pearson Legacy Gallery in Deer Isle, Maine on Tuesday. Hopefully I won't get it back because it will have sold but if it doesn't, I'll get better photos and a detail shot when the show is over. I used a new hanging system I saw on someones blog. I also bought professional silver umbrellas on pivoting stands with huge lights so I don't have to wait for the perfect time on a sunny day and pray for the best. The photos can't be worse than what I'm doing now.

SAQA Auction piece

This is my 12X12 piece for the SAQA auction. It is silk charmeuse and the processes I used were batik with soy wax with dye in it and thickened dye. Hand stitching is with gold metallic thread. The sandwich is made with pink felt (all I had at the time) and backed with white silk haboti. 2" sleeve. I really love this piece of fabric.

Spring Flowers

I renamed the "spring 9 patch" after dyeing more fabric for another improvisational quilt about spring air. I have not started on this. I am doing a parfait dye for the technique driven blog I am involved with called And then we set it on fire  As I type I am over-dyeing 6 pieces of black and white fabric using yellow (bottom), blue (middle), and red (top) dyes in a parfait for the blog. Photos will be added to THIS post later today so if they're not here check back in a few hours.
I lost a good friend this week. She was a lovely lady I stayed nights with for 3 years and her loss has left a bit of a hole in my heart. I wanted to do a mindless piece of quilting to just let my mind spin in neutral so I made a pin cushion out of scraps from Spring Flowers. It was the first piece I made using paper piecing. It was fun and just what the doctor ordered. I got the pattern from the Kemshalls, Thr3fold Journal #4.

Meanwhile...
Here are the pieces I dyed Parfait style. What a bust. They are too primary even though I added a pinch of black to knock back the colors. Not every experiment is a success.

                                                      These are embroidery threads I added

                                                       This one I like.

The muse was dancing this week

After a month of being in a rut, not creatively, but kinetically, I have made three quilts. Two are quilted and bound and today I will quilt the last piece and pillowcase it. First I think I should say a few things about kinetics. Judith came over this Saturday and we just jumped in with both feet experimenting with new techniques. I had had all the supplies needed to do these techniques but it was being able to hold someones hand as we both jumped off the cliff that was needed to take a thought and then take the action to make it real. Thank you Judith.

I finally used that beautiful sky fabric to make and finish "Vernal Pond". I had dyed the fabrics I needed, cut three stamps for the grass and had all the ProFab paint anyone could want. I just couldn't jump. I think the work Judith and I did really helped push me off the precipice.

We had done some silk screening at Kathy's community center mid-winter and I didn't know where to go with the pieces I made. "Fly Away" is what came out.

I dyed some green fabric for a quilt about bees. It was NOT the color I wanted but I loved it. It was a yummy olive green color. I took part of it and over dyed it. Now it was darker olive green - even yummier but not the color I wanted. Well, I took the olives (both) and teamed them with some lovely purples, lavender and pinks for a representation of what I think of as Spring! I just stared to improvisationally piece these colors with a vague idea if where I was going. I just wanted to make some improv squares or should I say squarish.blocks of spring color. I will be quilting this today with both tight machine quilting and a looser hand stitch. Meanwhile you can enjoy the fabulous colors of spring...

Image that I silk screened onto fabric

Image on another fabric with words, hand stitching and a mother crow calling sketch then painted (outline) with free motion sketched details.

                                                              Vernal Pond

                                                                Vernal pond detail

                                               Improvisationally pieced  "Spring Nine Patch"

An Afterthought

After making all that fabric using the kemshall batik techniques, I finally put the pear design and purple and green/yellow fabric together and finished the small quilt. I used a pen (brown) to shade the pear and colored thread to do additional shading then made half square triangled to surround the pear and the tjanting fabric to bind it.

I recently bought the world ugliest coffee cup - mat black with a grey lid. I decided to make a dress for it to pretty it up a bit. The coffee cup dress is attached to itself with Velcro like a wrap. I bound it with the color catchers I threw in the washing machine for the final wash of this fabric.

Molly

Call me crazy but I just love doing portrait quilts. I love my other stuff and abstract art but I get such satisfaction from doing portraits. I like trying to capture the essence of a being in fabric. I don't know if you can see these details but the white is cotton covered with organza and it sparkles. The black is a curly flocked satin with glittery bling.

In case you are wondering who Molly is, she is a full sister to Gabby about 5 years removed. They both have the same parents just not the same litter. I think Molly must be around 9 or 10 by now and she is the queen bee of my friend Donna (a.k.a. my springer neighbor). We were neighbors in Portland many moons ago.

Volusia: Wrapped in Fiber

This is my ENTRY piece for the Volusia show "Carbon Footprint".  This is just the beginning of the process. I finished my piece yesterday and took the shots outdoors in dim sunlight, cropped and adjusted the photos in Corel and entered online. I took six pictures to capture the 3 dimensional piece but you can only submit 2 pictures: one full and one detail. I submitted the full environmental side and the detail of the industrial side.
I  had no options on pictures so I figured I'll either get juried in or not. I just left it up to the universe. I should know within a few weeks of the due date, December 15th.

 

Full frontal view

Environmental side - one of the views I submitted. This is what the earth looks like without man's interference.

 

Environmental detail

Industrial side

 

Industrial detail

                                                                        Sole of the shoe
I made this by making a pattern for a wooden shoe tree I had just gotten. Each piece (right, left and bottom) were made individually and then sewn together. It was a disaster. I took the three pieces apart and decided to glue them onto a real shoe. I liked the look of this clog (still in use but sacrifices had to be made for ART). The bottom piece was made by scanning money and printing it on to fabric. The backing is my favorite, natural linen and the batting, organic cotton and bamboo.  This also went along with the environmental theme of the piece. I machine quilted the sole with green ($) dollar signs. Each side piece was made with hand dyed cotton, cotton/bamboo batting and linen. After all the work was done, I used dry wall adhesive to attach the three sections to the shoe. The "natural" earth side was pretty much just embroidery with a tiny shell and three stones trapped under my tulle "sea". The industrial side was made with my flame colored fabric (hand dyed) a leather oval, black "slick" paint, black tulle, an embossed old piece of discolored copper for the factory with a rusted key for a smoke stack, another building made with blocks printed with a tiny stamp and rust and copper paint and that brass bit as a stack. I embroidered and painted oil derricks and three three red X's are the universal symbol for poison. Both side pieces had a beaded edge done with a blanket stitch and bead. The beads on the industrial side were perfect and menacing in color.
This piece came out EXACTLY the way I had planned so I am very pleased whether I get into the Volusia show or not.

Deconstructed screenprinting and new quilt

Yesterday was a meeting of the creativity play group. The meeting was at my house in Searsport and Judith supplied the entertainment. She readied 2 screens, one really large one about 18x24 and a smaller 9x12ish one with dried thickened Procion dyes in chartreuse. She also made a huge roasting pans worth of gelatin so we could do some gelatin monoprinting. I know my attempts at monoprinting were pretty lame but Judith had some great ideas or at least sparked some creative ideas in me. She used organza (where was my thinking caps?) and some resists then after removing the resists printed the reverse of the print from the gelatin. At first I was not impressed with the technique but after watching Judith, I was off and running with ideas for next time. I would check Judith's blog for her prints. http://quiltordye.blogspot.com/
Next we did the deconstructed screen printing. OMG what a ball. I have found a new addiction. Sorry had to stop for a chocolate break! We started  with her chartreuse screens and as the dried dye was exhausting, we pulled a different color (blue) dye across the screens.
Here are the pieces I made through Judith's generosity!!

And here is the newest quilt I made called "Mishagoss" which is a Yiddish word for all mixed up and crazy.
I am not a traditional quilter but I just LOVE this little quilt made of 4" squares. Each block is free motion quilted in a matching color. LOTS of thread changes but it's the process and not the product (my new mantra). 40'x40"

Zac's naming ceremony

My son and daughter-in-law asked me to design a graphic for my new grandson, Zac's, baby naming ceremony in Malta. A few days after the invitation I awoke at 2:30am seeing the finished design. This is it:

-->

The black background is the color of creation. It also is a visual for infinity. The four directions are from the sacred hoop or medicine wheel. East is yellow the direction of birth, dawn, the direction of the infant. South is red the direction of adolescence, a time to grow away from parents and prepare to take adult roles. West is black the direction of the adult, the time of accumulating knowledge and learning to truly know yourself. North is white, the direction of the elder when knowledge is sifted into wisdom and enlightenment. A time to wear the white crown. The fifth direction is green, the earth below, our Mother who gives us life and support the life of our two legged, four legged, winged , swimming and green brothers and sisters. The sixth direction is blue for Father Sky above, the heavens that hold the stars. The seventh direction is gold, like the sunshine of the spirit, it is within our heart, the part of the hoop that intersects eternity. This is where the Creator lives, within our heart and where we are connected to all creation. The outer circle of dots represent Zac's ancestors and the inner circle are those on earth committed to caring for and guiding Zac while on earth.

I believe he has a special purpose on earth and he is very fortunate to have the parents he is entrusted with. I believe they are uniquely able to give him the guidance he needs.

shells along the beach

Remember the silk quilt I dyed in gradated blues with a sun and waves? Well, I was a bit disappointed with the outcome but decided to revisit that inspiration. I had painted with dye a piece of cotton when I did the silk  just because I had leftovers and I'm too thrifty to waste good thickened dye. I took the painted fabric, added a sun out of a beautiful orangy yellow and red parfait dyed piece surrounded that with chicken scratch in variegated yellow/orange. I had painted on fusible web and ironed 4 squares on the central section and stamped 2 hand carved stamps of a scallop and nautilus and silk screened two other nautilus motifs to the other squares. On the lower section I free motioned waves and on the lowest portion small rock shapes then attached medium dark blue tulle, stitched it into pockets and added rocks from my beach, stitched that shut and added shells, closed and added sea glass.

Outside (too bright but you can see the shells) and inside with a flash.

The sun and the nautilus

I like!

Part of the journey

I'm not sure whether I like this or not. I had a dream and in the dream I was looking at this quilt so I got up and made it. The silk just didn't want to cooperate with me and the differences in the values of blue are not exactly what I was going for.
It is done in all hand dyed fabrics, even the scrim on the "sun". It's 18 X 22 and has an unfinished edge which I like. I didn't dye the pearl cotton of the "waves". The Japanese characters say, "Fine weather, clearing up".
The jury is still out.

MAKE

Nothing is a mistake. There is no win or fail. There is only make.             Sister Corita Kent

Make is the name of this quilt. Sometimes I have an idea for a work and I execute that thought or concept. In this case I took out a piece of unbleached linen, the remains of a curtain bottom after shortening, and I just started to assemble. This is one of my favorite pieces or is my current work just my favorite?
I wanted to do a vertical triptych and after auditioning certain fibers and metals I started assembling. It soon became not a triptych but four groupings with connecting elements.

This the quilt indoors and outside

I had a panel of pre-printed units separated by grayish turquoise fabric with handwriting on it. I used the background fabric throughout the quilt and discarded the rest of the panel. Each time I placed a section of this fabric on the quilt, I free motion quilted the word “make” continuously over the fabric. If you look at each of the sections of the quilt, you can see the word “make”. One of the important elements of this work was the unfinished raw edges of the fabric. There are clots of frayed threads all over and they are stitched over and allowed to remain wherever they lived on the linen and other fabrics. After attaching the fabrics I free motion quilted the entire piece in a stream of consciousness letting the piece tell me what direction to take.

The top quarter of the quilt is started with a row of plastic buttons. On the left is a section of fabric I painted with acrylic paints and sliced into pieces. I juxtaposed horizontal slivers of gold lamee' which I fused on. On the right is an interesting piece of batik which I fussy cut to show off the design. I stacked branch tips from a red twig dogwood bush and couched them onto the quilt. The turquoise rectangle with the word make stitched onto it also has a crow stamped onto it with gold paint.

The second quarter has another piece of cloth I painted however this piece was simply a rag I used to clean my brushes and wipe up the spills. It was so interesting I heat set the paint and free motioned the piece onto the linen. I added a piece of a felted Aryan sweater with a metal draw pull onto it. You can clearly see the words make stitched into the turquoise fabric to the left flanked by wrenches.

The third section is made with commercial fabric but it looks hand painted. On it I sewed turquoise dyed shell buttons and olive green plastic buttons. While free motioning the linen, I sew that box shape with an X in the center and sewed shell buttons with the rough outside surfaces of the shells showing. I had done a lot of what I refer to as alternating rows of stitches on the linen. I placed brass safety pins ( I love safety pins) in the same alternating rows along the left side just outside more turquoise fabric with Make stitched on the surface. I stamped tiny squares in gold paint down the entire length of the make section. I hand carved both stamps used in this piece.

The forth and bottom most section of this piece is “attached” to the third section with copper pipe supports. The base fabric is a piece of hand painted fabric sporting an “eye” of green handmade torn paper with a fused gold foil eye and a very old and pitted washer in the center. I found that washer on a walk in town and it was so smooth and felt so soft between my fingers, I knew I had to use it in a significant place in something I made. The star as well as the two keys and lock face were given to me by Karna from “Old Stuff” in Belfast. A wonderful crashed bottle cap also found on a walk was placed as a “period” at the end of the quilt. I bound the entire piece in a heavy duty brass zipper. It is 19.5 inches wide and 54 inches long. As you can see from the “inside” picture, it is now hanging in my living room.