Houston, here I come!!!

What a day!

One of my two submissions got accepted into Studio Art Quilt Associates Text Messages exhibit. I promise I will post that photo after the exhibit opens October 31, 2013 - with me standing next to it!!!

I am doing the happy dance tonight!  I had a goal written in my studio to have a quilt hanging at the Houston quilt show.  My quilt will be hanging in International Quilt Festival Houston 2013 and then it will continue to travel with the exhibit til 2015. 

• International Quilt Festival - Houston, Texas, October 31 - November 4, 2013
• International Quilt Festival - Cincinnati, Ohio, April 4  -6, 2014
• International Quilt Festival - Long Beach, California, July 2014

And the joy of the timing!  I submitted two entries to the Text Message exhibit and much like the Highlander, there can be only one... so the other by default had to get rejected, or as I prefer to say be "not accepted".  The rules allowed us to submit up to three entries for the same fee, but only one quilt could be accepted.  Since I was notified of the "not acceptance" today and the Sacred Threads entry closes tomorrow, I was able to resurrect it as my second entry into Sacred Threads. 

Of course, I'm not posting those photos or jinxing that entry!  Below is Cognition that got my gears spinning and started me on these adventures in 2011.

This is has been an exciting day for me! Tomorrow, I will get to visit Cognition, which travels as part of the Power Suit Challenge as I go to the gallery talk by Cyndi Souder at the Del Ray Artisans in Alexandria, Virginia.

2013

And did I mention that recently I accepted the offer to serve as one of the co-representative for the Studio Art Quilt Associates for the region of Maryland, DC and West Virginia?  Here is my very official photo...

2011

Quite a transformational journey for me.  I think I got powerful from the Power Suit challenge, it the first step of a thousand mile journey... (well 1400 miles to Houston to be more accurate)

 

 

 

a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step

Laozi

Lucky 13's - treasures found

Happy January 13! Thinking of luck and one of my favorite quotes "no fate but what we make", why not have 13's be lucky?

So far in 2013, I've been lucky enough to find 2 of my favorite tools that were lost!  They were hanging out together in a crossstitch kit, that obviously I had not been working on recently.

Funny these two tools had a few things in common that I wouldn't have thought of if they weren't found together.  Both came from "Falls", Omstead Falls and Great Falls, both from really unique quilt shops, and both were splurges.  If you ever have the chance to visit Abigayale's Quiltery in Omstead Falls, Ohio or Jinny Beyer's in Great Falls, Virginia, enjoy the adventure!

Several years ago traveling to Cleveland area for work, I happened to find Abigayle's.  I was in sewing withdrawal and the ladies working there were beyond friendly and welcoming.  I started up a handsewing project so I could sew on the go, and picked up my Roxanne open ended thimble - it allows you to have a longer nail and the thimble stays right where it should on the pad of the finger.  Abigayle's in is an old Victorian house, each room held different treasures: a room for the threads, another for novelty prints, then the flannels, etc.  In one of the upstairs rooms I found scraps by the ounce - a giant barrel of scraps, you pick out the ones you want and they get weighed at the checkout - kinda fun to dig thru a barrel of scraps!

Jinny Beyer's shop did not involve any digging thru barrels!  Jinny's shop has a museum quality to it, there is an awe I experience in seeing the precision and handwork of her quilts.  There is a genuine beautifulness to the display cases of the handsewing tools (including a pair of Dovo folding scissors, that came home with me).  I love the colors of the Palette Collection, and of course the border prints!  I went to Jinny's with a few of my quilt bee-mates, made a day of the adventure including lunch.  Food, friends and fabric: key ingredients in a fun adventure.

I love these two tools, not just cause they are great tools, but together they have remind me of these adventures - one I experienced alone and the other with friends.  Now having found them together, it adds to their history.  So I'm saying it aloud,  "I'm lucky to have misplaced them!"  It allowed me remember these stories and share them with you!  Plus, these tools came back to me at a time, when I am ready to spend more time on my handwork. 

Gotta say that was lucky!

Bucket List - Radical Elements!

Submitted my portfolio registration for the SAQA Radical Elements exhibit!

A first - my very first ever entry to a SAQA exhibit - and my first ever portfolio entry - they select based on views of artist's work, then artists make something specifically for that exhibit...

AND (happy geek artist dance)...
the theme is the Elements of the Periodic Table - how could I not enter this exhibit! 

Leaping into the 47th year of my life, and I'm artist number 47 to enter!  

Okay, Hurricane Sandy - you can take the electric from my home, because my entry has been submitted! Below are my 3 quilts and closeups!

Cognition, currently traveling with the Power Suit Challenge

Chantilly Lace - currently traveling with the Arts and Old Lace Challenge

 

 

Try-angle Trees and Cutting Tool Clouds, currently on exhibit in my powder room

 

 

Bet you are wondering which elements that I picked as my favorites!

Try-angle Trees and Cutting Tool Clouds

Can you see I've been having fun? Imagine yourself skiing thru the fall colored trees and looking up to see the clouds forming shapes?  Perhaps you should keep your eyes on the ski slope while skiing!

Went to the Sewing  Quilting Expo at the Dulles Expo Center this weekend.   I was so fortunate to be a passenger and I wanted to get my "stitching on".  So at 8:30am Saturday realized I needed some handwork to take.  Found the Scissors sunprint in my "altered fabric" box and fused it to some felt (oh yes, lime green!) - then looked at the shape of the scissors - in the class last week, I really saw how repeating elements helps the piece and thought , hmm - applique of a scissors shape was, well, kinda blah and I don't do blah very well.

So started looking at the fabric, where the blades open there is a very nice triangle. and there is a second triangle in the opening area near the handles.  So glad I decided to open the cutting tools - the largest one is actually a tin snip from the garage.

First I wanted to be able to practice some outline sewing - for the 3 scissors left to right- running stitch balanced, running stitch with longer thread than gaps, and backstitch. I liked the backstitch best so repeated it for the top scissors.  Added triangles at bottom, at first my thoughts went to "cutting the grass" so laid them out in a grass-like, organic order.  And did some free-motion applique with YLI thread. 

Did I mention that I love quilting... Not piecing, not applique, but taking a needle and thread and scribbling all over fabric at high speeds... At quilt shows I absolutely love running the longarms and just playing!  Yesterday, an energetic vendor was talking to me while I sewed some spiky flame shapes... She asked "what are your thoughts?" in a kinda getting me to open up about my intentions to purchase (it wasn't overtly pushy, but still doing her job)..  but I heard a question about what thoughts I was having - and I answered honestly - "I'm not thinking".  There is a methodical, meditative groove I get into when machine quilting (I know, it's drudgery to some).  If I could only do one of the steps of either piecing, applique or quilting - I choose quilting!

So thanks to one friend I had time to sew in the car, thanks to my other buddy, I was given the vision of skiing  thru trees and seeing shapes in the clouds... She insisted I see these stuffed koi fish in one of the vendor booths.  AND - I do love making me some three-dee objects, and fun to see what others are doing.  In the booth I was chatting up the sales person and behold, the topic of quilting came up - shocking, huh!  She had this steering wheel - but kinda square and shaped like a very blocky capital C. And she was no sales person, she was the Gypsy Quilter herself, Lanette Edens. Liked her right off - even when I thought she was just a sales person.

Love. LOVE, L-O-V-E the tool, it' really does live up to it's name "The Fabulous Fabric Glide", the feel and motion is really close to that of the long arm and the control is amazing.  Before this tool, I would wear the white Micheal Jackson like grippy gloves - better than barehanded - but not that comfortable.  I was able to do some ridiculously tight quilting - see in a nice turquoise Robison-Anton thread "Marine Aqua" - I do love the 40 weight Super Brite Polyester - one beacuse I have it - two cause it has a nice shine and the poly is stronger than rayon so can also be used in come construction.  Note to garment sewers - never ever never never use rayon to seam a garment - top stitching is fine, but seam construction in rayon can lead to unfortunate wardrobe malfunctions. 

Thanks for letting me go off on a quilting and thread tangent!  Back to the project at hand!  Here is a needle-eye view of my Fabulous Fabric Glide - hanging right behind the machine I quilt on.

Before I did that quilting I fused on some appliques.   The second shape in the scissor was the oval handle loop - so instead of circles, I cut ovals to and cut "triangles" out of the oval flower-cog...

flower-cog-oval...
flog-val? 


My goal for this project was not to make art - but to experiment - so tried different stitching on the flogs - no two the same.  I can use this as a reference for adding handstiching to flowers. And if it was for a project I thing I would have done the same stitching inside each one - I think some variety is nice, now that I see it.  Maybe in future do a few styles of stitching - on purpose!

I love the bottom one with the V's and the single french knot... Never would have come up with this stitching pattern if I had not done the others.  And I didn't undo or go back - in the left of this photo the one with the single bar on each pedal is not my favorite, but that's the one I did that led my to the V's.



Here you see it hanging in our powder room, the walls are the same mossy green as the flogs, not yellowish as it looks here. 

And that raises two questions
Question number one
- Should I be providing "powder" if I insist on calling it a "powder room"?  Or it it BYOP?

Question number two
- What is "a scissor", singular?  The 2 handled tool is called "a pair of scissors" or a scissors, plural...

Just saw this in Wikipedia.  It's a bit odd...

"In New Orleans, some believed that putting an open pair of scissors underneath your pillow at night was a sound method for sleeping well, even if one might be cursed."

I don't recommend sleeping with scissor open or closed under your pillow!

Make It Work - Reveal day 12

You heard my trials and tribulations yesterday. I didn't know what I wanted to "make". I knew I wanted to "make" something. During this Dozen Days, on my design wall is pinned an index card with "Make It Work" scribbled on it.  I totally believe in the power of positive thinking.  How many times in this Dozen Days did I use something that existed before, where I had invested time and effort then found a way to Make it Work? Feels good! Was it cause I was thinking of making it work?  I know that being on a deadline also helped creativity and productivity flow, and having permission to fail allowed me to take risks.

Make It Work is Tim Gunn's catchphrase that you hear repeatedly on Project Runway episodes.  As a recovering garment sewer, this show has a special place in my heart!

Tim Gunn clips from PR


In his own words about Make It Work

Tim Gunn's blog

If you want to be surprised, close your eyes right now... but since I know you can't wait (and would just scroll down til you see it) so here is the picture, and then you can sit back and read the story behind it...

So back to my story, here I was with my quiltless day 11 and the need to sew on Day 12.  The "need" is both for the challenge and as a result of the challenge, I'm more connected with my creativity and productivity, sewing time has become part of my routine.  So here I am looking back at the last 10 quilts, thinking, pondering...


Part of me thinks, I should do a new technique today.  But what did I say about thinking yesterday?

Step away from the brain and no one gets hurt! 

So back to feelings, desires, emotions... I want... what do I want? I want a Make It Work, that is more inspiring than my index card... I know that doesn't set the bar very high!  And I have far more light colored labels than I have dark ones, so if I want to play with labels more (AND I DO!!!) I better stick with light colored background.  I already had made "it" on Day 9, I didn't make "it" for this purpose, but I think it was "made" to "work out" for me!

So nowhere in my rules did it say that I couldn't repeat a technique... Nor did I say I couldn't make two quilts that were almost identical.  And it's my game, so if anyone doesn't like my rules, well they can make more strict rules for themselves!

So I built 2 backgrounds - it's fun to play with the labels!  The stickiness of Steam a Seam 2 works great with the labels.  I was on the couch relaxing with my dear hubby, there was a baseball game on and I had my big bucket of labels.  Like building a stone wall, I was adding bits and more bits til I had something pretty substantial, made up entirely of small parts...


I didn't want to make a predictable triptych with the same font.  Plus you may have noticed that the words MAKE and WORK are 4 letter words and you know what that means - yep they take up twice as much space a two letter word... so it's gotta be a smaller font but still needs to have strong impact.  I heard once if you use more than one font, just don't mix san-serif and serif, or was that you should always mix them? and what's a serif? "I shot the serif, but I did not shoot the de-pu-ty"... now Bob Marley has joined in the theme song of the day.   If you want to know more about fonts, there are likely books filled with that info.  :)   But is there some contrast and commonality I ask?  The 2 fonts have a playfulness to them so that's their commonality.  The angles and curves, the size and weight of the font provides the contrast.

I also loved working with Ultra-Suede (now when I think the words "Ultra-Suede", it sounds very much like ... "here I come to save the day...Ul-tra-Suede"  any of you Mighty Mouse fans out there?

So I cut out the words "make" and "work".  Did I not cut out the centers of the a,e and o as a design element or just out of laziness? (it's not just the cutting it out, but I would also need to stitch around those centers)  But seriously, I intended to cut them out, but took a look-see after I cut out the outside and thought, ya know I like it that way.  Ser-en-dipity!  Sounds like a good name for a loveable but ditsy sidekick for my superhero!

When I fused down the "work" I kinda burnt the k - there is some slight darkness on it - dirty iron perhaps?  So that's why I decided I better do some stitching down - used the Free Motion Zig Zag and a Jean 16 needle.

Do you look at your work from 3 distances?  I think we tend to forget the far distance views... But I want to give my quilts the best opportunity to shine, and in a big crowd of quilts, you are likely to pay more attention to those that capture your eye from 20 feet away.

You need to keep their attention once they get up close, but it's the drawing them in that "makes it work".


I hope you have enjoyed this 12x12x12 challenge as much as I have, I'm pondering more lessons learned from this process, so of it I understood right away - other parts are taking more time to sink in.

As always, I wish you fun from A to Z! 

"Tag you're it" - Reveal Day 9

I think I finally made "it"...  everybody talks about "it" cause they want "it", well I've got "it" now!

If you think I will live "it" down or stop "it", you really don't know me...

• Imagined a quilt made of clothing labels*
• Saved clothing labels for "it"*,and  was given clothing labels* (receiving them in the mail, in person, via messenger; and yes, I will still accept more, this is not my last label quilt)
• Created light colored applique letters, fused base fabric cream colored Kona !!!
• Created dark colored background on base fabric using Steam a Seam sticky fusible!!!
• Zigzag stitched applique - later inked in applique stitch with black Sharpie marker!!!
• Free Motion Machine quilted the light areas with lime green, and dark ones with Navy Blue - this is why I had Navy Blue on my machine - so at this point I decided to edge many of the quilts from the early days of this challenge
• Free Motion ZigZagged edge!!!

  * - These steps were done prior to 12x12x12 challenge
!!! - First time I ever did this type of thing



and what is behind "it" you ask...

Money

"its" backed with cash - well, cash fabric

Numbers Count

Happy Triple 11's today! 

Wednesday was reveal day for the 2011 challenge quilts.  Challenge was to make a quilt inspired by page 73 of a nonquilting, nonart magazine.  I checked about 73 different magazines before selecting my page 73.

Peaceful Passage

Yes, I've come full circle back around to circles!

I had fun with numbers, such as the olive branch is made up of 7 leaves, 3 of which have stems.  There are 3 blue flower-cogs (flogs, cowers?), 3 sides of quilt have facing that takes the silk right to the edge.  There are 3 double flogs, and 7 single black/grey flog shapes, 3 silver circles.  Love the juxtaposition of wool felt and silk - the only cotton is a single green line on the left edge. In Cognition (my Power Suit entry) I didn't want to admit the shape could be a flower so I denied it's graphic daisy-osity;  with Peaceful Passage, I embrace it's inner flower and gave them a little spin.



Here's my inspiration page...

I wanted to put number 73 in the quilt, but slightly hidden... do you see it now?

Serendipitously...
Saint Leigh and her son spread their wings and carried me as we embarked on a quest from to silver water  to the land of rocks to rescue my silver stallion from it's incarceration.  Yes, you guessed it my car was towed from Silver Spring to Rockville...  Leigh's sister is a great friend, Nickie (or five-cent as some of us hockey players know her), so I know one day through Nickie, our paths would have crossed, but if not for the tow I wouldn't have been inspired to add the peaceful dove and olive branch, so I guess I should say that I must say I was lucky... And I do feel lucky, overall it was a positive experience. 

I wanted to honor their kindness in my art, with both the image of the peace dove and on the backing a delicious chocolate colored fabric.   Leigh Lambert is an experiment artist as well, now I crave to experience her art and I predict that I'll be trying these brownies in my not so distant future...

The hand dyed silk was a gift from my sister, so you need sisters for Peaceful Passage.  My sister also asked what is the Chinese character means - I think it's "peace", based on the Internet - but I don't read Chinese, so it could be "soup"...

Sorry for the humorous diversion - back to math...
So I thought I would count up the parts of the quilt not including the shadow silhouette, tada! There are 33 (oh yes I counted 3 times to be sure) 

33 is 11+11+11

what an auspicious number!