Hello, Today in my part of the world it is raining again. We need the water, but I am tired of the gloom that the gray skies seem to bring along too. It makes me want to take a nap. This photo is one I took on my way home on Tuesday after taking down the “Sticks and Stones” show. As you can see from the image it was gray that day too.
Progress Report: Pumpkin Lichens I am not showing this work this week because I had a bit of a disaster with it . I though I had trimmed it all up and I was adding the sleeve when I realized that one side was a good inch longer than the other….. I have not done all the deconstruction that needs to happen before I can correct that mistake yet, but I will do so and show that next week.
On the Road to Dry Falls I made progress on this work this week. I am doing more of the tron and free motion stitch down work on this surface. I used this technique with the fused silk, some taffeta and some nylon netting. I like how it allowed for a feeling of shadow and texture.
Oak Leaves I started this at Quilting by the Lake. The leaves are free floating and made with a top layer of silk and a bottom of cotton. I have been looking at it in this state for a few weeks now and it finally came to me that It needed a three dimensional limb too. So I pulled out some roving and frapped it with a dark patterned fabric. In this closeup you can see how the fabric is wrapping around and creating a new texture. There is a little of the roving showing at the bottom of this shot.
This second shot is of the full limb as it is now. I need to create a background and stitch the limb to it before I add the leaves.
I though I might add fused silk clouds to this work as well. I will at least create some clouds for myself in the fused silk workshop that I am teaching on Friday.
New Work I am doing pure explorations with this new piece. I took a class with Valerie Goodwin at QBL in 2012 and she suggested we use all the different way we knew to attach fabric to the surface to add texture. I had not really applied this idea before but when I came across my class notes I though I would give it a try. So with this small piece I have used flip piecing, raw edge and hand stitching. The next process is to add paint….. I am having fun as I am not at all sure what I am doing and the class notes are not as complete as I had though. A year plus is a long time and one does forget details.
I hope fall is sending you visual joy and creative time.
It was the first day of school for students here in central New York. When I went out for my walk this morning there were two boys waiting for the bus on the corner. The same place that my daughter waited for the bus many years ago. I passed others on my trek and thought that this is a sure sign that fall has begun.
This week was the first Tuesday of the mouth and so I went off to my DIVA group meeting on Tuesday. I had missed the mouth before so I was very excited about seeing what others were doing and I was not disappointed! Liese had been doing a lot of marbling on paper . She created two books. I really like the one with the quotes and her second one was an accordion book with wonderful creatures that she saw in the marbling.
She said that she learned that the newsprint paper worked the best for this job.
Susan is doing some great exploration based on sleep. She is printing on fabric with old stencils and writing her quotes in water soluble graphic pencils.
She has a wild collection of stencils and is trying not to cut any new ones for this project. I really like the long line of people she repeated in this second print.
She is also dealing with the inside of things- including people. The rib cage is made with painted canvas suspended in the opening. I can hardly wait to see how this develops. She always looks at things with such a unique eye.
Sally brought a problem to the group for suggestions. She is getting ready for the Art Trail in the Ithaca area and one of her practices is to have each of her visitors add a piece of fabric to a background that she has selected. Then the sews them down were they are placed. Every five years she take the panels and puts them together in some fashion. She was after suggestions. We brainstormed and gave her several ideas- I can hardly wait to see what she finally does. I really get a lot out of this group for the support as well as the many skills and ideas that each person brings to the setting.
Occasions 35.5″ X 49.5″ $ 440.00
Progress Report: Occasions This quilt is one more of the ones that I started at Quilting by the Lake, the second week. I had purchased some deconstructed fabric( the light blue) from her the first week of the conference and used it as my starting place for this piece. This fist close up show the wonderful texture she had created with lines that attracted me to it. I pulled the rest of the materials from my stash and supplemented with a few new pieces that I purchased from the venders there. I enjoyed doing the circular quilting on this piece and feel it is just what the quilt needed to pull all the sections together. The gals at the Diva meeting really liked this work too and had lots of kind word about this work.
East Wall – Rock Series This work got lots of additional machine drawing added this last week. There is so much texture now that I feel it is pulling together a bit better.
I used some of my painted wonder under on the surface to add more color and pattern. There is also a bit of intense quilted pink velvet on the right side of this shot for more texture.
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Pumpkin Lichens : I am to the quilting stage on this quilt. It too has some of Randy’s wonderful decomposing screen fabric as it start- The orange with the the dark circles on it. The colors of the trip to southwest really have had a long time effect on me if the work shown here is any indication.
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New Work Here is some more of the curved piecing work I am trying to conquer. I am ready to start the placement of the fused silk paper on this top to add texture and unity to it. There are two pieces sort of pinned in place. I think more will help as well as some of the painted wonder under.
Then the quilting will really pull it all together .
As this shot shows I have been out of doors. I spend a day with my daughter and grandson at a local park called Beaver Lake. We spend a few hours walking in the deep woods as well as along the lake. We not only spotted this leopard frog along the shore, but we saw a heron as well. The woods was full of many types of fungus in color from whites, oranges , browns and even a dark blue colored one. There was a wide range of shapes too- from the flat shelf fungus, branching coral like shapes, to the umbrella mushrooms. It was fun to see who would spot the next one along the trail as we walked. Nature always provides lots of variety.
The big excursion for me this week was a drive to Athens Ohio to go to Quilt National. I was on the road with Ethel last Thursday and because we started early( 6:00 am) and drove for 11 hours- we got to the show that evening. It was wonderful to get a chance to see the work that eve. And it was even better that we also got to have a second day to study the quilts on Friday. The other big even for this last two weeks was the hanging of the ” Sticks and Stones” show at the Americana winery in Interlocken NY. That job took Anne and myself two and a half hours. I have eight works in that show including Wind Fall, Sunny Crannies under the rim and Mummy Cave Ruins from several weeks ago. The canyon and stone works I have been working on really look strong on the barn board walls of the winery.
Diamond Peak 43″ X 41″ $ 440.00
Progress Report: Diamond Peak This quilt was created after my float trip down the Grand Canyon with my Dad eight years ago. I did ten quilts about that trip when I got home. The experience was magical and I would do it again in a second. For this show I pulled out the seven quilts that remain from that series and reworked some of them. I added about five or six hours of additional machine quilting to the surface of the rocky areas of all of these quilts. I think that extra machine work helped. When I first made them I was so excited about capturing the images that I could not see that they needed more needle work.
Canyon’s Create Towers 41″ X 45.5″ $475.00
Canyons Create Towers This is a second one from the Grand Canyon Series. It is based on a photo that I took further up stream then Diamond Peak. Part of the thrill of the trip was how fast the river ran down some of the narrow cliff openings creating great water patters and falls . I was also fascinated by how you could see the different layers of stone in the rock formations father down the river. Here too I reworked the surface with lots of quilting. I folded over the organza and stitched in lots of quilt lines to lead the eye back into the quilt surface on this work. At the bottom of this shot you can see the florist plastic that I captured under the organza too. It added a bit of sparkle that was always present on the water.
Sunny Canyon 37″ X 31″ $295.00
Sunny Canyon I remember how beautifully the sun filled that canyon the day I took the photo that was the inspiration for this quilt. Every thing sort of glowed. This quilt not only got a lot of additional quilting it also go a major resizing. I removed a hole row of trees that were on an island that was in the for ground and about six inches off both sides before I was happy with this quilt. I also remember how surprised I was when I started these quilts that I did not need to purchase much fabric to complete them. I had been on the look out for “rock” materials for a long time it seemed.
Slot Canyon 19.5″ X 26.6″ $ 135.00
Slot Canyon One day on the Canyon trip we walked up a slot canyon. The narrow walls were wonderfully textured by rushing waters. I found all the line marks so fascinating that I had to make a quilt about that. This quilt is a whole cloth piece with color added in pastel and pressed into the surface. Then I did the machine work on top.
I hope summer is still bringing joy to your lives as it is to mine.
I am always amazed by the growth that happens every summer. These beautiful flowers are at the top of some swamp loving plat that is nearly six feet tall. They are annuals and the amount of energy it takes to grow from a small seed to this towering colorful plant just makes me stop in my tracks.
I have had a busy week as the kids are getting ready for a return to school and we all seem to be in a rush to do all summer activities that we have put off thinking there was still time for them in the future . With that though in mind I will tell you that there were be no post next week as I am off for a trip to Ohio next week.
This week included a play day with my friend Cheri. We painted fabric on Wed. Cheri did the two pieces and I did the single one. This is only the first step of many so we will be getting together again. It is always fun to experiment with a fellow artist and we had a good time even though it rained off and on all day.
I am putting most of my efforts into preparation for the “Sticks and Stones” show at the Americana Winery now. It will be hung on Wed next week. I am doing a bit of rework and additional quilting to some of my Grand Canyon works for that show. Images will appear in the next post.
Wind Fall 23″ X 42″ $245.00
Progress Report: Wind Fall I am very happy with how this quilt turned out. All the twigs that I pick up after the wind storm work well on this curved pieced background. I had a lot of fun doing all the hand stitching as well. The only real problem with this quilt is it must be rolled and not folded as the sticks will break if it is folded.
I like all the color changes that are present in the tan twigs- from very dark brown to a cream color- some times on the same branch.
I machine drew in branches in the dark areas of this work to add bit more interest too.
The Machine drawing came about because I felt that the quilt needed a bit of horizontal action to contrast the strong verticals present in the sticks and most of the other quilting.
Synapse Firing 30″ X 47.5″ $ 360.00
Synapse Firing I am happy with how this quilt came out. I have found that when I am exploring new territory I can only go so far before I need to fall back to familiar ground were I know what to do. Such was the case with this work that I created at QBL. I was playing and working on all the rock/texture stuff and I needed to feel safe again- so I pulled out this fabric that I had purchased from Randy last summer and put this quilt together. I quilted this with silver thread and then added a variegated around the out side of the work .
On the Road to Dry Falls This is the work I was constructing when I did Synapse Firing. It is highly textured with fabric that is wadded and then pressed in the wadded state before it is sewn to the surface. I also used a satin fabric ( dark brown) that was shinny on one side and matt on the other to add additional texture. I tore strips of fabric and left the raw edges exposed for a further texture. I am enjoying the free motion quilt drawing process to continue the wrought feel of the rock too. At this point I am more concerned with the way the eye does not quite flow across surface as I intended then I am with the texture parts. There is always work to do.
Blooming Bacteria This quilt I started before QBL as I wanted to keep my direction with this idea. I am adding the black button wholes on top by hand now. They really add a wonderful texture to the surface of this piece. It will take a long time to complete it however as the hand work is quite slow. I do think the time and effort it worth it however.
I am feeling like we are to the dog days of summer now. The slow down and the feeling that nothing is really pressing is upon me at least. We had a good time this week on our visit to Philly and the Barn’s Exibit. I did use the audio guide that the museum provides and that did enhance my experience. I enjoyed all the images. I had forgotten that he collected so may African masks. That is a subject that I too love. Barns took so much care in how he presented the material that it was quite enjoyable. I found that by the beginning of the third hour of intense looking that my mind could not really absorb much more material. We really only did a through look at the top floor as the ticket man told us floor one was crowded when we started, so he sent us upstairs. Eric and I agreed that we will need to do a return trip. I was exhausted and slept really well that night. I feel really good about looking at art too- it is so stimulating. Because I was away for three full days this week I did not get too much done.
Thoth 28″ X 26.5″ Not for sale
Progress Report: Thoth Eric’s birthday gift is finally finished. I will add the sleeve this evening and then give it to him. He can take it to his office and hang it next week. I like the stencil of Thoth and I am sure I will use it again.
This second shot is of the eye is one of the Egyptian’s favorite symbols. I quilted in papyrus plants and leaves in the back ground as a part of my new push to add interesting quilting to my work.
This golden scarib is from an old stencil that I did several years ago. I have made it a habit to always create a new stencil or stamp in the Egyptian style for each additional quilt that I create in this on going series. There seem to be many people in my life who find Egypt fasinating, including myself.
Wind Fall I stared this quilt weeks ago and I have only just gotten back to it. I wanted to do something for the “Sticks and Stones” show that was not rock related. We had some sever weather a few weeks ago and there were lots of little dead branches that were blown down after the storm. I had collected a pile as they were so smooth and simple in shape. I hand stitched with heave cotton some to them to the surface over the course of the last few weeks. They are all attached now and I will begin to quilt the piece this week . So the final will show up next time.
I hope summer is proceeding in a clam forward motion for everyone.
Quilting By the Lake is over for one more year, but I am still in the happy after glow of seeing everyone. Week two brought with it new classes and some additional people. This first shot is of the mini mall that happens both weeks and is when the participants can sell their wares- books, patterns, posters and fabrics- to others at the conference. This event is always well attended by both faculty and the students as we all check out the special items our fellows wish to part with.
Week two is always as much fun as week one because I enjoy watching as new a different ideas emerge from my peers. This shot of Sharron shows her 4.1/2″ Dear Jane blocks behind her. She is doing this quilt in six variations and claims that after she has worked out the “bugs” with the first block the others are easy.
Debbie continued to work away on her scrap quilts and finished two more tops the second week. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves in the Independent Studio class and produced lots of work. Linda ( on the right) quilted and completed this this beautiful orange and black piece. Betty worked very hard on this black, white red and yellow quilt for her grandson. I think Cathy did a lot of exploration with her seven works that are pictured behind her. I feel the smiles say as much about the good feelings that carried us all home as any thing.
Apron Auction Last week there was an apron auction and this week that was repeated. All the teachers made or altered QBL aprons. Cynthia Corbin skillfully hid a small piece of her work on the back of this fuffy/furry apron. Rosalie continued her fish theme with fried fish this week. We all had fun bidding and enjoying the festivites at the end of the session.
Progress Report Exploration 1: I did some work myself too. This new bit of exploration was more work with the curved line connections. I made the white, rust, orange and green fabric in a QBL 2 class about four years ago. The colors fit well with the rock and canyon things I am doing now that it has now found a home.
Exploration 2: Here I used a piece of Randy Keenan’s discharged fabric as my starting place. I had purchased it at the mini mall. I was also feeling a bit out of my depth with the curved work so I wanted something I felt comfortable with too. I started quilting this with silver thread this morning.
Exploration 3: This work too started with and older bit of Randy’s fabric. I purchased it last year and it got burried. It only came back to light when I was doing my cleaning in preperation for QBL three weeks ago.
Exploration 4: This is another of the curved line piecing / rock wall projects. I am not at all happy with it so far. I think I did too much in the way of curves and so it is very warped…… A new problem for me to solve before this will be seen again. But I am showing it to let you know I make mistakes, especially when I am trying new things. If one does not make errors every now and again then one is playing it too safe.
Good Habits 21″ 32″ $ 170.00
Good Habits This quilt was also started at QBL and I finished it this week. I think the completion was do to the small size as much as any thing. I challenged myself to create a block of a simple every day object. I chose a toothbrush. The white areas are the bristels of the brush and I added lots of line quilting to add to that feeling. The multi-colored area is the handle of the brush. I quilted in toothpaste tubes in various stages of usge in the solid areas. I did have fun with this project and plan to make the idea a challenge to one of my design groups.
Do to a change in plans I will be away next week on Thursday so this blog will be posted on Friday next week.
I hope everyone is enjoying the bounty of summer and creating great things.
I am home from Quilting By the Lake for the week end and it has been as fun and exciting as always. I helped hang the quilt show on the 12th. We stared the morning with a big empty gym and boxes of quilts and hanging units. We asssembled units and started putting the work up. This shot is of Tony – a long time assistant that has followed QBL from Morrisville Community College, its last home, to Onondaga Community Collage, the new home for the last five years. By noon the gym was starting to look like this shot. We continued to hang and make alternations as the day went on. There was a featured exebit of the work of one of our quilters. It showed her work from the first year of QBL to last year when she passed away. It was lovingly curated and hung by two of her good friends Debbie( standing) and Andy( on the ladder). Although the job was not complete we went home at 4:30. A new crew came in on Sat and finished the job.
I started giving away little doll pins that I now call Creative Assistants to folks at QBL years ago. They stared by my making a pin for a friend that was a copy of a petroglyphic that she had shown me the year before. The pins have taken on a life of there own and I enjoy making them over the course of the year and them passing them out to folks that I come in contact with. They are fun and a bit silly- they always make everyone smile. Some folks have very big “tribes” as they add a new member every year as the pins change each and every time I do them. ( I will post a tutorial on how you can do it too after QBL is over. )
I spent my week of uninterrupted quilting in a class called Independent Study. It is unstructured and undirected. We all work at out own thing at our own pace. These shots of some of my fellow class mates gives you an idea of the wide range of actions going on. Everything is relaxed and enjoyable with folks working on finishing projects, to staring new directions. One gal even spent some of her time creating little pig dolls and enjoying the process. Most of the gals in this class are old timers. We all enjoy the atmosphere. I can not believe I have been participating for 31 years- but that a fact….. Only my Marriage is a longer relationship.
Progress Report
I did start lots of work too. Project 1
I am continuing to use images from the trip to Idaho as inspiration. This is one from a rock wall at Dry Falls. I am still playing with strips of fabric that I can wad and fold over to create texture.
Project 2 This one is of a small crack in another stone wall. It was in direct sun light and the contrast of the rock face and the shadow was very strong.
Project 3 This work is also inspired by a rock picture. I used a much more traditional way of assembling this one however without the folded textures.
Project 4 Oak Leaves
I played silk that was fused to cotton. I sewed the leaf vains on to the surface and then cut the leaves out. I picked some real oak leaves( deep green) and used them as inspiration. I learned that the side one puts on top when sewing in the vains is the way the leaf will curl when you let it hang.
The last event of the week at QBL is an auction of aprons that have been altered by the teachers. The money raised goes to the scholarship fund . It is always lots of fun and we all get a bit silly. This time Rosalie Dace quilt teacher from South Africa, really went over board as she dressed her part. It seems the IRS in response to her inquires about paying taxes had written her a letter. On the back in pencil was a message that told her “she need not pay any taxes on any fish that she caught or sold”. So she dressed up in wades, a fishing hat added a net and poll to illistrate her story. Also shown in the photo are Cynthia Corbin, Hollis Chatelain and Katie Pasquini Mastopust.It was a fun week and I look forward to more of the same this next week.
I hope your week is as creative as I expect mine to be.
I feel we have reached the slow days of summer when Mother Nature really does her magic. I have noticed on my walks changes especially in the trees. Hickories, pines and oaks all have immature versions of the seeds to come in fall. Because of all of the rain we have experienced here, I think the apples will be really big this year because the green ones on the trees now are already bigger then gulf balls. Nature provides me with a visual feast each day.
I am getting ready to attend the Quilting By the Lake conference. I so look forward to seeing my friends and to getting stimulated by lots of new ideas and thoughts about the art of quilting. In preparation for that work I had to do a bit of sorting. One thing lead to another and I ended up pulling all the fabric out of the closet and refolding and stacking it. This shot shows the job as it neared completion. As you can see I have lots of fabric. This activity not only cleaned up the shelves, and sorted out the material that I need for my projects, but it also made me realize I do not need to purchase anything new. I hope I can stay to that resolution over the next two weeks while I am there and tempted by the fabrics of the venders. I am doing two weeks of Independent study this year and I plan to keep working on the Rocks and Canyon series. I will allow my self to find other ideas as well. Please be aware that there will not be any posts for the two weeks of QBL. Then we plan on a little vacation so this will be the last post until Aug 8.
Anastazi Ruins 18″ X 24″ $ 110.00
Progress Report: Anastazi Ruins This work is complete now. I have really enjoyed putting the silk paper into this work. It makes the feel of the flow of the rocks really work for me. I liked doing the free motion work to add texture to the surface too. The other thing I tried here and on the Sunny Crannies quilt was adding torn strips of satin to the surface. The strips were slender so they folded in on them selves and they flipped over that also added to the textural changes that were created.
I ended up not using the painted unit I posted last week on the ruins. It was just too much. But I did add nylon net to the top of the cave area to help with the darkness.
Sunny Crannies 22.5″ X 31″ $ 175.00
Sunny Crannies
This quilt is a part of the Rock Face series. I really seem to be fascinated by the surfaces of road cuts and cliffs. This one came from on of the photos that I took in Idaho a few weeks ago. Here I went back to the free cut method to put the work together. Rocks do not break in continual strait lines most of the time so the free cut is the only way to get the correct feel.
This shot shows that I also turned the brown commercial fabric over and use the “back” side to get another tone to the surface.
I used some of the fabric that Marty and I discharged in this quilt along with some slender torn gray jean fabric as well. I really like this plus the satin surfaces on the work. Finally I used more of the silk paper here too. This piece of silk paper has some glitter and gold added to the silk as well as the color. I look forward to teaching this technique with the Quilt Exploration Group in September.
Rounds
This project is moving along nicely for me. It is changing under my finger tips however, but one needs to be open to that as it happens. All the circles are stitch down now and it has been washed so there is fraying of the shapes. I plan to slice the top and invert one or more to the slices before I reassemble it. I also want to add so yarn appliqued to the surface to add more texture. I will then have to see what the quilt tells me to do.
Eric’s Thoth
Thoth is the Egyption god of writing. I intended to complete this quilt for my husbands birthday. That happens to be today so I will not make it. But I am sure he will accept it later. He is an English teacher and worked on his collage publication called ” Thoth” so this seems like a good idea to me. I made the stencils- Thoth, the Eye or Horis and the Eagle mouths ago, but never put them together until now.
The scarab stencil is even older. I added the scarab after the whole top was assembled as I discovered that the area needed an addition.
I enjoyed adding the Hiroglyphs to this project too although I did them before I assembled the top. I have had this set of stamps sense I taught school and I used them with the kids. Here I spelled out ” Eric the Teacher” using the Heiroglyph guild book.
Green Nebula
I keep working on the beading work on this quilt. I am just about ready to do the quilting now. About three more evening of watching TV should to the trick to finish the beading step. Then I will begin the hand quilting.
Blooming Bacteria
Here again I made my background using the free hand cut method. I did the cut and flip thing on this background too. The red circles are just pinned to the surface now . When I get the placement exactly were I want it I will satin stitch them down and begin hand work. I imagine it will be a while before this work reappears again, as the work I do at QBL will probably capture my attention for a while. I wanted to have this work started because I have made all the “add ons” and I do not want to forget the direction while I am away.
I hope this day is full of delight for everyone. We will have family over for a cook out this eve and later enjoy our local fire works. This week was a full as they all seem to be at this time of year. Starting a new mouth always means meetings for me. The Quilt Exploration Group meant and was lively as ever. Angela continues to work on her Ta-pa Cloths series. She prints the fabric in neutral colors and then embroiders another ta-pa pattern on top. The dark brown image is done in French Knots. Sally really has gotten to know her new embroidery machine this year. She has been creating feathered star patterns in fabric and thread all winter. The fabric is yellow and the dark blue in this star- the rest is all created with thread! Even those many points. There are 36 stars on this quilt and I just kept looking and looking. It is so awesome. Not only were the stars powerful so too was the quilting in the white area. Sally did an excellent job putting it together too.
I am regretful that this shot is so poor- but the colors in Noel’s silk circles are so powerful that I had to present it non the less. Hopefully I will learn to check the image after the shot instead of assuming it is OK.
The Diva meeting was full of new ideas too. Susan is collaging/painting pictures of some of her puppets. She wants to create depth with organza as well as paint. I am sorry that the photo does not show the fact that the arm of the puppet on the right is made of tin and sticks out from the surface. And All the suttelness of the organza is lost in the photo.
Alice is working on a paper construction for a recycle show that she wants to be part of. She has created this ” water unit” all out of privacy envelopes. The paper is surprisingly strong when it is stitched together even though she still has only one layer. She held up envelopes with green and some with black images on them for use as trees and rocks. I hope we get to see the finished work.
Sharon grabbed my camera and took this shot of me holding up my Fossil Bed quilt.
One of my followers asked if I was worried about copy wright of my images. That topic also came up in the June/July issue of Quilting Arts and Jane Da’vila provided a little section about water marks on page 72. ( There is a survive at Digimarc.com if you are interested) Taking that action would protect one’s work. I am always very careful to ask permission about shooting the work of my fellow artists and there are times when they do say “No”, witch is there right. But my feeling about my images is a little more open. I do not feel anyone can really copy my work and if they are so in need of my material, that they steal it – I hope it serves them well. That is not to say that I do not value my work- I do. But I just do not choose to spend my energy in that fashion. I prefer to keep creating new things and for the most part I have enough. For that I am truly Thankful! I hope this source helps anyone who needs it.
Progress Report: Rock Face This first shot is a close up of the quilt work. I am using the silk paper I created with Ethel to add texture and color to the surface. This image also shows the rust dyed fabric in the background and the torn silk I stitched on top for additional texture. I used some of the fabric from our discharged day with Marty in this work too. It took me a long time to decide how to go about quilting this work. But I am quite excited about working on it now.
Anastasie Ruin This work got attention this week too. I tried painting the actual ruin on organza- and I am not sure it works. The scale is off some how. I plan to make a second organza unit and add it on top of the work. I am going to embellish with the silk paper an strips of fabric here too. Again I am filled with doubt about where to go with the quilt step of the work. But I think that if I get the dwellings defined then the rest will take care of its’ self.
Untitled Noel’s quilt from the QEG’s meeting just would not leave me mind so I decided that I needed to play with circles too. I though I might mix them with the raw edgue idea I was playing with a few weeks ago. ( that work , although not tossed yet – is still in a questionable state) I also played with several different textures here- silk , velvet and cotton. I hope I am not falling into one of my typical patterns of trying to do too much in one work….. but I guess only time will answer that. I though I was making a back ground for all the black and red fiber rings I have been creating- but this is not the home for those creations.
Star Wars Quilt I did finish a little practical work this week as well. The Star Wars quilt is twin size and for my grandson. He picked out all the fabrics and although I think it is busier than I would have selected, he is delighted.
I hope the holiday creats delightful memories for all.
Hello, Today in my part of the world it is raining again. We need the water, but I am tired of the gloom that the gray skies seem to bring along too. It makes me want to take a nap. This photo is one I took on my way home on Tuesday after taking down the “Sticks and Stones” show. As you can see from the image it was gray that day too.
I made progress on this work this week. I am doing more of the tron and free motion stitch down work on this surface. I used this technique with the fused silk, some taffeta and some nylon netting. I like how it allowed for a feeling of shadow and texture.
Oak Leaves
In this closeup you can see how the fabric is wrapping around and creating a new texture. There is a little of the roving showing at the bottom of this shot.
This second shot is of the full limb as it is now. I need to create a background and stitch the limb to it before I add the leaves.
New Work
