Two More Watercolors & Some Quilted Portraits

Three watercolor paintings I did earlier this year will be an exhibit at the Cinema Place Gallery in Hayward:

The Watercolor Show 

Jan. 10- Feb. 23, 2013 

Reception Fri., Jan. 11, 5-7pm

Here are a couple more watercolors I did for my class.

The technique for the first painting was to emulate the texture that Andrew Wyeth used in his paintings. This lantern and the foreground rocks have texture added to them from stippled paint, sanding, and lots of drybrush. This is my husband’s favorite so far this year. I like how most of the painting turned out, but wish the water hadn’t gotten so muddy looking, and I’m not sure about the brown rocks.

The second painting we were to use Turner’s technique of picking paint up after putting it onto the paper to lighten areas. This is a view of Lake Chabot in Castro Valley from an overlooking trail on Fairmont Ridge.

I found a couple of unfinished quilted works I started seven years ago.

 The face on the first is from two pieces of fabric. The face is drawn on with a Pigma ink pen. The shapes and lines are all traced from a photo of Camilla when she was about six years old, but somehow it didn’t end up looking like her very much at all. The part I like best is stalk of succulent flowers I added almost as an afterthought because the bottom seemed to plain, but they never quite seemed to fit with the rest of the image. This one is nearly done except the edges are unfinished. I expect it will stay this way unless I decide to cut it up and use the flowers from it on something else sometime.

I decided to use the same photo as a starting point for a second try. This time I cut all the shapes freehand and went wild with the colors. Maybe too wild. It got put in a drawer at this point and it was forgotten until I dragged it out a week ago. Camilla likes this one, so I decided to see what I could do with it. I’ve added some more fabrics around her since this photo. I’ll post more photos when I see where it takes me.

Notan, Gallery Exhibits, & Scrap Starters

Last weekend at CQFA, we did a mini workshop on considering the Japanese concept of Notan in our designs. Here are my workshop results completed with free hand cut paper and glue.

I gallery sat at the Cinema Place Gallery in Hayward for their Abstract Exhibit. It is a nice selection of both two and three-dimensional work. There are three other quilters plus painters and sculptors in the exhibit. Chabot College also has an exhibit there this month. The work in the Chabot exhibit is mostly representational, and is an impressive display of drawings, paintings, and sculpture.

Wanting a small project I could do in between my current watercolors, I thought I would try completing a small quilt started with small scraps. I saw this idea on Franki Kohler’s blog. Franki was inspired by an article by Jenny Bowker in Machine Quilting Unlimited (May 2011.) Here is my start. The idea is to use the small scrap as in inspiration for the quilting design, and then to expand the design into the plain areas of the quilt with free-motion quilting. I am already thinking about how I might add paint to parts of the quilt.

Upcoming Shows

My work will be in two upcoming shows.

The San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles will hold its 5th Annual High Fiber Exhibit October 20 – November 4, 2012. All of the art in this exhibition is for sale at $500 or less, with a designated percentage of the proceeds donated to the Museum. Four of my quilts along with many other quilted and fiber works were selected for this exhibit.

The Cinema Place Gallery in Hayward will be showing Driven to Abstraction November 1 – November 25 2012. All of the work in this show will be abstract work. Two of my quilted wall pieces, plus my quilted rock, will be in the show. Mine may be the only textile work in the show. I expect to see a lot of paintings and mixed media work.

Hayward Quilt Art Exhibit

The online Synchronized Chaos Magazine has a well written writeup and some nice photos of the art quilt exhibit "The Quiltessential Event" currently at the Cinema Place Gallery. The show will be up until November 12th.

Sunday, Nov 6, 2011:

The Synchronized Chaos site seems to work fine from my Firefox browser, but seems to have trouble displaying content with Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

If anyone has a better answer than blaming Microsoft, let me know.

A few of us did demos at the Cinema Place Gallery last Friday.

Here is Denise Oyama Miller working on collages. The piece in the foreground is a background for an underwater scene which she created by fusing strips onto a background fabric. She is planning to add fish to it. The sunflower is made with fabric and colored paper held together with acrylic medium.

Franki Kohler is showing how she creates fabric postcards. That’s Franki’s book she has on display.

I created a very simple landscape before I went, so I could demonstrate free-motion quilting.

Here I am painting the fig quilt. I made the fig color up, and then realized later that figs aren’t really as purple as I was imagining. I think I will go back and dull the purple down some, and add some green highlights.

I also have a larger fig quilt in progress.

The show will continue until November 12th.

New Quilts for Demo

I've been asked to do a demo at the Cinema Place Gallery in Hayward tomorrow. I’ve been scrambling to get some work in progress, so I have something to demo on. This fig quilt has been painted, cut out and stitched to a background fabric. It is half quilted. I will be doing some more quilting and painting on top of it at the gallery tomorrow evening.

Art Quilt Show & Watercolor Class

A new art quilt show has recently opened at

Cinema Place Gallery

1061 'B' Street

12-4 Wed & Sun, 12-8 Thurs-Sat

Most of the pieces are from SAQA members. I have three pieces in the show. I was there last week. It is a nice space, and I was impressed with the quality of the work displayed. It will run until November 12th. I will be going to the reception tomorrow night, which will be from 5-7pm.

This photo is a sampling of what I have been doing in the watercolor class I’ve been taking.

I have no great masterpieces yet. Most of our paintings so far start with copying the instructor’s sketch, so we have a starting place to practice techniques. I would rather do more original work, but am happy working this way while we are still learning techniques. Having the basic composition already planned does take the pressure off of coming up with subject matter. The top left sheet with two landscapes on it are my own compositions. I am learning to plan ahead to preserve the whites, since watercolor is transparent. I think learning watercolor will make me more aware of value in other work as well.

A few photos from the Exhibit

Our exhibit is in glass display cases distributed throughout the fifth floor of the library. There are maybe three dozen quilts displayed. The exhibit looks great. It was worth the effort we all put into it. Here are a few photos from the show. I'm afraid my snapshots don't give it the proper justice it deserves. The exhibit looks much better in person. Fill in the missed names in the comment section if you can.

Sonja Jeter and Dolores Miller next to the exhibit sign featuring digital images of some of the quilts.

Top left: Quilt by Madlyn Jones Bottom row: quilts by Julie Stiller, Nancy Riffle, Diane Carver, & Linda Cline

Terri Thayer next to her quilt

Clockwise from top left: Quilts by Diane Carver, Virginia Schnalle, Debbie Wambaugh

Amy Witherow with her quilt

Left to right: purse by Jaye Lapachet, nest by Bronwen McInerney

I will go back on April 17th for the reception and to see the panel discussion. All of the promotional material says that the panel will talk about how the quilts were made, but from the discussions on Saturday, it sounds like they will be talking more about why the quilts were made, and what they were thinking when they were creating quilts to go with the theme of the show. The talk will be accompanied by a slide show.

"Primal Green" Art Quilt Exhibit

This week's assignment was to create an event flyer. I decided I might as well advertise my own event. I had fun manipulating a photo of my quilt for the background of the flyer. This is the show that my CQFA group has been working hard to get together the last few months. We will be meeting there as a group tomorrow, then going out to lunch.

Environmental Quilts

My quilt samples for the educational display at our quilt show are completed. Now I need to write up some text to go along with the display.

I have a piece I made a few years ago which will fit the theme of the exhibit since it’s made mostly of repurposed materials, but I’m also thinking about a current piece that would go with the environmental theme.

I went to take some photos of Arrowhead Marsh just up the road at a shoreline park in Oakland. The colors from the late afternoon sun were quite spectacular at about 4:30 until the the sun dipped below the horizon twenty minutes later.

The origins of the marsh are a bit of a mystery. It wasn’t there in 1855. They think perhaps it is the result of silt washing down the creek from construction of the Lake Chabot Dam in the late 1800’s. The resiliency of nature despite the carelessness of man resulting in something so beautiful fits the theme of the exhibit quite nicely. Although to be honest, I am more interested in the gorgeous colors than making a quilt with a strong statement. I think there could be several quilts to be made just from the images I captured this week.

My CQFA group will be having a quilt show at the SanFrancisco public library titled “Primal Green: Environmental Art Quilts”. It will be opening March 2011.

Three other members and I are putting together an educational display designed to show what an art quilt is, and how it is made. We are each making three small quilts in varying degrees of completion, so we can show the progress. Here are my three pieces started. One of them will stay as is, and I will be working further on the other two.

International Quilt Study Center

I’ve been catching up on my reading. I’ve just finished looking at the SAQA newsletter from a couple months ago, and was excited to find out that my quilt “Succulent IV” was chosen to be part of the permanent collection at the International Quilt Study Center at the University of Nebraska.


The quilts have been traveling since January 2009 in SAQA’s 20th Anniversary Trunk Show. 183 SAQA members created eight inch quilts which were mounted with archival mat board. Three of the 56 quilts chosen for the collection are featured this month on the IQSC website.

42nd Annual Textile Exhibition

I will have four of my recent pieces in the Olive Hyde Art Gallery for their
"42nd Annual Textile Exhibition".

April 2 - May 15, 2010
Thursday through Sunday, 12:00 noon – 5:00 pm.
Opening Reception on Friday, April 2 - 7:00-9:00 p.m.

The Olive Hyde Art Gallery is located at:
123 Washington Blvd.
Fremont, CA 94539

Georgia O’Keeffe, Ansel Adams, & Whisper Quilts

I am in a Whisper Quilt challenge with SAQA. We are divided into groups of ten. The first person received a photograph, and was required to create a quilt inspired by the photo. The second person gets to see the first quilt (but not the photo) and makes a quilt inspired by it. The third person gets to see the second quilt… and so on. It’s a bit like playing “telephone” where something is whispered from person to person, and by the time it gets to the last person, the message is completely changed. I got to see the results from the last Whisper Challenge (this link loads slow, but it’s worth the wait). Three groups went in completely different directions, and all of the quilts were really wonderful.

I am creating a quilt based on what Liz Berg has done. I had an immediate first impression of her quilt, and my family had similar thoughts. But, I put that idea away to see if it might lead me in other directions. Then I remembered a piece of fabric which seemed to relate to Liz’s quilt, and the fabric lead me in a new direction, and everything seemed to fall into place…until I got it all pinned together and it just didn’t seem right. The separate pieces weren’t relating to each other. Time to put it away for a day and come back to it later.

I went to San Francisco the next day to the SFMOMA to see the “Georgia O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams” exhibit. The exhibit showed works by both artists and compared their art. I hadn’t known that they were friends, or imagined that their work could have any similarities. Actually, I knew little about the work of Ansel Adams beyond a dozen or so of his most well known photos. I now have a better appreciation of his work after seeing the exhibit. I enjoyed seeing O’Keeffe’s paintings up close. I began noticing areas in her paintings how a shape or a line might be clearly defined in one area, and then fade into obscurity. I wondered if adding some obscurity might make my quilt better.

The following day, I got out my fabric paints. I darkened the background in part of the quilt to lower the contrast between it and the foreground. I added some visual texture to the same area which seemed to relate to the rest of the quilt. It’s been rescued from the “what was I thinking stack,” and now it’s one of my favorite quilts.

Sorry, I can’t show pictures. It must remain Top Secret until the last people have finished their quilts, and we are allowed to reveal them to the world. I will be taking it to my small CQFA group this weekend to share. There are two other Whisper Challenge participants in that group, but one has finished hers, and one said she won’t be there this weekend, so I think it will be safe to whisper a few secrets in the small group. The last person is scheduled to finish in December, so look for pictures in 2010.

April Happenings

I've been taking a bit of a break from creating new textile pieces.

My current focus has been on updating my programming and web design skills to make myself more marketable in the job market.

I have been learning Java programming, and have been updating my HTML and CSS skills. My current project is redesigning and building from scratch the website for the Piecemakers Quilt Guild. This work in progress can be viewed here: http://www.piecemakersguild.org/new. I still have a lot to do loading content, and fine tuning the layout.

To make my post quilting related, I have two pieces juried into the "Images of California" art show at the San Leandro History Museum and Art Gallery:

320 W. Estudillo Avenue, San Leandro, California
May 14 to Saturday, June 27
Artist Reception: Saturday, May 16 from 1:00 am - 3:00 pm
Thursday through Sunday, 11:00 am to 3:00 pm

March Happenings

Last Friday I went to the opening reception of the “41st Annual Textile Exhibition” at the Olive Hyde Art Gallery in Fremont. I have my three painted succulent pieces in the show. Several other artists working in quilts were represented along with artists working in other fiber mediums. The show will continue through April 18. Details are on the Olive Hyde website: http://www.ci.fremont.ca.us/Art/OliveHydeArtGallery/default.htm

On Saturday, I went to the CQFA meeting in Santa Clara. One of our members invited Margaret Nivin, a painting instructor, to come talk with us about critiquing. We had our normal show and tell in a variety of techniques and styles, and Margaret guided us in critiquing the pieces. It was good to talk about each piece beyond the customary “oohs & ahhs” and the “how did you do that?” types of questions.

I’ve been trying to put together an interview outfit, and finding that the suit I have from 15 years ago (and the other one from 20 years ago) no longer fit. I found a jacket I liked, and made a plaid skirt to coordinate with it. Then Saturday night, I went to a clothing exchange at a Zocalo’s coffeehouse to find a good home for the old suits. I think there were no takers for my suits, so they will go to a local community service organization. I found a nice pair of slacks, a jacket, and a nice blouse for eveningwear.

I’ve started a twelve inch block for the SAQA auction, but I let my colors run together and become muddy. Now it reminds me more of an artichoke than a succulent plant, so I plan to start over.

Meet SAQA’s Artists: SAQA’s 20th Anniversary Trunk Show

“Succulent IV” is a cropped version of the first succulent in my series. It will travel for a year as part of SAQA’s 20th Anniversary Trunk Show.


After the end of the show, selected quilts will be donated to the International Quilt Study Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln

“Trees Are Us” Exhibit

The following three pieces have been selected to be part of an exhibit at the Solovei Art Gallery in Everett, Washington. I expect there will be a wide variety of mediums represented.

Artist reception on Saturday December 6th 2pm - 6pm. It will be running until December 29th. The location is 2801 Grand Ave, #203, Everett WA 98201. Look for more information about the Solovei Art Gallery on their website: http://www.soloveiartgallery.com/

More about Last Weekend's Show

Thanks for all of your nice comments about last weekends show.

One of you requestd more detail shots. I didn't bother originally, since most of the newer work I had at the show has an individual entry either on this blog or the Fast Friday blog. I have a label that points to all of my finished work on this blog: finished quilts, and a label on the Fast Friday blog: Linda Cline. All of the labels are listed in the sidebar of each blog. Also pictures on Blogger are always clickable to show a larger picture.

Ellen Edith was the guest artist for our show. She is a cartoonist with her own line of fabrics, and she makes whimsical story quilts. She is a wonderful lecturer who tells stories about her family which go with the quilts she has made.


I had to buy something from Ellen's booth, just because she is such a fun person to be around, and her work makes me smile. So I bought this journal for myself, and a few half yards of fabric which I will use to piece together a skirt for my daughter.

Weekend Quilt Show

The Piecemakers Quilt Show this weekend was a success. My featured artist corner looked really great when it was all set up. I displayed about half of the quilts I had available in my corner booth. The other half were shown during my presentations.




My pre-show jitters vanished, and I really enjoyed doing my short half hour presentations where I showed the other half of my quilts. Halfway through one of my presentations, my parents walked in the back of the room, and Dad said, “Hey, you think you know what you’re doing?” Everyone laughed, and the short interlude lightened the mood a bit. (Hi, Dad)

After I had planned which quilts I was going to take, my husband saw this small 6” quilt laying about, “Aren’t you going to take this one?” and he was insistent that I should find a place to show this one also. I had a binder of my work in clear plastic sheet protectors, so on impulse, I slipped it into the front of the binder, and added it to my price list. And this little six inch quilt was my big sale for the day, which was great since I wasn't necessarily expecting to sell anything.