Completed Pieces for Fiber Shots

Here are the completed pieces I created for Fiber Shots at the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles. Fiber Shots will be sold to benefit the museum for $100 each. It begins today in concordance with the Kaffe Fassett exhibit.

"Fruit Salad"; 10 x 10

Untitled; 10 x 10

Linking up to Nina Marie's Off the Wall Friday.

Spiral & Leafy Shapes

This small quilt has changed a lot since it began. It’s beginnings can be seen two posts back on January 26. I think the design part of this quilt is done. I just need to finish the edge. I’m clueless what to name this, or if it shall remain “Untitled”. Any suggestions? I had spirals and leafy shapes in mind when I created it.

With the heavy quilting and paint, it is hardly noticeable that the areas of color are made up from tiny scraps, but up close, it adds to the layered look.






I have linked up to Nina Marie's Off the Wall Friday.

2012 Whisper Quilts Revealed

The Whisper Challenge for our Northern California/Nevada SAQA group had their big reveal meeting of the finished quilts today. It’s always fun to see the directions the various participants went in. You can see all of the quilts on our regions blog.

Here is the starting photo (By Deb Cashatt) that was used for our latest SAQA Whisper Challenge. It shows a busy street corner in Hong Kong. The arched structure is a pedestrian walkway above the street.


I wasn’t sure I would like doing an architectural piece, but I ended up liking how it turned out. With so much going on in the quilt, I needed to decide which details I would focus on and which I would edit out. I ended up piecing together of vertical rectangles to suggest a city, and then I painted the arches on top.

See what others have been up to this week on Nina Marie's Off the Wall Friday. 

Hibiscus Quilt

Here is the quilt I started back in November. This was a fun experiment to start with a couple of tiny scraps and build a quilt around them. I used free motion quilting to extend the design of the small bits of commercial fabric. Today I painted (mostly in the background.)

To make the painting relate to the piecing, I added some geometric shapes while I was painting. This discovered while I was working on my Whisper Quilt this summer.

I like parts of this quilt close-up better than I like it as a whole, but it was worth doing just to enjoy the process.


The SAQA Whisper Quilt challenge will be revealed at our regional meeting next Saturday in Elk Grove. I will post about it in a couple of weeks.

See what others have been up to this week on Nina Marie's Off the Wall Friday.

Quilted Rock #1

Quilted Rock #1 (3.5 h x 2.75 d x 2 h) is done.

I have several quilts in my mind, but it is good to have something small and less complicated in progress with so much else going on right now. Rock number two has been selected. The yard is making progress, but not done yet. I start teaching an online typing class on Monday. And I will be taking another watercolor class.

Whisper Challenge

Have I really not posted since December? I was busy in Spring teaching an Excel class which I hadn't taught before. Went on a week and a half trip to Orlando and Disney World right after school let out. This summer I've been busy with a major garden project in the front yard. I did manage to get a quilt done last month, although I can't show more than a preview since it's a challenge project which can't be revealed yet.

It’s Whisper Challenge time again. Here is a small detail of how I began. The top is pieced together with overlapping edges held together with zigzag stitching. I drew the main design lines directly on the top with a permanent fabric marker. They are hardly visible now after I have added all of the layers of paint and quilting. The completed quilt won’t be revealed until after the challenge is complete in February 2013.

The 2011Whisper Challenge can now be viewed on the SAQA regional blog. My quilt “Figs for a Crow” is the seventh quilt in Group 5.

I never showed the finished quilt from the 2010 Whisper Challenge, although I showed a preview a couple years ago. I don’t think there is a slide show available of the whole challenge, but I do have a few photos from the beginning.

Here is the photo, which I started from. A small crab on a rocky beach.

Here it is my finished quilt. I zoomed in on the little crab, brightened the color scheme up, and added a few barnacles.

I love what Deb Cashatt came up with next. She manipulated the photo of my quilt in Photoshop, and came up with something totally unique.

Figs for a Crow

I composed my latest quilt on watercolor paper, and then enlarged it onto fabric to make a quilted version. The quilted version is finished. I have started painting the watercolor version. I plan to build up the darks, and add some purple to some of the figs. Here is a detail shot of the in progress painting.

Strange Bird

I have finally finished this piece. It just needs a sleeve, so I can hang it.

It is titled “Strange Bird”, because the yellow bird in the tree thinks the flutist looks like a very strange bird.

 

We finally got the remaining trim on the house painted. I just have the porch and steps left, but I am procrastinating on that. I have the paint for it, but it will wait for me until I am in a house painting mood again.

Arrowhead Marsh III

I had to take a break from Illustrator so I could finish this quilt and enter in a local show.

"This is a Quilt!"

“Arrowhead Marsh II” is destined for the SAQA trunk show titled “This is a Quilt!” It will be traveling to various SAQA events through 2012.

I have given away four of the bookmarks as gifts. These two are left. Leave a comment on this post or the last one to be entered in the drawing in a week or so.

Bookmark Giveaway

Arrowhead Marsh II wasn’t coming along as anticipated. I hadn’t considered enough how the paint colors would blend. So I didn’t hesitate to cut the quilt into bookmarks. I embellished them with shapes cut from pre-fused scraps. I like the bookmarks much more than the quilt, and glad this was the smaller of the two quilts I at this later stage.

I have recipients planned for four of the bookmarks, and will have two left over. I will draw two random winners in two weeks. Leave a comment in the comment section if you would like to be in the drawing.
I'm making a second try at the same quilt. I’m learning what not to do, and what works well. I’ve made more conscious decisions with the initial fabric choices this time.

Painting the Marsh

“Arrowhead Marsh” is completed. It’s always a bit of a surprise for me to see how a quilt changes after I paint it. I was expecting to put more orange in this one, but I let the orange stay near the bottom, and added more green. I like the gradated area that resulted. When it was nearly completed, I added some blue into the bottom section to relate it more to the top section.

This quilt will be in the CQFA show
"Primal Green: Environmental Art Quilts"
Opening March 2011 at San Francisco Public Library
Reception April 17 , 2011

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.

Fashioning and Re-Fashioning Clothes

I’ve been working on clothes for a couple of weeks. I made a pioneer dress (McCalls 9424) a couple of years ago for a parade. It was still quite functional, but so old fashioned and costumey looking, that it hasn’t been worn since. I made a couple of attempts at restyling it until I came up with the final skirt. It’s just above knee level now. It looks good on her. I think it won’t be taking up space in her closet anymore.


I also got talked into sewing another dress for my daughter. We picked out McCall’s 6159. We found some plaid fabric in the closet which I forgot I had, and then Camilla found some gingham which she wanted for the collar and facings. And it’s a good thing she insisted on the contrast fabric, as I wouldn’t have had quite enough fabric otherwise.

This is a quick fabric postcard this morning. I used some scraps from the current dress for the background, and pre-fused scraps for the appliqué. It was fun to make.

Whisper Quilts Revealed

I went to the regional SAQA meeting Saturday in Elk Grove. The main feature was the revealing of the Whisper Quilt Challenge. I forgot to hand my camera over to someone when I was holding up the group of quilts I was in, but managed to get this snapshot of the quilts stacked on the table afterwards. I will talk a bit about the quilts shown here. I believe better photos of all of the quilts will soon be up on our SAQA blog. I will link there when they are up.

Four different groups all started with the same photo of a desert garden, and all went in four different directions.

Marjorie Johnson’s quilt is shown on the top of the stack. You can see her full quilt on her website. She says she had a hard time trying to find cactus fabrics to add to her collaged desert landscape. And then she added some animals to put life into the quilt.

Cynthia Long did a value study of Marjorie’s quilt, and discharged a piece of silk to replicate the pattern of values she saw. She then added lots of wonderful detail with additional paint (or dye maybe?) and lots of wonderful hand stitching.

Carol Larson focused on some painted and stitched details from Cynthia’s quilt, and made it the main focus of her own quilt. She worked in similar colors as Cynthia. Just a hint of the original landscape is showing in the green hill-like shape at the bottom of her quilt.

Liz Berg did away altogether with the landscape idea. She continued with Carol’s circle motif, and added some long curvy shapes. Her full quilt is shown on her blog at the bottom of this post.

My first thought about Liz’s quilt was of sea kelp and bubbles, but I didn’t wasn’t real interested in doing kelp, and waited a couple of days to see if any other ideas would emerge. The colors and shapes in Liz’s quilt reminded me of a piece of fabric I had with random circles printed across it. And then the fabric reminded me of a lone allium plant with two straggly leaves growing down the street. I pulled out lots of coordinating polka dot prints, and added a drift of circles behind the main flower. Liz’s long curvy shapes became the stem and leaves of my allium.

Completed Kalanchoes

Succulents IX and X are completed. These will probably end up matted and framed similar to the last two Succulents.

Midnight Garden

Deadlines are great for getting projects done. I wasn’t very inspired by my latest project, so I procrastinated on quilting it. I like it now that it’s finished. Some white paint was added after the quilting was completed. And it was completed just in time to enter into a juried show.

Frames for my Latest Succulents

I've gotten Succulents VII & VIII in their new 8 x 10 frames. I think they look great. I will plan on doing some more smaller framed pieces.

Succulent VII & VIII

I got two 5 x 7 pieces out of the current project instead of the one I was planning. I am looking for a good source for pre-cut double mats for framing.

And I had some scraps leftover to make ATC's. Two of the ATC's have some stitching to join some of the smaller scraps together.

Succulent VI

12 x 12
This is my piece for the One Foot Square SAQA Benefit Auction. I started with a piece of hand dyed fabric with blended turquoise, green and yellow.

I really should get some more photos to base my succulents on. I keep reusing the same favorites and doing them in different colors. Then again, why not repeat a good thing until I tire of it.