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

Piecing a Background

When I first began painted on my quilted pieces, I was inspired by the work of Deidre Adams. Her work has wonderful variations of color and texture which is achieved with paint on top of quilted cloth. I was able to see some of Deidre’s work in person last month at SAQA’s 12 Voices exhibit. For some reason, I had thought she started with all white fabric and layered on different colors of paint. But in fact, she starts with a very colorful assortment of fabric which contributes to the subtle color variations in the finished pieces.

I decided to try piecing some fabrics together to create a rather abstracted version of one of the photos I took last month. It will look very different when I am done painting over the quilted fabric in mostly oranges and yellows.

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.

Progress on Leaf Quilts

I have painted two of the leaf sample quilts.

I think the image in the right quilt came out a bit more distinct at this stage. I will add a backing, and quilt a portion of it.

I will quilt the other quilt, and then add more paint to show the finished project.

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.

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.

Strange Birds & Other Things

The tie dying party last April left us with a few extra shirts, so Camilla invited a few more friends over last month. I tied a shirt into a spiral this time. I thought I had used plenty of dye, and ended up with more white than I expected. Next time I will know to use more than seems necessary, and work it into the folds a bit when the fabric is tied up thick.

Camilla spent one week of her summer afternoons at Art Camp. They completed several fun projects in bright, cheerful colors. The instructors put the results up on their website. You can see Camilla’s work here.

I went to my CQFA meeting yesterday morning. We spent a good part of the morning doing some planning for an exhibit we are putting together which will be showing at the San Francisco Main Library next Spring.

After lunch, Sonja Jeter led us in a short workshop about working in a series. Our first task was to pick some colors, and write down vertical and horizontal objects we see every day. Then we painted backgrounds on index cards.

Sonja passed out a handout with a little cartoonish bird on it. Draw it about thirty times. Easy enough, but wait, you must draw it with either your non-dominant hand or with your eyes closed. I tried some both ways. Either way takes the pressure away from trying to create perfect copies, which was entirely not the point. Some of the birds looked more like fish than birds, but each bird was unique and had personality.

We chose some of our birds to trace onto tracing paper while incorporating the vertical or horizontal surfaces we had written down earlier. Birds on a fence make sense. Birds on a bed seems a more random idea, which I resisted at first, but it became an interesting little drawing.

We glued our tracing paper drawings onto the backgrounds, and then painted them some more. The cards with the larger birds are drawn directly onto the backgrounds, because I ran out of tracing paper. These were mostly done in an hour or so during our workshop, I added some more color when I got home.

These are just little studies, and I have no plans for developing them into larger pieces. But it was great just to have permission to play for an afternoon, and maybe I will bring some of the processes over to future artwork. Sonja suggested that the technique we used with tracing paper could be done in fabric with organza overlays in place of the paper.