Art quilts – Page 12

Creative journey

A few weeks ago, I shared a “sketch” for my newest bird in my songbird series (you can see it here). The sketch becomes the line drawing I use for making fusible applique artwork.

For those of you who don’t know, fusible applique is a way to glue layers of fabric together. The fusible product (aka web) is ironed to the wrong side of the fabric. Pattern pieces are then cut from the fused fabric and assembled on the background fabric. The assembled fabrics are ironed again to activate the fusible web and adhere all the layers together.

Fused fabrics are not meant to be a permanent way to adhere the fabric together. The fusible web can come loose with handling, which isn’t good for long-term stability. So, after the fabrics are fused they should be stitched in place to make sure all the layers are permanently joined together.

My fused applique Eastern Towhee, shown in the photo, could be stitched in place as it is, but I like to add another layer of interest before I do my sewing. I’ll show you that step in an upcoming blog post. So stay tuned and keep enjoying your creative journey!

Stop playing

No matter how accomplished you get in doing something, I believe there is always room for improvement and growth. Maybe some people can admit that they’ve reached the pinnacle. Not me.

The world is constantly changing. People’s interests change, fashion changes, and new technologies are created. If I could say I have it all together, I suspect in a few months…maybe a year…what I do would become out-dated, old, and uninteresting.

So my issue is to keep figuring things out. It’s a difficult process, because you can never stop, even if you get tired. My feelings right now are I need to improve my quilting skills.

I have a fancy machine, but that doesn’t do the work…my hands and brain do. Lately, I’ve noticed that when I quilt my pieces I fall back into what’s comfortable. I’m bored.

Recently what has wowed me in other quilts is the beautiful mixture of different motifs on one quilt. The backgrounds are rich with varying designs. That’s what I’m loving and want to do. I’ve been trying to think what’s holding me back and I realize its time. I don’t allow myself time to play … play feeds inspiration. Play also allows you to try something new without worrying about failure; “Oh well, I was just playing.”

This week I played. The results aren’t typical for me, but I was able to experiment with some new designs. Then, because that wasn’t special enough, I experimented with Derwerts Inktense pencils to add some color. I won’t show you the fails, just know that there were a few.

My take home message from this is to allow yourself time to play and experiment. You don’t have to be so serious about everything you do. Just remember as this applies to our art: “we don’t stop playing because we get old, we get old because we stop playing.”

Gathered along the way.

In a couple days, we’ll be at the official end of summer. For me, it’s been a long one filled with a lot of good things. I got to spend a few days at the beach and I worked on an exciting professional opportunity. This opportunity presented me with 2 deadlines. One was at the end of July and the other was this week. I look back on the days and I’m proud of my accomplishments. High-five to me, I did it! I also realize I enjoy what I was doing. Now I have to figure out how to continue with this momentum.

Over the next couple months, I’ll be working to make changes with my professional journey. After a year+ hiatus from teaching, I’ve decided to get back into it. I’m going to be approaching it all differently this time. I want to share my enthusiasm for “art” quilting and encourage other’s who feel the cravings like I did when I first started this journey.

I’m going to use the motivation of my summer deadlines, to continue moving forward. Using the symbolism of my bee friend, I will continue to explore the possibilities while remembering to enjoy life’s nectar, to work hard on my goals, and to share the information that I’ve gathered along the way.

Bid on Me!

I belong to SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates). This organization has provided me with a lot of information and encouragement over the past several years. For the support they give me, I like to give back to them. This year, I am again participating in SAQA’s annual benefit auction.

Earlier this year, I made a 12″ x 12″ quilt that is similar to my quilt “Silenced” (pictured on my home page). Both of these quilts feature my rendition of the now extinct Carolina Parakeet. These birds were the only indigenous parrot of North America. They once flourished in the old growth forests along rivers and in swamps. They could be found from Southern New York all the way to eastern Colorado.

Whenever I talk to people about the Carolina Parakeet, they question me by saying they’ve seen parakeets living in their yards. How could that be? The parrots they’re actually referring to are called monk or Quacker parakeets which are considered a feral species. Feral species, including “feral” cats or dogs, were once house pets that escaped that now live and breed in the wild.

With these quilts, I hope to educate people. Maybe by seeing my quilt with cloth parakeets, I can start a virtual discussion with the viewer. Maybe we can find a way to stop further losses. At the minimum, I hope the viewer finds a visual place to pause and imagine what life use to be. I hope whoever sees this finds peace.

You can own this quilt
“Carolina Parakeets”
by bidding on it during the

SAQA Benefit Auction

Bids on this quilt will be open Sept 15- 24
For more details visit www.SAQA.com

Simply enjoy the process

The next couple weeks I’ll be spending a great of time in my studio. Yesterday I dusted off the Behemoth (aka my HandiQuilter Sweet16) and started stitching. A frequent question from people looking at my work is “how long did that take to make?” My snarky comment is 55 years, because its a culmination of many years of experience.

I know what they want to know, but it’s difficult to factually testify the hours spent on any given piece. Are they talking time since the idea was conceived? Or, time since I actually started cutting fabric and stitching? Either of these figures are abstract.

I don’t think I know anyone who can actually sit and sew day in and day out. It beats up your body. It takes a lot of energy to push fabric around. You have to take breaks. There are a few art quilters who work full time at their craft. However, full time means stopping and starting frequently to do other tasks. Then, there are people like me, who work at it part-time. I may be on a roll for a day or two, then I have to spend time on class prep, marketing, addressing email inquires and … the other stuff in my life. My art is constantly being interrupted by life.

So today, while I was working, it occurred to me that I spent a consistent amount of uninterrupted time on the piece pictured here. This is merely the start of the background for an art quilt. I still have to add color with paint and apply the appliquéd design. When that’s finish, there’s the backing, hanging sleeve, and bound edge to add. This densely quilted, 22inch x 22inch square took me 3 hours to stitch (to include a few short breaks to rest my neck and shoulders). I’ve watched abstract painters complete an entire 40inch x 40inch painted canvas in the same amount of time … or less.

So back to the question, “how long did that take?” I’d rather be snarky with my answer, because the reality of the time I’ve put into it may be overwhelming for both of us to hear. I would rather not think about it, just simply enjoy the process.

Continue to experiment

As promised, here is the peacock feather I was working on in my last post. During the process of rendering my design into fabric, I found that my stabilizer didn’t work as well as I had hoped.

What’s interesting is that there are so many variations to creating thread sketched pieces. I have options to finding something that works better. I don’t usually put backing fabrics on my pieces when I thread-sketch/paint. Sometimes the backside of my art quilts look messy, so adding the backing after the fact hides some of the ugly. I do use some sort of stabilizer which helps keep the fabric from shrinking up too much when you add the layers of stitches.

On this particular piece I used fusible fleece batting as the stabilizer. I don’t think I ever tried using fusible fleece before. What I realized is that this brand of fusible fleece is acrylic and the more I stitched the more grip (resistance) it created on the sewing machine bed. It was almost like the acrylic fibers were melting a bit from the friction. When you free-motion stitch, your fabrics need to move smoothly under the needle. If they don’t, you’re stitch lines won’t look as fluid. I’m happy with the final piece and I’m ready to ship it off to its new owner. This is, however, a reminder that there’s always lessons to learn and I should continue to experiment.

Fabric and thread

This week, I’m working on a process to demonstrate thread sketching. Thread sketching is just like making a sketch with pencil and paper. Sketches are pretty quick and often made of simple lines. Instead of paper and pencil, I’m using a sewing machine and thread to sketch.

I want my example to be reproducible, so I need to start with an image. For this example, I decided to use a peacock feather as inspiration. I initially drew the design on paper (right) and I probably could have just made copies, but it looks a little sloppy from all my erasing and redrawing. To clean things up, I scanned the drawing into my computer and re-drew it using Adobe Illustrator (left). The line drawings I can make in Illustrator are known as vector graphics. I like working with vector graphics because they can easily be re-sized and changed without effecting the quality of the image itself. If I tried to enlarge the scan, the image would get more blurry the larger I made it. With vector graphics, I can enlarge or shrink the image as much as I want and have the same quality for all projects. I can also tweak the image to change how it looks. It definitely is a bit time consuming, but since I plan to reuse the image for several projects, I feel it’s worth my time in the long run.

Stay tuned, because next time you see this it will be rendered in fabric and thread.

Have the opportunity again

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to travel to Herdon, Virginia to be part of the Sacred Threads Artist Weekend. Sacred Threads is an art quilt exhibit held every other year which focuses on the spiritual side of making quilts. For this juried exhibit, artists were asked to submit quilts with statements that explain their story.

This was my first time entering this exhibit. To my great honor, my quilt “Soar” was accepted.

It’s always a treat to visit the exhibits where my quilts hang, but this time things were different. The emotional energy that’s in the building can’t be explained. Most quilt exhibits, you look at a quilt and move on, but in this exhibit you’re compelled to read the stories. More than once I was moved to tears reading the artist’s intent. Lisa Ellis and her team of volunteers also produce an audio tour of stories told by the artists and there’s the book, a big book, of all the quilts and artist statements. I didn’t have time to read all the statements while I was there, but I did buy the book and plan to read every one. I had the most fun, stalking fellow artists and asking them to autograph my book. It gave me a reason to have dialog with these talented people and personally learn about their artistic motivation.

During the weekend event, there was a special gallery viewing in which the artists stood by their quilts and talked about their art. Due to the traffic flow of show, I found my best observation point to be across from my quilt. I enjoyed the opportunity to observe people’s reaction to my piece. I had a great vantage point to see people’s reaction without them knowing I was there. I found that a lot of men were attracted to “Soar’s” large osprey wing. That intrigued me. Was it the size? Visual impact? Or that it didn’t look like a traditional quilt? I didn’t ask, but its an interesting tidbit for me. If you have the time to visit this week, I encourage you to go. If not, it will be 2 years before we have the opportunity again.

SEE MY QUILT “Soar” at the
Sacred Threads Exhibition
July 7, 2017 – July 23, 2017
Floris United Methodist Church, Herndon, VA
www.sacredthreadsquilts.org

Dates on quilts

Right now my quilt “Soar” is in Herndon, Virginia waiting to be hung in the Sacred Threads Exhibit. I’m excited to be part of this biennial exhibit which is designed to convey spirituality, healing and inspirational messages without emphasizing any particular religion or theology. The concept of spirituality lives close to my heart as I travel this Earth looking for meaning.

After living with this quilt for awhile I decided to change it’s name from “Solar Worship” to “Soar.” Soar just fits what I see when I look at it. Because of the name change, I had to change the label before I took it to the shipper. I was also required to supply a formal appraisal of the quilt for insurance purposes. Well, that was a first for me.

We have a licensed quilt appraiser in the area, Jane Hall. Jane is known as the “Pineapple Queen” because she has written numerous books about making pieced quilts using the pineapple block (a variation of the log cabin block). She’s also kind of a rock star legend when it comes to quilting; she’s been on many of quilting tv shows and in many magazines. I’ve met her several times before and she even appraised some of the antique quilts that I own. She is an amazing lady. Very kind, talented, and knowledgeable. I really enjoyed my visit with Jane.

One thing she told me was that I need to date my quilts. Since I had to change the label anyway (name change), I decided to heed her advice and include the year made. Dating a quilt is important for historical records. Years from now someone viewing your quilt will wonder about you and the label/date will help them find out who you are.

I have some reservation about dating my quilts, but I do sign them. Sadly, in today’s throw-away society, things that are “slightly old” aren’t valued as much as things that are “new and fresh.” I think if artwork is 10-20 years old, people view the piece as old fashion or out-dated. Jane knows best, so I added the date. But I wonder what you think about dates on quilts?

SEE MY QUILT “Soar” at the
Sacred Threads Exhibition
July 7, 2017 – July 23, 2017
Floris United Methodist Church, Herndon, VA
www.sacredthreadsquilts.org

Call this a win

Today is one of those rare June days that I can have the windows open. I love hearing the birds sing and call outside. There’s a red-headed woodpecker visiting our bird feeder. I can hear its distinct chatter. Somewhat migratory in it’s nature, the red-head seems to only visit us in the breeding season. I always look forward to seeing them. They are definitely hard to miss with their bright red head and black and white tuxedo-like body.

We have several varieties of woodpeckers who visit our yard. Another impressive species is the pileated woodpecker. Pileateds are large birds and amazing to watch. Last week we saw one feeding its young with suet from our feeder. It is so special when they play in our backyard.

Both of these birds are common in the longleaf pine forests in which I live. Like many habitats its being lost to encroachment of people. The pinecones of the longleaf are massive. I’ve been working on a concept using the longleaf pinecone as inspiration. This week I sketched out a digital drawing based on a photo I took a couple years ago. Now that I have the line drawing in Adobe Illustrator, I can easily resize the image to fit any project requirements.

I tried to send the line drawing to my Cameo Silhouette plotter. The Silhouette has a blade attachment which will follow the lines of a drawing and cut out pieces of fabric. (Here’s a link to a post where I describe how it works.) I’m not sure I’m sold on using the Silhouette. I can see it’s potential, but I also need a lot of practice trying to get the techniques down. The image in this post shows my results after I fused all the tiny bits together. I still need to fuse it to a background fabric, then add some depth and detail using thread and pencil. For the most part I’ve accomplished what I tried to do, so we can call this a win.