Doesn't It Feel Good To Wind Up Loose Ends?

     I've been in the procrastination mode with finishing up art pieces I've started. I decided to get them finished so that I can feel free to begin with new ones that I have brewing in my head and on the sketch pad. One of them that is sort of an art piece, although not really mine, is a marionette that I bought in Burma in 1984.
     The country is now called Myanmar. Back then, I was backpacking there and bought this puppet for me as well as another one for my brother. I was also carrying two large bronze sculptures from Nepal in my backpack waiting for a safe place to ship them home. I was hesitant to add two more large, heavy items to my pack to carry but they were so beautiful I thought it would be good for my soul to add the weight and I was young and full of energy. I finally shipped them all from Bangkok and they all made it safely. Over the years, the moths got at my marionette and destroyed her clothes. I've been hesitant to redo them because I hate repair sewing work.
     I began by prying off a sequined bib that was nailed on over her clothes. Then slowly cutting off the first layer of silk jacket around her strings, followed by a wrapped pant-like thing around her waist and legs made of upholstery fabric. Underneath that was silk pants that were almost totally disintegrated from the moths. After cutting those off I discovered a layer of cotton underwear. All of those items had her puppet strings going through them that I had to cut around. Here's what I did to sew her new clothes:

1.) I tried to recreate patterns from paper from the clothes I had cut off.
 2.)Then I pinned fabrics to the patterns and cut them out.
3.)The easiest thing for me to do was to pin the pieces onto the puppet
4.)Hand sew the pieces on to her.
5.)Find where the strings were attached and cut holes in the sleeves, pant legs, etc. there .
6.) Untie the knots in the strings.
7.) Feed the strings through the holes, and retie the knots.
8.) I started with the cotton underwear and then sewed the layers on up; redoing the strings each layer.
9.) Dab matt medium around each hole in the fabric so that it wouldn't fray. (I did this as I went.)
10.) Nailed on the sequined bib.
All in all, quite a job. I'm glad it's done. And I used mostly fabric I had on hand. I had to buy the fabric for the jacket and the pants. But I used silk for the wrap, her belt, and her hair ties,  that I had picked up in Cambodia a few years ago. And I used cotton for her underwear that I had as remnants.

 By the way, she has human hair. As I worked on her, I wondered about the person or persons who created her all those years ago and whose hair she has. Her country has experienced great turmoil and I hope all the people involved have managed to have decent lives. When I visited, I was treated so wonderfully by everyone I encountered. It is a beautiful country and has several marvelous cultures.

My Burmese Marionette

     I also finished hand quilting the small quilt The Puppeteer. I used a single strand of embroidery floss in various colors for each area of the quilt. I used a running stitch that shows in the background areas. In the foreground areas, I used a very tiny stitch on the front, only grabbing a few threads and a regular sized stitch on the back to keep the "grab" even so that the quilt will lay flat. Jude Hill calls this a Wizard Stitch. I like that name.

The Puppeteer

So I have one more unfinished art project I hope to finish this coming week. Then on to the new ones. It feels good. I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts so that the artists know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

Great Value For A Good Cause

     Today begins SAQA's annual auction of art quilts. You can go here to see how the auction works. Most quilts are 12 x 12 and there is huge variety of themes and color choices. This is a wonderful opportunity to obtain a small artwork and support the media of art quilters. The profits go to SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates), which you can read about at that link. That organization has so many benefits and has changed my life with its exhibition opportunities, discussion group, journal,  and meetings with members. Here is the quilt I made and donated for auction. I monoprinted the fabric, hand-stitched, machine-stitched, and machine-quilted it.

New Growth

I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts so that they know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

Sharing Art About Town

     I'm in the process of hand quilting these days and taking apart a marionette that I bought in Burma in 1984 to redo her clothes that have slowly disintegrated over the years. I thought it wouldn't be too interesting to show those photos of the puppet redo in the blog, so I decided to take a few photos of art in my town instead and share those with you instead. Our town, DeLand, Florida, has become quite a mecca for sculpture and murals. Here are two of my favorites which are both located in in Chess Park.

A Conversation Over Chess in 1929
by Jill Cannady

This mural was painted by Jill Cannady from her imagination and I love how she captured the lights and shadows and the movements and expressions of the people. Sitting in front of it is a lovely bronze sculpture.

Peace by Joan Baliker

We have sculptures installed all over town but they only stay a year or two and then are replaced by new ones. There is an artist reception to celebrate the installation of the new ones followed by a sculpture walk around the town to introduce them. Peace, however, was so popular, that a movement germinated to purchase her and it succeeded. So she is now a permanent part of DeLand. 

     And here is how my stitching is progressing on The Puppeteer. I decided to do some echo quilting in the top right section in a thread the same color as the background.

partially quilted

It's difficult to see from the photo, but the quilting is helping the layers to lay flat. Since I used scrim for the background fabric and it has so much texture, the quilting stitches don't add much texture, themselves, like quilting usually does so the quilting won't be much of a feature. It will serve mostly for structure in this piece.

     I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts so that the artists know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

Does Life Ever Settle Down?

     Is it a good thing if life settles down? I'm not sure that it is. Then, it might get too boring. I've neglected my blog lately because I got called back to my home town suddenly for not such a good thing that I won't go into here. Life got interrupted (or maybe I should say plans got interrupted).  But in the process, old relationships got refreshed and renewed and old places got revisited. So, in the end, the trip was a blessing.
     When I got back home, I had a birthday. My husband usually never knows what to get me for gifts so I started a wish list on Amazon to make it easier for him. I started the list a long time ago and forgot about it so when I unwrapped the gifts, I was genuinely surprised. He got my this travel sized water color kit which is perfect for my Tuesdays when I get together with friends in the coffee shop or parks to sketch and paint. It is also perfect for on airplanes. Koi Watercolors and Brush

Watercolor set with Opus playing with brush

The brush unscrews to fill with water so that you don't need to carry water with you. And the plastic palette can be attached to the top, bottom, left, or right side. Pretty Cool!

The box 

And then, for inspiration, he also gave me this wonderful book written by Martha Sielman. Masters: Art Quilts Volume 1 (I already have Volume 2).

Wonderful book

     Once home, I met with my group ArtsEtc and showed them the small quilt I had begun but didn't know how to finish. The group consensus was that the figure of the girl wasn't showing up enough and to fix that I needed to mask the dark blue rectangle a little. Also, I needed to add some more blue to the right and frame it in blue. Here it is, with the changes. I put a white sheer on top of the blue rectangle, sewed on blue edges, and added a small blue rectangle to the right. I also painted the girl to make her darker. Then I added batting and made a pillowcase finish. Now I need to do some hand quilting to finish it off.

before

The Puppeteer

So the ups and downs of life keep us on our toes. The downs tend to dampen the creative spirit and make us wonder why but by wondering and questioning I think it leads us to new pathways and discoveries and new adventures. It's a good thing to not settle down... at least not for me.
I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts so that they know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

Where Do I Go When I'm Not Home?

     Once again, I am returning home after another adventure. This time, I spent two weeks in the Amazon area of Peru. The last two of my blog entries I had scheduled to post for while I was away. I was able to have them appear, but I was in an area that did not have an Internet signal on Fridays so I couldn't link up to Nina's Off the Wall Friday like I usually do each week. The women in the river area of Peru do amazing embroideries. The base city for my trip was Iquitos, Peru and here are two of the local women setting up shop.

One sewing and one setting up

Here is a cloth I considered buying. The white "outlines" around the flower represent anacondas.

All hand embroidered

The asking price was about $200. Of course, the tradition is to bargain. I have nowhere in my home to display it, so I didn't bargain. I just admired it for quite awhile and said how beautiful it was and moved on. I did buy a beautifully embroidered blouse from another woman at the end of our trip, however. And several baskets and bracelets from a village on the river to give as gifts.

     One week of the trip was a 7 day cruise on the Amazon (my husband and I were the only passengers with 6 crew and one guide). They didn't cancel because they had to move the boat anyway. And the second week, we stayed at a jungle lodge.  Here are few photos.

Our way, cool boat, The Selva Viva

Hiking with guide

picked up a friend

owl monkeys so curious about us

our tent for a night out

rainbow over the Marañón River just below the source of the Amazon

     It was a marvelous trip and my head is full of images of amazing birds, monkeys, foliage, and sounds. I'm glad to be home in dry clothes again and away from the many bugs. But the discomforts were so worth the enrichment. I'm linking this, successfully, to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts to let them know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

Want To Go Way Back With Me?

     I was glancing up on my kitchen wall looking up at an art quilt I created over 10 years ago. At the time was teaching chemistry and had just started making art quilts for fun and didn't even come close to consider calling myself an artist. I was invited to join an art group and bring something for show and tell. I had never shown anyone anything I had created before let alone a group of artists. I was terrified. I almost didn't go to the meeting. But the women I met were very encouraging and friendly so I went. This is what I took to show.

Kitchen Concoction

     To create this, I took a photo of this bowl.

My wooden salad bowl

And a photo of this bottle.

bottle of flavored vinegar

Then I manipulated them in Photoshop Elements until I got layers of colors and I printed out the photos. I chose fabrics with those colors and cut out the shapes and fused them onto the base fabrics and sewed it all together and then quilted it. The difficult part for me was to machine embroider the words for the sauces. I actually ripped them out twice before I was happy with them. The "vapors" are painted on with Shiva paintstiks.

     Looking back at this beginning quilt, there are things I would do differently. It definitely would benefit from having light values in it. I didn't know about varying values back then. I would balance out the dark green more. It's all on the left side. I would also change the shape of the vapor trails and change where the fluid coming out of the bottle intersects with one of the vapor trails. But, overall, I still like this early quilt and that's why it still hangs in my kitchen. And I still cook and/or use the sauces that are named on it. 

     So that day way back when I stood up and showed my quilt the group was very nice and welcoming I decided to join and I am still a member of ArtsEtc today. It has been such a great influence on my artistic life and now I do call myself an artist. I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts so that they know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

Do You Get To Visit Galleries Or Museums?

     Do you make a point of visiting galleries and or museums regularly? Luckily for me, even though I live in a relatively small town, it is an active artist community. In my city there is one art museum with a central space and a satellite space and both have frequent receptions with wonderful exhibits. And in the neighboring cities there are also excellent art receptions and exhibits on a regular basis.
    Recently, I attended an art opening celebrating artists new to the gallery called Arts On Douglas in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. It was well attended with many people I knew as well as many new to me. The gallery space is marvelous and the art there is always a delight.
     One of the artists is a friend of mine and it has been so inspiring to watch her work grow over the years. She recently had a one-woman show at the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum in Golden, Colorado and now is represented in this gallery. Her name is Bobbi Baugh. Here is a photo of some of the art at the show at Arts on Douglas. I tried to get some good photos, but the lights were from above and there was some glare. I love her printmaking techniques and the layering she does.

I love fossils so I'm especially fond of this one.

     Then there was work by the artist,  John Westmark. At first, when I looked at his paintings, I thought he used pattern pieces and thought that was interesting. I really liked his overall composition, too. But then, I started reading the words on the "patterns" and was blown away.

By John Westmark

I love the words on this detail shot

     So, lucky for me, I get to go to an artist opening or reception at least once a month. And I never leave disappointed. There is always inspiration in the art and the artists. I hope that you will seek out galleries and museums in your area to visit and to support no matter how small they are and that you will take friends and family with you to discuss what you see and exchange viewpoints. I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts to let them know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.