Are You Going To Festival In Houston?

     Are you one of the lucky ones going to The International Quilt Festival in Houston this year? I hope you get to go. I got to go for the first time in 2012 and went with an elementary school friend. We spent the first two days in the vendor area and I was amazed how large it was and the variety of things sold there. I was expecting only the usual quilting fabrics and notions. When I left, I had purchased sari silk yarns, gorgeous glass beads from the Czech Republic, hand-dyed silk fragments,  I watched many demos, and I traded about 30 ATC's with other artists. Then the next two days we spent in the gallery area viewing the quilts. I even had a quilt on display that year in the SAQA exhibit Sense of Scale.
     I haven't been since, and I don't get to go this year. But I do have a quilt in the SAQA exhibit Balancing Act.

Inner Balance 2

   
I wrote a post of how I created her here. This was one of those creations that just flowed. The exhibit will also travel to the festival in Chicago in April. I may get to see it there.
So if you are going to Festival this year in Houston, enjoy all the many things to see and do and try to visit the SAQA exhibit, too. Thanks for visiting.

Do You Make Your Own Christmas or Holiday Cards?

     Should I make my Christmas cards this year or should I just buy a set and send them out? That's the question I pose each year. If I make them, I like to do it in the summer when I'm less busy and then they are ready to go. But I forgot to do it this summer. And I'm not one of those artists that can just slap a collage together. I take a long time to make design decisions. I'm getting quicker about it than I used to be. This week, I decided that I would give myself two days to put together a design and finish a small art quilt for a card cover. If I didn't accomplish that, then I would purchase cards.
     I began by choosing a previously monoprinted fabric for a background. I thought I wanted it to be zen-like. So I chose another previously monoprinted fabric in a complimentary color and cut out a sun shape and hand embroidered it onto the background which I had placed onto batting.

in progress

     Then I got the idea to put a bird and a saying on it. For inspiration, I browsed through my book Inspired to Quilt by Melanie Testa, which has helped me often. And I reviewed my notes from a class called Spirit Cloth 101 which I took from Jude Hill. That class not only showed me many marvelous techniques in hand stitching, but it also passed on the art of story telling in cloth. And the great news is that the class is now open to all for free. Here is a link to it.
     So I finished it up by thread stitching a bird with my sewing machine onto commercial fabric, cutting it out close to the stitching, and hand sewing it onto the background. Then I embroidered branches using two colors of embroidery floss (3 strands) in a wrapped back stitch. I printed out text onto white cotton muslin, cut them out and hand stitched them on. Next, I cut out a piece of commercial fabric an hand sewed it on with embroidery floss. To finish it up, I added a piece of fabric on the back, and then I used two colors of embroidery floss and whip stitched around the edges (6 strands of the dark teal and 3 strands of the rust).

Joy and Peace

     I plan to scan the image in the computer and add a frame. I'll use that for the cover of the card. I'll put some text for inside the card and take it to a printing company and have them print the cards for me. That's the plan, anyway. We'll see how it looks as a printed card. Of course, the watermark won't be on it.  If it doesn't look good, then this year will be about store-bought cards. At least I tried and I ended up with a small art quilt. 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.

     

Do You Like To Work With The Seasons?

          This week not only did I tie up another loose end, but I tied it in with the autumn season as well. Way back in a blog post here,  I wrote about how I had some artwork that was going nowhere and I decided to rework it. I started it off and it was going well, but then I lost my verve for it and it sat waiting after I had added the top section and bottom section. Part of the reason was because I didn't have the right green fabric for the sides and I hate shopping. I went to the closest quilt shop and they didn't have the right hue. Finally I drove to the next nearest quilt shop and found exactly what I needed and I was off sewing on it again. I'm sure there was an easier way, but to finish it these are the steps I followed:
1.) Hand sew batting onto the sides.
2.) It wasn't nearly straight so I had to add extra fabric to the sides in places.
3.) Sew magenta fabric strips onto the sides.
4.) Sew green fabric onto the magenta fabric.
5.) Quilt onto the green fabric with a rayon rust colored thread (no backing fabric).
6.) Sew tabs with green fabric.
7.) Pin tabs to backing fabric and make a pillowcase backing.
8.) Quilt in the ditch down two sides lengthwise.
After all the handling the leaves were starting to show some wear so I dabbed them with matt medium to keep them together. (After all, they are from 2007.)
     It was nice to know that I was able to rework the art to a form that I like much better.
I bought the hanger at Ten Thousand Villages a fair trade store. It was amazingly inexpensive and they come in many sizes. We have one about 40 minutes away, but you can get them on-line, too.

Autumn Leaf Scroll

Scroll Detail 1

Scroll Detail 2

     So now the problem is what to do with it. I can't find anywhere in the house to hang it (Unless I take another one of my husband's things down and put it in its place instead.) No, I think I've done that enough times already. Working on this now did help me get in the mood for autumn even if it is still pretty hot here in Florida. Our first real cold front may come through next week. Maybe I'll get to wear a sweater soon. Exciting!
     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.

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.