home
about the artist
gallery
blog
links
contact

Archive for the ‘Rehabilitaing a Quilt’ Category

Back in the Saddle, er, Studio

Thursday, January 30th, 2014

graffitiredone

I am slowly getting back into my studio routine and getting past the grief of losing out on the new home that I really wanted. There is still nothing much for us to look at. We are just hoping that something that fits us becomes available soon.

In the meantime, I am having some fun working in my stripped down studio. I have not moved to the new one yet, because it is too far away from where we currently live. Last fall, when I went to my Oregon Critique group, the guest critiquer was surprised that the same person had done the graffiti piece and the moon pieces. She really liked the graffiti piece, but thought the purple which I had used was too flat. I decided to change it to neon pink. Little more shocking, don’t you think. Here is what it looked like before.

graffitiweb

The moon pieces have been weighing on my mind. I was not happy with the hand stitching I had done. So I have been working on this one to see if I can resurrect it.

BlueMoon1

I removed all the hand stitching except on the surface of the moon. I used a blue fabric pen to make the perle cotton all dark blue instead of variegated.

indigomoonredux

Where I had the little white circles, I covered them with a variegated silk ribbon, which is more subtle and adds a bit of interest to the surface. If you click on the image, you can see the detail better.

I have also been doing some therapy sewing.making a quilt for Paige, using Lisa’s fabric line. I am doing the disappearing nine patch which is so easy and you end up with blocks that belie the simplicity.

paigequiltmaking

paigequiltblock

And,  so there you have it. You knew I couldn’t stay maudlin for long, right!!

Break Through!

Thursday, June 27th, 2013

handstitchedmoondetail

 

I tried a different configuration for the beads on my moon. It just didn’t speak to me. I had an epiphany that I needed to do some interesting hand stitching instead of beads. I had an idea in my head but wasn’t sure about executing it. I started drawing sketches of marks in moon shapes and decided I just needed to have at it. I did the curved lines first and was very happy with the result. I was originally was going to stitch circle shapes, but ended up referencing circles with some seed stitches. I used a variegated Perle cotton that goes from yellow gold to a yellow green to red. It was perfect for the discharged area. Here is the final piece which I love so much.

monnstruckhandstitched

 

For a third piece, I am repurposing a piece I did with pomegranate photos printed on organza and collaged.

poms

 

The first thing I did was remove the binding and finish it with a facing.

pomegranatedwobinding

 

I already like it better, but I need it larger and more red. So I am making another quilt using red dupioni silk. I will mount this on top.

pomsredborder

That is tomorrow’s project.

My raspberries are beginning to ripen. Here is Tuesday’s picking:

Tuesdayraspberried

 

Here is today’s — almost double.

Thursdayraspberries

 

Needless to say, we are all very happy with yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling. Now, Lisa and Clay can be  legally married and have the same benefits of same sex couples. I love how happy they were on June 1st!!

992955_10200412561975815_1876304730_n-1

Grateful

Tuesday, October 18th, 2011

Today was a wonderful day. It was warm and sunny. I made delicious food in my kitchen. I played in my studio. I hung out with fiber artists tonight. I was alive. I am grateful for the life I have and that I survived my latest medical episode.

Some time ago, I made this piece that was not that successful.

I decided to isolate some areas to see if I could make some smaller pieces out of it. So that is what the first photo is – an 8 x 8 section of the quilt mounted on a cradle board. I love it. The fun thing is you can turn it in any direction and it looks good.

If you missed my interview with Pat Sloan yesterday (done in a somewhat feverish stupor), you can still give it a listen by clicking on the link in my sidebar.

Quilt Rehab

Thursday, September 15th, 2011


Remember this piece? Beautiful bits of painted organza — total mess of a composition. It now is dismantled and lying in the heap you see above.

I realized when it was done that the proportions of my little pockets were off. I think they need to be square to get the kind of flow that I have in the other 2 pieces:

So I took it apart and trimmed the pockets and will now reassemble the piece. I am going to change the dimensions a bit, too.

I went to Fabric Depot today to buy a quilt basting gun for attaching the Twelve by Twelve quilts to the felt panels that Terry and I have been working on. She is sick today, but if she is well enough, we will get to work on them tomorrow.

While I was there, I started looking at fabric for a quilt for my great niece Gwen. She has orange, yellow and green in her room. I decided to do polka dots and stripes. The backing will be the white with multicolored dots in flannel.

Not sure when I will fit it in, but, sometimes doing mindless piecing is a stress reduce for me.

Revisiting Green Flash

Monday, January 4th, 2010

After (so far)

Before

(You probably can’t see a lot of difference in these two photos.) I loved the fabrics in this piece — the gorgeous shibori, the fabric I painted and the beautiful silks. I had a great idea and then I over-thought and over worked it. I decided to make the green flash really flashy by adding mica chips and glass beads in gell medium. What was I thinking?

Another problem was that the bottom edges. Even though the edges were uneven, the outer edges needed to be squared.

So today, I decided to see if I could rehabilitate this puppy. First, I started trimming the edges to square it up. Next, I started scraping off the gel medium with the beads and mica chips. My hope is to get the surface smooth enough to fuse new fabric to the top and just let the green silk work on its own as the green flash.

When John Hopper titled his blog post about my work. “The Quiet Stillness of the Textile Work of Gerrie Congdon”, I was glad he had not seen this piece. I also thought I could take it back to be more representative of the landscapes that I love to do.

I think it is worth trying to save.

I only had part of a day to work in my studio because I had the Columbia Fiberarts Guild board meeting at my house this morning. We accomplished a lot of good stuff. I am really happy with how things are going and not regretting that I took on the job.