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Archive for the ‘handstitching’ Category

Making a Mark

Sunday, July 19th, 2015

stitchedmark

I know that I have been missing from the blogisphere, but I have had a lot going on. I lost two days earlier in the week because I had a colonoscopy on Thursday and Wednesday was prep day – stayed close to home. The good news is that it was all clear and I don’t have to go back for another, ever.

And, I have been working to get three quilts finished and ready to photograph tomorrow. One, I can’t show you, as it is for a special project and I have been asked to keep it under wraps.

The other two are for the annual High Fiber Diet show. This year, our theme is Making Our Mark, done in neutral colors, with minimal other colors.

The mark that needs to be on or part of every piece is that little square up there. I want to submit this quilt:

MarGECfinal

I made it in one of the sizes that the committee asked for, but what to do about that mark. Up above, you can see that I stitched the mark down in the lower left corner so that it sort of looks like a chop mark.

The piece I have been working on all week is photographs of our trip to Glacier National Park. I played with them in photoship and printed them on Jacquard Extravorganza. I fused them to grey cotton and then to gray felt and I have been obsessively stitching on them all week.

aspenstitching

glacierparts

Here they are organized for stitching together. you can see that each segment is a different part of the square so that together, they make the mark.

 

glaciersneakpeek

We also had my daughter’s chihuahua for a week while she was in San Francisco taping an illustration workshop for Creative Bug. He is really not much trouble and is very loving. He spent the week on the sofa, behind me while I stitched and recovered from anesthesia.

wilfredodogwalkI still have to do facings on two of the quilts in the morning before I photograph them.

Blue Exhibit Opening and Current Work

Tuesday, July 7th, 2015

hhfdblues

This afternoon, Mr C and I braved the traffic on I-5 and drove up to Longview, WA to see the High Fiber Diet exhibit, What’s Blue to You, at the Lower Columbia College Art Center. The gallery was quite lovely and the show looked fantastic. I loved how they hung the blue and orange pieces together. You can see Blue Picasso Woman in this shot.

hfdblues4

We drove home on a different route, more back roads and it was lovely. We stopped at Burgerville for supper so that I could have Walla Walla onion rings.

I have been working on a neutrals piece for the next HFD show. It is composed of black and white photos from our trip to Glacier National Park. I printed them on Jacquard Extravorganza.

glacierphotos

I created pdfs of the photos and printed them poster style and fused them together to make them larger for the piece I am doing. I created a thermofax to print the title.

glacierprinting

I am doing some handstitching on each photo.

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Our hot, hot weather has finally abated and it was quite lovely today. What a relief.

Back Home and Busy

Friday, May 22nd, 2015

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We arrived home on Wednesday, mid-day, just in time to get my self organized to teach another art quilt class at Trinity. I am so proud of my students, who range in age from 8 to 70. Wednesday night, I introduced them to the serenity of slow cloth. We sat and did hand stitching on our little art quilts. Here are some examples of what they are doing. The piece above is done by my oldest student. We had to do some engineering to get the elements off the space to be sturdy.

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Adea is a budding abstract artist. Love the colors that she is using.

student work 6

This piece is the four seasons.

studentwork5

Her Mom is doing a wonderful still life.

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This is my youngest student. She has a lot of stitching to do; I hope she can stick with it and finish.

studentwork3

This piece was started by  the Dad of the family and is getting finished by Mom. It is an homage to their camping experiences.

studentwork2

This is a bit blurry, but the daughter in this family is doing a beautiful multi-colored leaf tree.

studentwork1

A fun landscape by her Mom.

Here are some photos from Jayme’s graduation. It was a very exciting evening. She graduated with an MD with distinction.

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This is a very blurry photo of Mark and Paige hooding Jayme.

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It was a great few days in the bay area with Mark, Jayme, Paige and Jayme’s family.

Art Quilt Workshop Prep

Tuesday, May 5th, 2015

fusedstichedquilttrinity

I am getting ready to teach an art quilting class for our multi-generational art program at Trinity. We will have no sewing machines so I got permission from Laura Wasilowski to pattern my class after her wonderful little hand-stitched art quilts. This is my class sample that I am working on. I have some stitching done.

I love this part soooo much. Slow stitching – ahhhhh!

stitchy

The class will be on Wednesday nights for the next 4 weeks – an hour and a half per class. So part of my planning is parsing out the steps to a finished quilt. For those who get done early, I will have them make fiber postcards.

I bought several batiks for them to use for the background fused to black felt. I have lots and lots of fused scraps that I am bringing in for them to use for their creations.

fusedscraps

There are so many things to think of. I will try to take photos as we go along.

I was exhausted after the SAQA conference and then I had a backlog of SDA work to do. Today, I am feeling rested and energetic again.

Life in the Fast Lane

Thursday, July 10th, 2014

skybluepinkstotchdetail

My life is full, fun and fantastic, but time gets away from me. The main reason I am a bit distracted this week is the visit from my two Oakland girls, Lisa and Clay and they brought Wilfredo!

wilfredo

Four adults and two dogs are getting along just fine in our condo. My son in law, Jack, has named it The Congdo! We have had such a good time with them, and they love our neighborhood. This week, Lisa is participating in an ICON conference and tonight is a meet and greet at the Portland Art Museum. She has her books to and some prints of her work to sell and examples of all the work she does. Saturday, she is doing a workshop session on the business of illustration.

Every one gathered here for the 4th of July. We had great food and it was fun to have every one here. We could watch fireworks from our windows. We had some great salads and kabobs.

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These photos were taken by Steph for her 3191 blog.

I have been working frantically to get my two big quilts done for the High Fiber Diet “What’s Blue to You” exhibit.

Lisa took this photo of me with my blue picasso woman and posted it on Instagram.

instagramphoto

I got 760 likes and 72 comments. The comments cracked me up.

This is the Sky Blue Pink quilt as of today. I think it might need something more. I am disappointed with the wonkiness of the bottom. Not sure what to do. The photo at the top is a detail shot of the hand stitching on the cheesecloth section.

skybluepinkdoneyorn

Today was STASH day at Gale’s home. I just love spending a morning with my friends, chatting and eating. Reva brought her vintage t-shirt quilt At our next meeting, we are going to help her tie it. It is to unwieldy to do machine quilting.

revatshirtquilt

So that is a bit of what I have been up to. The other part of my life is so left brained. I am helping SDA with membership and database issues on the website. There have been some problems with work done by some previous employees. We are slowly getting it under control. We have about 4000 members and people join and renew in various ways – phone, mail, and online. I get a real sense of satisfaction as I troubleshoot issues.