My creations | Crazy for Fiber

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Archive for the ‘My creations’ Category

SAQA Donation Quilt

Thursday, May 29th, 2014

I finished this piece, Sky Blue Pink, just in time to get it shipped to SAQA by the deadline and then, boom, today, they extended the deadline to June 15th. Well, it is done and it gave me something to do while I have been nursing a crappy, achy virus. I did copious handstitching on this. I only used my sewing machine to do the edges.

I used some of the fabric that I snow dyed last winter — cheesecloth and cotton.

First I did random seed stitching on the cheesecloth.

Then I used a running stitch to finish the other sections, following the undulations of the cheesecloth section.

I was hoping to get to my studio today to do some printing for the Printed Fabric Bee, but instead, I have stayed in my jammies and watched tv and dozed away the day. Hope I will be better tomorrow. That is the good thing about a virus, you usually wake up and feel fine after a day or two.

Posted in handstitching, My creations, SAQA, Slow Cloth | 2 Comments »

Window Seat at PDX

Monday, April 28th, 2014

Today, I got to go behind the scenes at the Portland airport to see the exhibit that my Prairie Fields is in. It consists of 13 or 14 glass cases with and essay by Jim Earl, a literature professor at U of O. In the essay, Earl uses images taken from Google Earth to educate people about the land below them as they fly. I didn’t realize that the complete title contained the phrase – The Art of the Circle Field. In addition to our 3 quilts, there are several Google Earth photos used to illustrate the story. In it, Earl ponders the artistry of the prairie circles – are they intended to be so artistic or is it by chance. Here are some of the photos he selected:

Here are Shirley and Elizabeth with their quilts.

And me:

And the three of us together.

We met the curator in her office and she took us through to the secure area through a back door. We looked at some of the other art exhibits. I have always enjoyed seeing art in airports and so it is quite fun to be part of an exhibit, now.

IKEA is out by the airport so I had lunch and spent some time there picking up some things for the condo. Then, Mr C and I went to the lighting store and picked out a chandelier. We are tired at looking at hanging wires.

Posted in Juried Shows, My creations, Out and About in Portland, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Window Seat at PDX

Making Progress

Monday, February 24th, 2014

I have so many projects going on that I can’t possibly get bored! I am making a bit of progress of filling in the movement piece for my class with Elizabeth Barton. It is tedious, but I think I will like the end result. Here is my workspace:

I have a teflon sheet over the pattern that I printed and my sketch nearby so that I can work on the values.

I am also quilting Paige’s quilt. We are going to CA in mid-March for her birthday and it needs to be finished. I am doing tedious straight line quilting on the diagonal through the squares.

I have been plagued with aches and pains. First, I have had a flare up of carpal tunnel in my tight hand. I tend to cramp my hand at night when I am stressed so I have found that if I wear a wrist stabilizer to bed, it really helps. I also have developed a cantankerous lower back pain. I am icing it, doing stretches and bought some new walking shoes.

On another note, we have decided that a condo or townhouse to purchase may not become available any time soon, so we are renting a very small (718 sq. ft.) apartment in downtown, near the art museum ane the theater where we attend the symphony and close to the light rail and the street car. We move in April 7th and will have a moving sale soon after that.

Only four more posts until my 2000th. Stay tuned for some nice giveaways in celebration!

Posted in baby and bed quilts, House and home stuff, My creations, workshop | 4 Comments »

Life Gets in the Way

Thursday, February 20th, 2014

I was supposed to turn in my blocked out movement piece for the master class today. This is as far as I got. I have had a really bad sinus headache for 3 days. I had a SAQA meeting yesterday morning. Today, we had to go to the title company and sign all the papers to sell our house. Then, we went to our realtor’s office to discuss our options since there is nothing on the market for us right now. Tomorrow, we are going to look at a potential rental that we can rent for as little as 2 months. We have to be out of here mid-April.

Here is how I attacked this layout. I printed a rasterized version on 15 sheets of paper and taped them together. Then I cut freezer paper patterns for all of the black pieces.

I fused all my fabrics while watching figure skating on tv. You can see Paige’s quilt waiting for me to return to the quilting!

I laid a large teflon sheet over the pattern and ironed the black pieces in place. I am now adding the color pieces. Here is my palette.

I checked the values because this is someting Elizabeth Barton drums into the heads of her students.

Unfortunately, I did not get as far along as I had hoped.

The highlight of my week was attending a screening of Tim’s Vermeer. The Tim in this documentary is the husband of my good friend and co-curator of the Dinner at Eight exhibits at IQF, Leslie Tucker Jenison. He is an extraordinarily talented engineer. He read a book about Vermeer and the speculation of how he painted the photograph like images. He became obsessed (so to speak) with this and set out to duplicate the process. It was amazing to see how a non- artist, untrained oil painter ultimately painted a replica of a Vermeer painting. I highly recommend this movie. It was wonderful.

Posted in Fusing, My creations, workshop | 1 Comment »

Back in the Saddle, er, Studio

Thursday, January 30th, 2014

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Posted in baby and bed quilts, Finishing touches, My creations, Rehabilitaing a Quilt | 1 Comment »

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