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Archive for the ‘critiques’ Category

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Where Was I

Sunday, November 4th, 2012

Oh, yes, I was excited about doing the quilting on the Rosales Organ quilt when my Janome decided to quit. I took her in to the Janome dealer and fortunately, I have a 3 year maintenance and repair plan. They told be it could take 10 days to 2 weeks. I put on my nicest smile and sweet talked the repair man into trying for a week. He wrote ASAP on the order. I  told him I had been a Powered by Janome quilter on the Janome web site because I talk about my Horizon on my blog. It might have helped.

In the meantime, I will work on the embellishments for the quilt. The filigree wooden parts and the gold foiled parts for the pipes.

The downside is that I can’t machine stitch 3 x 3’s. I am doing felting and hand stitching for now. I may convert my Bernina from my felting machine for the time being.

Yesterday, I got up early and drove to Eugene, a 2+ hour drive, for the fall meeting of my Oregon Critique group. Terry was unable to go so I made the trip solo. I stupidly took the wrong aspen quilt, I grabbed the one I took last time we had the critique with the same artist. I did have my Kelp Dance quilt. She really liked it and had lots of positive things to say about my design – good value changes, good repetition, great color combination, etc. Interestingly, she suggested the same changes for this that she gave me for the Aspen quilt last time – pump up the red for more contrast. I think I can go in with some paint and fix some of the areas that she suggested.

I have a really busy week ahead of me. Just so you know!! Sending love and warmth and concern to all my readers in the Tri-state area. I hope things get better for you soon.

Posted in 3 x 3, critiques | Comments Off on Where Was I

Bye-bye Week-end

Sunday, April 22nd, 2012

I had a busy and productive week-end. Yesterday was our spring critique for the group of Oregon fiberartists that I am part of. Marci Rai McDade, former Fiberarts editor and now Surface Design Journal editor, was our guest critic. She lives near me and when I asked her about a possible critic for us, she volunteered.

Every critic we have had has a different emphasis in their comments. Marci, as an editor, was most interested in the story that the art told. She also commented on visual impact and design elements. I had my Walking with Scooter and Mr C piece. She thought it was very successful, but was put off by my black screen prints of Scooter and Mr. C. I see her point and I wish that I had put the screen prints on the base fabrics so that they were not so prominent.

It is not as obvious in the photo as it is in person. I also had another piece that I am almost finished with. I will show that later.

Today, after church, I had a phone meeting with a consultant who is helping me conquer the Filemaker database for Artists Among Us. I have a load of inventory to enter in the system and we worked out details for upgrading it and making it more user friendly.

It was gorgeous weather this week-end. I think we will have one more beautiful day and then it will get rainy again.

I managed to get 6 more 3 x3s done. I am almost caught up.

Back to watching Mad Men.

Posted in 3 x 3, critiques, Quilting Friends | 3 Comments »

Multi-tasking

Friday, March 23rd, 2012

 

I had one of those days with no immediate deadlines, but lots of things that need to get done before we leave town next week. So, I was doing many things at once. This is today’s felted 3 x 3 with a bit of embellishment.

I also worked on some quilts to submit for my guild’s show that is coming up and the quilts need to be turned in while I am gone. I want to submit one of my aspen quilts. I took it to my crit group last fall. The guest critiquer teaches art at Univ of Oregon. She suggested that I pump up the red in one of the branches of leaves to have more of a focal point. So, today, I took a big breath and went at the leaves with scarlet Dynaflow.

Here is a detail of the leaves:

It is a subtle difference, but I think it helps.

I have been doing SDA work and lots of stuff for our Artists Among Us exhibit coming up in May. It was a glorious sunny day. Scooter and I go in 3 miles of walking while Mr C was working in Corvallis. Tonight, we went our for a delicious dinner. It was a good day. And still, no baby!

Posted in 3 x 3, critiques, My creations, Trinity Arts | 2 Comments »

SAQA Critique Sessions

Sunday, April 17th, 2011

This is Sandra Sider, SAQA Board president, who is staying with me for a few days. She is critiquing work by SAQA members in sessions today and tomorrow. We are having a great time. Laura Jazkowski and Georgia French, our state reps are here in town, too, and doing a lot of the driving and coordinating. Sandra arrived yesterday, after a delay in Minneapolis and a change of flights. She got in at 6 pm instead of 1:30 in the afternoon. I cooked a delicious meal for everyone last night. We had a good time getting to know each other.

I stayed home and worked on my sunset quilt this morning and joined in the afternoon critique. That is my Prairie Fields getting critiqued and it was quite good.

I thought you might like to see the other work. There were some spectacular quilts like this one by Jean Wells. The iPhone camera does not do it justice. This is a gorgeous quilt, with many of Jean’s signature design elements. This was the first critique and she set the bar very high.

Next was Mary Goodson who is my art quilt group. She paints whole cloth quilts and stitches them exquisitely.

Another Sister’s area member showed this quilt with mega pieces of fused fabric and divine quilting. The work on this is mind blowing.

This was when I popped up and asked if they would like to see something minimalist!!

Carol Heist, who is also in HFD, showed this piece which is about Blue’s Music. She said she started it with blue fabric and it was not working for her. The music is laminated sheet music.

I always admire people who bring quilts because they need help. This member is from Corvallis and she had made this large gingko leaf on a beautiful blue background. She said her photographer said it looked like a broom.

Sandra turned it upside down and you can see that it looks so much better.

Laura also brought a quilt which she felt needed help.

Sandra suggested she introduce some of the light color to the lower left area.

This is another member from Eugene with a piece she made by abstracting a photo of an old building. Her problem was the pink object over on the right which was making the eye go off the edge. Sandra suggested covering it with organza or smudging or stitching it to tone it down.

This is a lovely wet felted piece that needed something more. Some good suggestions were made for making a couple of the flower bits more of a focal and to only do machine stitching in the green background.

So, that is what I have been up to for the last couple of days. I have been sneaking in time to get two quilts ready to turn in for out next High Fiber Diet jurying. The theme is North West Vibe. I don’t really like the theme, but the committee says it can be anything that makes the NW a unique place.

Posted in critiques, High Fiber Diet, Quilting Friends, SAQA | 3 Comments »

I’m Here

Monday, October 26th, 2009

fishbubblewrapdyeing

I had a hectic few days. I hosted the Oregon Fiberarts Critique Group on Saturday so there was the frenetic getting ready and providing coffee and treats when every one arrived on Saturday morning. Our guest critic, Alice, was our cathedral arts director until we ran out of funding for the position. She did a great job. I got a good kick in the butt. First of all, the only work I had was really safe work that I had done for the Twelve X Twelve group and them SDA member’s show.

Her biggest advice to me was to kick it up a notch and not be so safe. I had already begun to think about this. I really have had a problem getting something going in the studio so I think I just need to do the work and spend more time with perfecting some techniques. I need to go back to where I was before I did my solo show which took me off track.

Enough soul searching.

Right now, I am having fun whipping up a piece for the Fast Friday Fabric Challenge. The theme is an animal. I don’t really do animals. The most abstract one I could think of was a fish. I wanted to try a new technique with the Colorhue dyes which involves printing with Lumiere paints and then applying the dye. The pain acts as a resist.

For the background, I chose a lime green silk from my stash. I shose some paints from my collection.

fishpaintpalette

I then screen printed with a thermofax screen that I had made last year.

screenedfish

They were a little more purple than I wanted, but looked iridescent which was good.

Here is the fun part. You lay the silk on bubble wrap. Then paint it with water; that makes the silk adhere to the bubble wrap. Then I painted with 3 or 4 colors of the  Colorhue dyes. the result is what you see at the top of my post. It is still wet and needs to dry on the bubble wrap. I think I should have used the smaller bubble wrap, but it is still very fun.

I have to go finish getting our supper ready. We have to eat early and go to theology class tonight. I have a very wonderfully smelling slow cooker soup going. Chicken, black beans, corn, salsa, mushrooms, cumin. I am going to garnish it with sour cream and avocados.

Posted in Cooking and Recipes, critiques, Dyeing, FFFC, My creations, painting fabric, screenprinting | 4 Comments »

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