Susan Walen - - My Trunk Show

End of Year Wrap-up

2011-12-28T17:10:00.000-05:00

September brought a class with the lovely Terry Jarrard-Dimond; we worked on Shape...just abstract shapes. It wasn't easy, but it was interesting to see what came out of the group's invention. First, we worked with paper (black, white, neutral). Here's what I came up with:

(Ignore blue tape holding the top). Then we had to enlarge significantly, and sew the design in black, white, and a neutral fabric:

Then, we were encouraged to make it again, using one more color. A next assignment was to design shapes with string (n.b., not my hands) :

And finally to make a composition of shapes that arose from string exercises. Here's my paper piece, which reminds me vaguely of Hebrew letters and African kuba designs:

Toward the end of September, we played host to grandson Ami (2 y.o.) while his parents went to Europe to give academic talks. Here's Ami:

We borrowed toys from several friends who are grandparents, bought an outdoor plastic basketball set in a huge box, got lots of his favorite foods stocked in, borrowed kid movies from another grandson, and made up a few activities: e.g. I found an old canvas frame in the basement and covered it with batting. Then I made a dishpan full of color (all kinds of odd shapes and a few letters), so we had "art" most days. We also had "hammering": got a bag of extra long golf tees in pretty colors and cut big squares of foam to 4" thick, and he had fun just hammering away. But I'll bet you already know what his favorite toy was. Yep. The big box.
"Where are you, Ami?"
"I'm hiding..........in the box."
It also made a great speedway for our (recently acquired) collection of matchbox cars.

Another thing I did was to make Ami a new Minky snuggly; I'd been told his old one was looking rather ratty. Just in case you haven't made one, I'll show you how. First you go to the dime store and buy a half yard each of pretty decorative ribbons (avoid the wired ones, or remove the wires). Then, get a yard or less of Minky. (I've always made these of white Minky, but it's getting hard to find these days.) Cut out two squares (or rectangles) of Minky, the same size. Put one face up and pin ribbon loops around the edges as shown here:

Play with the design till you're happy; I've found that the more the variety in ribbons, the better. Then place the other square right side down on top of the first. Pin carefully around, and then sew, leaving about a 5-6" opening on one side. Remove pins, turn inside out, and close the opening by machine or hand stitching. Minky hides all irregularities!

Here's a picture of Ami's ~~snuggly~~ pillow, and two little ones for brand-new babies on our block:

October was a month I devoted to finishing off UFO's. Here's a few:

EcoGirl: based on a photo I took in London, where a group of ecologically mindful people were putting on demonstrations. This lady was sewing without electricity...one hand turning the machine's wheel, the other moving the fabric through. This is a small quilt, about 12 x 14.

Graphic I: You might remember an earlier post of this piece. I took off all the little silk squares with beads in the black center, and broke up the long green vertical with rows of double beads, a small on top of a large. I think these changes helped make the graphic more clear and bold (nod to my wonderful SIG-SAC critique group). This is a larger quilt, about 20 x 35.

November began with another on-line course with Pamela Allen. This one was about working in a series. Each student picked a subject matter (e.g., castles, weddings, etc); I chose still-life. For the first assignment we were to select a piece of art which had a color palette we liked and make a quick fabric "sketch" of it. As you can see, I loved the Matisse painting of the red room, and here's my quick sketch in fabric:

The real part of this assignment, was to make a new quilt using that same color palette. I made a sketch of a still-life that would use many of the same colors:

But look how the final piece came out, with Pamela's guidance:

The second assignment was to do a cubist design. Now, I'd decided that I wanted to put some of my collections of silly animals into my still-lifes, so this piece began with my Big Fish found in a folk art store in Warsaw, Poland:

Here's how he looked in the fabric piece...still not finished:

The third assignment was, I believe, to do an abstract design. Searching for inspiration, I gathered some of my silly animals into the kitchen and started making pictures......e.g.,

but no matter how I played with arrangements, it just looked like a bunch of "stuff." So I'm sitting there, playing with my rubber chicken, twiddling his legs to make him dance, and it suddenly hit me. Fageddaboutit... no still life....a dancing chickens piece! I'm gradually working at this and I think it'll be really cute when it's done, but here's a glimpse of the first iteration:

I ended up being so hopelessly behind in this course, that I never did do a 4th piece, although Pamela was exceedingly gracious in allowing us to submit later, even much later. I really love this teacher, and highly recommend her courses!

December: what a busy month for everybody. I did manage to finish off a piece I've been noodling on for much of 2011. I'd collected a batch of scraps of yellows and related light colors, and I made up a bunch of varied blocks...just improvisationally...whenever I felt like just "making something." At some point I began to put some of them together into larger units, and eventually it was large enough to form a background -- 30-some inches on all sides. So, OK, now I have an interesting and subtle background....what am I going to put ON it??? Lots of drawings later, I finally came up with a spring themed idea; in fact, I'm calling it Dreaming of Spring:

Here's a detail shot:

Mid-December, Dave and I went off to San Francisco for a holiday. We saw lots of art, lots of friends, lots of wonderful sights, and on our last day, we had the best coffee we'd ever had:

So if you get to Filmore St. in 2012, stop in at Jane and ask the barrista to make you a cappacino.
Happy New Year!

What I did BEFORE vacation

2011-09-03T20:28:00.000-04:00

Decided I'd better keep working on new blocks for grandaughter Ana's Banana quilt. Here's a few more

added to the collection:

Unfinished Banana Ruler

Striped Banana

Banana Hat

Banana Bush

And then I started on this piece:

which has a lot of dupioni silk and other silks, which start raveling immediately after being cut. It's going to be a satin stitch exercise!

And then my friend Robin gave me some baggies full of fresh figs (yummy in salads) and allowed me to take a few of the large leaves from her beautiful fig trees. I fooled around with paint and acrylic ink and a breyer, and printed this I-have-no-idea-what-I'll-do-with-it piece of fabric:

....and then we went to Colorado!

The sky!

The streams!

The flowers!

The aspen trees!

The trash bins!

My new Stetson hat!

What a beautiful place!

Problems, problems, problems.....

2011-09-03T19:29:00.000-04:00

First, my old Epson printer finally gave up the ghost...or maybe I gave up on him. He was using SO much ink, and making smears, and demanded that I clean his little "openings" frequently. So I pulled his plug!

Then I went to the huge file of suggestions on "printers to buy" I'd saved from chat lists and web sites, and ended up more confused than ever. Luckily, my patient partner, Dave, went shopping with me and helped me find my new one. It looks like the BIG BROTHER of my old Epson: wide-bodied, many more ink colors, can accept sheets or rolls of paper (or fabric), and uses ultra-chrome ink. It's name is Epson Stylus R 2000, and the day I bought it, it became obsolete! So what; I got the floor model and a modest discount.
Here is is:

...and I never have to wipe his little whats-its.

BUT, then my camera decided that he needed to be replaced too. My little old pocket Canon just wasn't able to do decent quilt shots. Again, I went to my huge file of helpful hints on buying cameras, and after a good amount of discussion with the savvy saleslady at Penn Camera, I came home with my new Canon PowerShot G12. I'm in love! Unfortunately, I can't show you a photo of it, because....well.... you get it.

Now seriously, THIS has been my biggest problem:

width = 56", height from 33" to 17.5"

It's my "Fence" quilt. Yes, it IS a quilt. From a previous posting, you'll see it was drawn on a big sheet of white fabric. Then each twig or post was constructed with raw-edge applique (you can see that phase most easily, perhaps, on the tallest post which has several fabrics giving it dimension and the knots were added as well). The piece uses dozens of different brown fabrics, shading from lightest to darkest to indicate distance. The entire sheet was then backed with Shirt-Tailor by Pellon to give it body (and three layers). At that point, I did a heavy zig-zag in black around each and every twig, and then quilted each piece in a pattern that seemed to fit the fabric it was made of. Finally, I took a very wide, beveled black market and colored a dense half-inch or so around every piece. Then I cut out the fence. It looks terrific in person, and what I especially like is the pattern of shadows created in the negative spaces behind the fence when it's just a bit off the design wall.

The problem is that all my semi-formed ideas on how to hang this open-work piece have flopped. More correctly, the piece was floppy. So then I traced each twig to get a template, and cut out those shapes from the stiffest interfacing I could find, and stitched them on individually, thinking that the piece could still be rolled or folded if it were to be accepted into a quilt show. Well, stiffening it helped, but I thought the upright posts needed to be more sturdy. So I attached velcro to the back of these and cut 1/2" thick black foamcore and velcro'd them together. Feh. The velcro stuck together, but didn't stay attached to either surface.

And what quilt show would take a piece like this with NO SLEEVE? Sigh.

I'll probably have to mount it on a fabric quilt WITH a sleeve. But if you have any suggestions for keeping it as an openwork piece, I'd seriously love to hear from you!!!!

Summer Camp Button

2011-08-08T23:38:00.011-04:00

Summer Camp Button

I took another class with Carla Sonheim, one of my favorite on-line teachers. This class was called "Faces! 101" -- which stands for the 101 faces she hoped we'd do in a week!!! We worked like dogs (see camp button): fast, slow, messy, neat, realistic, abstract....from photos, models, and imagination....with pencil, ink, watercolor, charcoal, pastels, and more, much of which was NEW, HARD, and FUN. I'll put a few examples of my efforts below:

a first attempt with conte crayon, day 5

One assignment was to draw a face without lifting the pen from the paper. Here's my 11th attempt, finally washed with a damp brush to shade the drawing a bit. This is MUCH harder than it looks.

Only one line with marker, day 3

And from Day 1 when I opened my first box of water color paints:

my first attempts with watercolors, day 1

In an earlier post, I wrote about my first course with Carla (The Art of Silliness), but I also want to tell you about her book:

Drawing Lab for Multi-Media Artists: 52 creative exercises to make drawing fun!

Available on Amazon or from www.quarrybooks.com. I doubt you will find more fun for $23!

WHAT have I been up to?

2011-07-14T18:49:00.012-04:00

Well, shortly after my last post, I found the art of Ton Schulten online, and just fell in love with his rich colors, interesting divisions within the paintings, and organic shapes. So I went to Amazon and found that I could buy nice large calendars with his art, but they were pretty expensive. So I looked at what it would cost to buy a calendar from last year or the year before. You wouldn't believe how expensive THEY are. So I decided to "invest" in the current year.

One picture "spoke" to me, and I decided it would be fun to copy it in fabric. I built it from right to left, one section at a time, and each day it was so exciting just to see it develop. Here's my copy (not a really good photo of the intense, and close-in-value colors, I'm afraid):

And here's a little close-up of quilting I practiced on it:

Now, of course, it's a copy....an exercise...which I could share with friends, but never "show" or sell, so I handed it off to my son, Alec. I hope he likes it; I like it! Thank you, Ton.

You may remember my Pelican quilt from several seasons ago?

It was made in honor of Laura Quinn, who founded and ran a wild bird sanctuary in Florida, and the quilt had returned home from a show, so I wrote to Ms. Quinn, included a photo, and asked if she would like to have the quilt as a donation, which she might raffle off to raise money for the sanctuary.

I waited and waited --- no response. "I guess she didn't like it", I thought. Then, many months later, someone from the Sanctuary wrote me a letter telling me that Ms. Quinn was dead. Her small staff had cleaned out her office and in the back of a desk drawer, they found my letter to her. They asked if I were still willing to donate the quilt, and I said I'd get right on it!

Now, unfortunately, the Florida coast was hit with big storms and wild flooding, one of which virtually knocked out the Sanctuary, so this brave little band of good souls had to rebuild it, on the other side of the road, farther away from the unprotected coast. But once they got things sorted out, I received the nicest letter, which (blush) I'd like to share with you. It says:

"....the quilt is magnificent. We are going to hang it in the main entrance at the education center/gift shop. I was so thrilled to receive such a wonderful piece. We will not be selling it! Your talent and generosity are beyond words. I will send a photo of the quilt in it's new home."

So, if you're ever traveling in the south of Florida, do stop in to the

Florida Keys Wild Bird Center

Emergency Wild Bird Hospital and Sanctuary

93600 Overseas Highway

Tavernier, Florida 33070

and say "Hi" to Lynda Munshower for me.

* * *

My Twelve Connected group is still running. The March challenge was

"BIRD." Seems like I'm seeing a lot of birds in quilts recently, so I wanted to

do something different, and the first image that popped to mind was Lady

Bird (Johnson), a woman whom I'd long admired for her concern about

the land and preserving wildflowers.

So here's my little 11 x 17" quilt, "Lady Bird":

Speaking of flowers, since I had my flower fabric all over my sewing room, I made another little, subtle iPad cover:

A flower in my garden of grandchildren is little Ami, who began learning words! He had the big wall quilt I'd made him (shortly after he was born) hung over his diaper table, and he'd stand and point to little blocks and his momma would say the name....but some of those blocks were just "designs" or "plaid". So I figured I'd better whip him out an AMI'S WORDS quilt, one that he could sleep with, sit on, drag around, and so forth. I cut out every "object" I found in my stash, and then filled in with home-made images and a few letters.

Here's Ami's Word Quilt.........

And here's Ami, giving Dave a word or two:

My final sharing on flowers is to show you some of the gardens we've made around our little townhouse. First thing, of course, was to GET RID OF ALL THE GRASS. Inside the back fence, my concept was to have a patio that sort of floated in the flowers of the garden. Dave built the fence, the wood deck, and the fancifal blue bike/garden shed, even putting in an old stained glass window on one side. Here's a view from the rear of the backyard:

....and here's the view from the other direction:

I love certain greens and purples together, so.....

Now around to the front of the house, where you can see the Kissing Pig. This little pig is the star attraction for all the toddlers in the neighborhood. He comes up to about their belly buttons, and he must look like he's reaching up for a kiss.... and every toddler stops to kiss him. Some come by every day and do it. It's truly amazing!

* * * *

In May, I began an online course with Pamela Allen, an artist I've admired for years. The course was called "Faces and Figures", and was quickly filled up, largely, it seems, with Pamela's "groupies", who have taken her classes together for some time. We had four weeks, and were to do one project each week. I'll share what I did, but I wish I could show you the work of some of the "advanced kids" (who also seem to have magical stashes).

Our first assignment was to make a figure in a room with one object, such as a chair. We made a rough fabric draft, photographed and uploaded it to our group site, and Pamela would offer critique and -- even better -- she'd pull the post into her computer and make changes (I think, in photoshop) so that we could see what she was suggesting. Here's my finished project #1, which I call "Creamin' My Feet":

Project 2 was to focus on a face. Here's my (as yet) unfinished piece:

On this one, Pamela had some very serious critique (which I think is brilliant!). Here are some of her words: "Competent, illustrational, generic." She went on: "You are very good at drawing, but when you use a process such as this, reducing tonal shapes to a flat pattern, you strip the work of all personal, signature content. It is mechanically perfect!!! No tentative edges, no distortion that results in the artist's hand being present, no evidence of a change of mind as might be present in a spontaneous painting such as Modigliani himself has done....If we have a fully formed notion of the finished product, with a pattern and meticulously cut plain fabrics that correspond to certain flesh tones, there is no room for creativity! Now not everyone agrees with me about this. Many art quilt portraits are highly admired for their realism (usually due to manipulating a photograph and making a template from them). But where is the individual presence of the artist?"

On the third project, I decided just to "draw" with my scissors and be a little more playful (gulp). So here's my daughter dancing with her daughter (Ana) in an imagined environment. I call it "Dancin' at Glen Echo."

The last project was to have been the most creative, but I never got to the last phase before life stepped in. We were to compose a scene with people, then cut out a small rectangle from somewhere on the quilt, and build a brand-new image around it. All I managed to do was make the first image, and it's only pinned-together still. One day............

The figure is based on a young woman I saw sewing in a garden in London. Of course, there was no electricity; she's hand-cranking her machine with one hand, and feeding fabric with the other. She was one of many ecology-minded young people in the park that day.

* * *

I've been part of a 4-person color-study group for over a year; we've worked through many topics about color, doing little exercises along the way. As a result, I've become much more conscious of color connections, values, saturation, relationships around the color wheel, etc. What I recently learned, by doing the little fabric "sketches" below in analagous colors, is that I rarely use these combinations.

* * * *

This year I submitted a piece to Sacred Threads, which has been moved to a venue in northern Virginia. This year's show was probably the most moving quilt exhibit I've ever been to. There were quilts dealing with loss, grief, love, abuse, spirituality, and joy -- which was the spark for my submission. I took a quilt I had made several years ago, and reworked it. I cut off a good bit of the perimeter, took out the old quilting stitches and requilted the piece, added some hand applique, french knots, and embroidery, and redid the binding. It's called "Gotta Dance":

Here's a little closer shot:

You can't read the words that are under the dancing girls, but here's what it says:

The urge to transform one's appearance, to dance outdoors, to mock the powerful and embrace total strangers is not easy to suppress
The capacity for collective joy is encoded into us almost as deeply as the capacity for erotic love of one human for another. We can live without it, as most of us do, but only at the risk of succumbing to the solitary nightmare of depression.
We are creatures who generate their own ecstatic pleasures out of music, color, feasting and dance
Let us acknowledge the miracle of our simultaneous existence with some sort of celebration

These words are from "Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy" by Barbara Ehrenrich.

SAQA Auction

One of the most important groups to which I belong is SAQA, Studio Art Quilt Association -- from which I have learned much, met wonderful artists, and grown in my own work. Each year SAQA holds a Reverse Auction, the proceeds of which are used to support SAQA exhibitions, catalogs, and outreach programs.

Members can contribute one 12 x 12" quilt, which are collected on the SAQA website, and which are auctioned off, in groups, beginning on September 12th, 2011, starting at 2 pm Eastern Time.

You can learn about how the reverse auction works AND see all the quilts by going to the SAQA site. Just google "SAQA Benefit Auction 2011" and it'll take you right there. But don't dilly dally; those quilts go like hotcakes!

Here's a picture of my little contribution. It's called "A Cubist Got Into My Studio!"

* note iron, spray starch, pens & brushes, rolling cutter, tomato pincushion, and threads.

* * * *

I submitted a quilt to an amazing exhibit in Philadelphia, curated by Michelle Flamer (below). The show is called THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE: Their Untold Stories in Quilts. The stories that are told are about the slaves that George Washington brought from Virginia to Philadelphia, where the first Executive Mansion was erected. The terrible irony is that the 9 enslaved people were taken to the FREE state of Philadelphia, where slavery was outlawed! Each of these 9 people are celebrated in quilt art by a total of 55 quilters.

Here's a photo of me with a group of kids (ages about 7-12), each of whom made a block for their group contribution. One little 7 y.o. proudly told me she was a 4th generation quilter. They were so happy to be part of the celebratory weekend we shared. (and don't you like my halo?)

Perhaps the most iconic and striking quilt was that made by Carolyn Crump (below), whose work is just exquisite. Here she shows Mr. Washington atop his 9 household slaves, with the original house on one side and quilt square images which resemble Masonic shapes on the right (unfortunately not visible in my photo). Carolyn's quilt was used in all the advertising for the show.

Another quilt I liked very much was that of Marjorie Diggs Freeman, of Durham, NC; her own great-grandfather was born into slavery. Her quilt depicts each of the enslaved residents of the "white house", each with a little story, and linked by a chain (which she painted on).

My quilt, "Let Freedom Ring", was made to honor Ona Judge Staines. Oney

was the daughter of a white indentured servant and a black field slave at

Mt. Vernon. We knowa bit about how she looked from the "Wanted" posters

sent around the country by Mr. Washington after Oney fled, and we know

more about her because she was twice interviewed by abolitionist newspapers

in the 1840's. At 16, she was Mrs. Washington's personal servant, and

apparently an excellent seamstress. Friends she made in the marketplace

aided her in planning her escape, and one evening, after she set the plates

on the table, Oney ran to hide out on a sloop out of Portsmouth, N.H.

Despite several serious attempts to have his "property" returned, Washington's

wish to have her kidnapped and brought back to him were thwarted.

Oney married and had three children, all of whom predeceased her.

Living alone in the north of New Hampshire, Oney's neighbors helped

sustain her with food and wood for her fire. She often said that although

her life had been very hard, at least she had lived free.

Although we have no image of Oney, I imagined her looking us straight

in the eye, in front of a collage of freedom bells, boy scout slogans, and

other Americana symbols -- asking us to truly let freedom ring.

* * * *

Do you realize that we are almost at the 10-year anniversary of 9/11?

The Fiber Artists of Hope (sort of the "daughters" of the original Obama Mammas)

are working on a quilt show to remind us of that dreadful day....and the

disastrous years that followed for our country. Many of us have made small

quilts (9"x11"), and some larger ones as well. We're hoping to find a few

more venues in which to share this work. The organizer for this 9/11

project is Jeanette Thompson, one of the amazing, creative people

I've come to know over recent times.

Anyway, here's my small contribution to the show:

It's simply called "Oh, no!"

* * * *

If you've been patient enough to read to this point, I salute you. I promise I'll update more

frequently; that'll be easier on both of us!

Here's a hint of what I'm working on now. It's just a fence, outlined on a long sheet of white fabric, and each wooden twig done in a different fabric. I think it's going to be pretty big, and I have lots of puzzles to solve about how to hang it. Here's the first picture I took of it:

So, thanks for visiting, and remember, I'd love to hear your thoughts and comments on this blog post.

My how the time flies......

2011-02-08T15:54:00.037-05:00

I guess I'm still working small, so let me show you some of my Little Quilts.

Here's a photo of my niece Julie and her 4 kids, with whom we visited on Thanksgiving. I hadn't seen them in years, since they live in Israel, so I wrote their names on the picture Julie sent me: Adiel, Matan, Galia, and Elazar.

What I do in such pieces is to draw each person several times, until I have captured what feels like the essence of their portrait....a kind of cartoon. Then I build the picture against the background. Here's what the final little quilt looked like:

Soon thereafter, I was told I was the "secret santa" for my adult stepson, Craig, so I got to play with the same technique for him. I used the same arrangement of adult + children seated on a sofa, and here's a snapshot of the piece in progress. I generally do one person at a time....

and here's how the whole piece looked when it was done:

I think of these as little folk-art portraits.

So then I decided to do a self-portrait. My little "joke" was that in my portrait, I really would be painting myself. Unlike painters, who are limited to individual paint colors, we quilters can dip into anything in our stash. So my first attempt is called Self-Portrait in Plaids:

Then I tried Self-Portrait in Polka Dots:

Then I thought it would be funny to do a Self-Portrait in Words:

(Detail):

And then came Self-Portrait in MUSIC:

detail:

And then, before I finally made myself stop this silliness, I did Self-Portrait in Spring:

detail:

Now on a similar silly note:

I was finally able to finish a quilt that has been "in progress" for a lo-o-o-ng time: it's called My Magic Phone. It all started with a little drawing of an old-fashioned telephone with a dial on the front that just captured my fancy in some weird way. So I made the telephone with some slick fabrics I had at the time, and it just sat on my design wall till this past month. I finally found the "right" background fabric and printed the labels on Pabric (a wonderful material), and got it finished just in time for our local group's quilt show:

detail:

another detail:

I know you can't read all the labels, so I'll list them here (snort):

Press 1 to have more hours in a day

Press 2 for another chocolate infusion

Press 3 for effortless free motion quilting

Press 4 for George Clooney's private line

Press 5 to have dinner delivered immediately

Press 6 to be invisible for a day

Press 7 to be 20 years younger

Press 8 to lose 5 pounds

Press 9 for the bathrooms to clean themselves

Press 0 to have a zero added to your bank account

Press * to get a Wild Card!

It sold the first day of the show!

One of the best things I did recently was to join an online drawing class taught by Carla Sonheim. It was titled "The Art of Silliness" and was run by a King (see below) and Carla, the Silly Queen (or, as she liked to say, The Squeen). Every day we had a worksheet with delightful

challenges to do, and when we were finished, we scanned our work in and uploaded to our private flicker site where we could see and comment on each other's work. There were even extra credit assignments and special prizes and awards given. Here's the king.......

One of my favorite tidbits was Carla's drawing of little ants that talked. I took to drawing them myself. On one of my last papers, an ant crawled by and left this message: "Oh look...she made a BLOB", but another ant said "I like it". Maybe I can show you a sample of my silly work later. [If this sounds like fun to you, Carla will be offering the course again in May. Just google her.]

This must be Signing Up Season. I also signed up for a 12-week course at Montgomery College called "Exploring Creativity".... and I signed up for 10 sessions with a personal trainer at the Y....and I've joined a Color Study Group which meets monthly. The color group began to fade quickly (pun intended), and we're down to 4 die-hards clinging to the color wheel, but we have fun exercises we do together, and take turns leading a discussion on different topics. I just got my first EXCITING assignment to lead: monochromatic.

Taking a right turn~~

On a more serious note, we went to a very moving show at the Renwick Gallery called The Art of Gaman. "Gaman" refers to bearing the unbearable with dignity. The show had artifacts and art made by japanese people in gaman.

In 1913, a law was passed that no Japanese were allowed to own property; yet they prospered. During WWII, 120,000 Japanese from the West Coast were ordered to appear at gathering places, like fairgrounds, with poor facilities for the people. They were given 48 hours to get ready to be at a detention camp. Bank accounts were frozen. When they arrived at their bleak destination at the detention camps, they were provided with one room for a family and one bed (w/o mattress). Eating, cooking, toileting, showering was done in a central area. Privacy was at a minimum. Most were kept for four years. When they were allowed to leave, they were given $5 and a bus ticket.

One of the ways people coped in these miserable conditions, was to build and craft what they needed, and craftsmen and artists set up classes, making tools and art from the most meager of environments.

“Only what we could carry was the rule, so we carried

Strength, Dignity, and Soul.”

Lawson Fusao Inada

“Everything was lost, except the courage to create.”

Delphine Hirasuna

Among the artists in one community was Chiura Obata, an artist at UCLA. If you want to see some lovely images, google Mr. Obata. If you want to read more about life in the camps: The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, a lovely novel.

I'm working small now

2010-11-14T15:30:00.031-05:00

One of the larger items completed this season was the little quilt for my

newest grandaughter, Elizabeth. Here she is in her first holloween costume:

and here's her quilt:

Twelve Connected

Our web-group continues (www.twelveconnected.com). Every two months, one of us is assigned the task of posting the new topic, told in just one word, and we have the next two months to finish it. We all work in the same 11 x 17 format. I'll show you some of my recent posts, in case you missed them.

"Reminiscence" was the challenge, and I found my brain searching for childhood images. What popped up was the memory of sitting under my favorite tree -- a little weeping mulberry bush, that sat on the corner of our property -- and reading and eating ripe mulberries. I had Dave take a picture of me in the pose so I could see how to do the limbs, but I didn't know how to do the tree's limbs. Finally, I decided to just suggest them by attaching small strips of green/yellow batik sewn only to the top of the quilt; they float in front and cast just a little shadow.

The next challenge was "ebullient".... hmmm, when did I feel ebullient? Aha, dancing! I was a dance addict some years ago. Squares, Contras, International folk dance, Swing, Ballroom...basically anything that I could do with a partner. I loved dancing!!! So, here's the quilt for ebullient, altho' my dancers did get a little out of hand:

The most recent challenge is a tough one; the word is "idol." I knew what my idol would be immediately, and I'll bet you've never seen a quilt about my idol, but I can't show you my response to this challenge till after Dec. 1st, when we post our images on the site. How would YOU respond to the challenge "IDOL"?

My iPad!

The best birthday present ever (70th). I looooove my iPad.

But I thought it needed a cover, and what better

use for those things in the stash that have been neglected.

Here's my first attempt:

It's Ikea fabric, kinda tough, lined with a black/white fabric, which sandwiches some thick felted batting, and has a velcro closure. I went on a several-day spree of making different designs in different fabrics, and am happy to give them away. Want one? Drop me a line.

Small Works:

I've been slowly making blocks for my oldest grandchild, Ana

(whom we fondly call AnaBanana). Yes, of course, it's a Banana Quilt, and the blocks will have Banana jokes,

Banana Recipes, and a wi-i-i-de variety of Banana images. Here are a few:

a banana outfit

... a pieced banana

...a cubist banana

an abstract banana:

a low-contrast banana:

and...well, you know who...

Falling in Love with an Artist!

Yes, I recently finished a lovely book I'd picked up at the Tate

Modern in London on Modigliani. I love his work, the numerous

portraits, his colors, his composition, his uniqueness in that

time....all this in the context of his tragic health history

and foreshortened life. And then I saw a few photographs of him...and that's when I fell in love. I kept studying

this one photo of him, drawing it and re-drawing it, and realizing I was beginning to

abstract it in the manner in which he worked.

So, here's my little portrait of Modigliani in fabric:

You may notice some heavier outlining of the face; that's because I experimented with a funky

stitch on my old Bernina. It goes two steps forward and one step back; I kinda like the little

jagged edge it creates.

Odds 'n Ends

I have a number of files of images (e.g., hands, faces, children

playing, and dancers). I thought it was time to try a miniature

"dancer", so here she is:

I have a lot more stitching to do, and I'm replacing her lifted leg (I don't like the proportions), but it was fun creating the scene, and playing with layers of thin silk for her

ballet skirt.

I'll say "so long" with two tiny stitchings made after an evening workshop with Lee

Porter on Kantha embroidery (straight stitching). I've lots to learn about this, and plan

to do more, but here's a sample: a shoe and two flowers....

February to the First Days of Summer

2010-06-22T13:39:00.057-04:00

Well, I ended my last post in February with a mention of the blizzard, and as is usually the case, there's something positive in every negative. In our case, the blizzard froze us out of our house, but we managed to make it to a motel, where we spent four happy days watching movies, playing gin rummy, and reading. Here's a shot of the comfy chairs on my patio, when we got home:

I -- like every quilter I knew-- tried my hand at

snow dyeing that week. Here's one piece I

photographed:

I have no idea how this and its sibs will ever find

a way into a quilt....but what the heck...that's what

building a stash is all about, right?

* * * * * * *

Soon after, I started working on my SAQA

auction square, which I envisioned as a girl

sitting on a huge gnarly branch of an old tree,

looking at a beautiful sky. Here's my working

sketch:

Then I got "fancy"; looking at all those negative

spaces made by the crossing branches, I thought

it would be cool to put in a plaid sky...actually,

a multi-plaid sky.

It didn't work for me. In fact, it made me crazy just looking at it:

So, once again, I simplified. Zap go the plaids,

zap goes the brick wall, water, and far bank.

I lightened the tree limbs, laid them on a

piece of hand-dyed fabric, and moved the girl

to the edge of the image.

This is the design (before quilting) of the one I sent to SAQA. I think it's a little spooky, but

I like it.

Don't forget to check the SAQA website for the

fall auction. There are pages and pages of

amazing small works of art, and the proceeds

of the auction go to support the organization and students in the field of art quilting.

* * * * * *

In March, I took a course in fabric marbleing

with Elin Noble (look at her gorgeous marbled

t-shirt). We stirred huge tubs of goop, made

little brushes out of twigs of hay, tried to

"float" colors, learned about dispersants (way

before they showed up in the gulf disaster), and

laughed and ate popcorn for days.

We dipped little pieces of cloth, paper envelopes,

big hunks of cloth, and Elin even dipped a pair

of her panties. Here's a shot of one one hot

red pan of marble paint (not mine).

When I got home, having NOT read the full

set of instructions, I washed out my fabrics,
and guess what? They faded away to just about

nothing. I salvaged only a few snippets,

which I stitched onto card stock, and sent out

as greeting cards. sigh.

I want to try this again sometime!

* * * * * *

The most daunting project on which I've been working is my quilt on "overcoming racism." Many of the ObamaMama's from our show last year have joined with some new Mamas to dialogue on our Yahoo site, where the ugly spectre of racism is bemoaned and discussed. These are hard times for rational, liberal minds. What can we do? Let's put on a quilt show! What shall we call ourselves? Well, it's still being debated, but will likely be something like "Fiber Artists in Dialogue."

The image that came to mind immediately for me was based on a photograph I'd seen back in 1996, I think, on the back page of the New York Times, in an ad for the Fresh Air Fund. It showed a bunch of little girls of many colors lying happily on the grass together with their heads in the center of the circle. I tracked down the photographer (James Levine) and wrote to ask if I could have his permission to make a quilt from his photo image. He agreed, and wanted to see the final result.

So I slowly began making each face-- over and

over again -- learning many things each time.

In this iteration, you see shadows shown as patches of color; most of them don't work, especially on the face. Learning to build the mouth from the back to the front (first tongue, then teeth, then lips) was a big lesson. Making the face with as few lines as possible seemed to help preserve the look of a child. Capturing giggles on the faces was even harder. And I haven't even mentioned hair!

Here, the faces are a little better, and I'm beginning to experiment with hair and decoration, but -- horrors -- I don't have enough Grass fabric, and no one on the web has any more! so it's time to make templates of the spaces between the girls and patch the grass in.

oy.

And here's the final result. I'm calling it"Friends:

May our children do better than we did"

(James Levine likes it, and says he felt honored that his photo was its inspiration!)

There are some amazing quilts coming out of this group of passionate quilt artists (which include Susan Shie, Jeanette Thompson, Debra Gabel, Sherry Boram, Diana Bracy, Edna Patterson-Perry, and so many more).

Now we have to find a few good venues. If you've got any ideas, drop me a line and I'll pass them on to the group. Thanks.

In a related vein, another quilt show is being organized by Michelle Flamer, up in Pennsylvania. There's to be a celebration for the original White House, which was in Philadelphia, and where George Washington and his family moved, along with a number of their slaves. Ironically, Pa was a "free"state, in which slavery was not allowed. Were the slaves set free? Not a chance. Several did manage to escape, and one whose story touched my heart was Oney Judge Stains.

In the markets, Oney had met many free black

people who offerred her help if she wanted to flee.

As I learned it, one evening Oney set the food on the dinner table and immediately left by the kitchen door, heading north. Washington pursued the "return of his property" till he died, but Oney, hidden in the northern reaches of N.H. lived out her days, saying often that although her life was hard, nothing was harder than not having her freedom.

I created my image of Oney simply staring at us and calmly asserting "Let Freedom Ring." Surrounding her are images of the Liberty Bell and Americana symbols, on which words were overlaid. These words were cut from a piece of "boy scout" fabric:

citizenship

courage

perseverance

resourcefulness

service

and so on, all of which spoke to me of Oney Stains.

* * * *

Remember my "12 connected" group? You mean you haven't googled that yet? Well, when you do, you'll see more of our challenge postings. Our second challenge was to work only in bright color. So, the next morning, I noticed that there was a LOT of bright color in my kitchen, and that became the inspiration for my piece: blue and white tiles, red kettle, tulips, and some fine fresh fruit.

Shortly thereafter, our Metro-Threads group got to see the SAQA traveling trunk show of small (8") art quilts, thanks to the help of Cathy Kleeman. They were fabulous, and inspired a number of us to begin making these small sized quilts, in which only 8 sq. in. show, but they are mounted in 10-inch frames. Here are several I've done:

a miniature of the above:and two self-portraits:

These little ones are FUN to do.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

I've been working on drawing and sewing white lilies. They used to grow in a little shady patch in my back yard, but I think the ferns ate them up. They were so lovely, and I never quite figured out how to depict them. I began by choosing as a background a shiny piece of red fabric (probably dress lining material) which was pretty snazzy but not real sturdy. So I hand-quilted it to batting and a back fabric, and just loved the way the light caught it. Then I found some white satin (or faux satin, I guess), and I cut out the petals from that, made some raw-edge leaves and stems, and sliced up some lace from my old wedding gown (oh! that must be where I got the white satin too) to fashion a vase. I kind of liked the figure, but it was so flat-looking, especially the lily petals. This piece has been sitting in my UFO pile for quite some time.

One day, feeling brave, I decided to try thread-painting the flowers, after studying lots of photos of white lilies. That helped. But then I noticed that the lace vase wasn't staying put, so I went over the lace designs with free-motion quilting, and then discovered that I could cut away the "plain" parts of the lace material. Finally, to give the piece some sense of gravitas, I hand-stitched some black outlines around the flowers, and then folded the edges and stapled it to a ready-made canvas I had in the house. et voila:

And then, for dessert, I made one more. This lily was about 12" square, and was donated to the QSDS auction in Columbus, Ohio in June:

* * * * * * * *

I spent my QSDS week with teacher Sue Benner in a course called "Driven To Abstraction." Sue was charming, adorable (I couldn't wait to see what she was going to wear each day), and gave us some great handouts and slide and film lectures. I'm posting below a shot of my "design wall" at the end of the week. It shows a paper collage, several attempts at rapid abstractions, and a more labored attempt at a cottonwood tree (taken from the background of a painting by Georgia O'Keefe). I think I learned more about myself than anything else during this week. I learned that my ADD is worse as I grow older. Put me in a large class, with lots of noise, color, interruptions, conversations, and tension swirling around me and I go into brain-freeze. I simply couldn't concentrate in that (to me) chaotic setting. I plan to spend time over the next year studying more about abstraction, using Sue's materials and others, and playing in my quiet studio. That's more my style.* * * *

On a quiet note, I took a little workshop with Lee Porter this spring. Lee came to our PMPatchwork group and gave us a lovely evening workshop on Kantha embroidery. We made practice pieces on three-layer sandwiches of muslin, using only black embroidery floss, making single stitch motifs. Here's a few of mine, ending with a little face portrait of Georgie, who started all this stuff 7 years ago (see the beginning of this blog if you're curious).

It was a BIG fall....

2010-02-19T15:35:00.040-05:00

One week after my last post (September), flush from finally learning to breathe AND swim, Dave and I decided to try to play a little tennis too. We dug out our rusty old racquets and headed for the Y. We tapped that little ball back and forth a few times, and then I turned to reach for a shot going past me, and --- next thing I knew, I was flat on my face on the concrete. I think my foot just got stuck, and when they scraped me off the cement and took me to the hospital I looked kinda like this:

So, not much happened this fall except wrist surgery, tooth surgery, nose surgery, PT, and another wrist surgery.

The good news is that it seemed like a terrific time to have some work done on my basement studio! New lights, new floor, fresh paint, new IKEA cabinets for storage, new ironing table built by Dave, new design walls (one black, one white), and last, a new Horn quilting table. It's just so wonderful, and I'd show you a photo of it but it's a mess now.

I can, however, show you the finished piece sold at the SAQA auction -- The Marvelous Miss Josephine Baker.

She looks a hellova lot better than me, huh?

Well, later in the fall, Dave and I took our first trip to Israel. We went with a Hopkins Alumni Tour, and took along several professors as we raced from Tel Aviv to our kibbutz hotel, to the Galilee, to Haifa, to Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, the Judean Desert, and then to Jordan and Petra. If these names don't mean anything to you, you've gotta go yourself. Each is an incredible experience, even if your tour is a whirlwind. When you go, be sure to plant a tree, drink wine from the Golan Heights, and take lots of pictures. It would also be useful to take along Dr. Ted Lewis, one of our professors, who illuminated our evenings with lecture topics such as, "So What Is God's Name?" and "So, What Does God Look Like?" I won't bore you further with our travels except to show you shots of two quilts I came across, one in a Druze home and the other in an Arab market in Jerusalem (below), and I'll finish with a joke told by Linda Gradstein of NPR, who gave us a fabulous lecture: "Is It Finally Time for a Peace Deal?"

Here's the joke: Three men suddenly die and go to heaven: Achmadinejad, Osama Bin Ladin, and Netanyahu. God grants each of them ONE wish. Bin Ladin says, "That's easy; get rid of all the Shiites." Achmadinejad's wish was "Get rid of all the Sunnis!" God then turns to Netanyahu and asks, "Nu, what is your wish?" "Well," he replies, "if he gets what he wants, and he gets what he wants....I'll just have a diet Coke."

Now I still wasn't able to do much with my bum hand, but I did manage to make a bunch of little fabric "fortune cookies" for friends, each different, and each filled with sincere and meaningful messages, such as:

"Follow your dreams...except for the one where you fly."

"The decline of western civilization seems to leave you strangely unmoved."

"You like cats, but don't try to eat a whole one by yourself."

"You've been invited to join the National Sarcasm Society. Like we need your support."

....just sweet little sayings such as these that I've collected over the years.

* * * * * * * *

My e-friend, Maria Shell from Alaska, asked if I would contribute a block to a group quilt, this time on the theme of racism, which sent me to my pile of "skin-colored fabrics." I cut a number of strips from this pile and wove them onto a wonder-under base to form a background. While I did so, I would think of all the beautiful people I've seen in different shades of skin, so in the photo below, you'll see that my "lady" has wild hair which spells out the message.

TWELVE CONNECTED:

Another exciting group project is one I joined in a moment of madness. It's a challenge group of a dozen people from many different places on the globe, all committed to working together over the next two years! Every two months, one of us is responsible for describing a theme, and at the end of the period, on the same day, we post our quilts to our online site. Our first "reveal" was on Feb. 1st; the challenge topic was SANCTUARY.

Please google "twelve connected" and see all the different and interesting ways this theme was interpreted. Each artist posts photos and describes what the theme meant to them. I find it very moving. Here's my photo, but you'll have to go to our blog to read all about it..........

There are -- in my NEW studio -- a pile of OLD unfinished or unsatisfying quilts. I decided to tackle them before moving ahead. So far I've managed to complete two....both of which entailed some serious editing. Let's see if I can figure out how to post a Before and After of each. The first is one I've begun calling "Hello Kitty".... and here's the "before"

and.. here's the "after", although it's a crummy photo....

Just for fun, I bound a big hunk I cut off. I call it "Hi Kitty", and don't worry, I put her other eye back on!

Another one is my "Little Boy with a Tire"..... first, the large one, and then the finished, cropped one:

He's now in the Popcorn Gallery (don't you love that title?) at Glen Echo Park.

Finally, there was a rather "surgical" attack I made on a piece called "The Lovers"...still unfinished, but it's the next on the pile. It's based on a photo I took of two trees entwined around each other at the edge of a grove.

...........and then came the Blizzard of 2010. I think I'll write about that another day. We're both probably tired by now.

September... already?

2009-09-04T15:17:00.047-04:00

The big quilt event in June was a trip to Ohio, first to attend the Sacred Threads reception (this is my quilt,"Sue's BlueFish", at Sacred Threads), then to see Quilt National (the MOST amazing quilts I've ever seen!), and finally to spend a week at QSDS in class with CYNTHIA CORBIN.

Our class was called "Black Fabric Sketch", and here's a picture of Cynthia (a most gentle and kind teacher) in front of one of her pieces. We were asked to take a piece of black fabric and cut a line into it. Then another line. And so on, and then to move the pieces apart to see the shapes & the lines.

Here's my black fabric sketch, and then the first two pieces I made using each black piece as a template to construct each segment. My first effort has what Cynthia called a "yellow tornado" through the middle. Trying to tone down the tornado effect, I made the second one (to the left).

My final attempt was to make the last one with many highly patterned yet strangely similar fabric bits that I had brought with me. I called this one my "purple fantasy." By the time I had completed these three pieces, I wasn't sure I understood the black-fabric technique, but I was becoming more comfortable with curved seams. Then I made a new black-fabric square using only straight lines and trying to make a human image. I call him "The King."

And just to keep him company...and to take a break from piecing...I fused him a "Queen."

The last several days of the class we worked on our final project. Before I did my large piece, I made a small "study piece" (it's only about 6 x 8), and it's called "Lady Flower Study."

Here's a photo of my larger piece as it stood on the design wall the last day of class (now being quilted and finished).

Now let's see....what did I do after June? Well, I played with making quick little fabric pieces just fusing down in several colorways. I gave some of them away already, but here's one in gold/orange and another in reds. These make good pieces on which to practice free-motion quilting.

I cut up a quilt I'd made a while ago...two strawberries, so huge they looked goofy, and just saved a bit of the lovely silk to make "One Very Nice Strawberry" (below)

I took a terrific online course with Ellen Lindner and learned her reverse-applique-by -machine technique, and made "Ellen's Apple"~~

I finished my quilt "Memories of Japan"

I took an online course at Quilt University called Silk Dyeing with Marjie McWilliams; it's a 4 week course, but I still haven't managed to get back to the laundry room to do the last week's assignment. Here's some silks from week one:

I spent a happy day at my friend Barbara Svoboda's house taking my first taste of breaking dishes and putting them back together again as ceramic mosaics (doesn't that sound like a familiar process?). Here's one of Barbara's gorgeous stepping stones~~~

And finally, I began what I think will be a pile of goofy dolls for Baby Ami (one,unfortunately,already eaten by his puppy, Zephyr), and a beribboned little Minky snuggly-thing which he's really starting to reach for!

spring update

2009-05-27T12:50:00.018-04:00

Our newest grandchild arrived via emergency C-section, accompanied by a strep infection which he shared with his mom, but after a week in the hospital, they both came home and seem to be recovering nicely. His name is AMITAV DJANGO WALEN. Go figger. I'm madly in love!!!

But let's go back to quilting, since this is a trunk show...........

I took a one-day course on making a variant of a "pineapple" block, and decided to use the shelf of floral fabrics which I collected when I'd just begun making quilts. I barely made a dent in this stash! I started out making scrappy blocks, but soon determined that they looked better with just a one-color pattern, with variations of fabrics of that one color. When I put them up on the wall, I realized they could form a pattern, a diagonal line of one color, and then another. So here's the top, at the point where I stopped adding to it (full view and detail):

I've also been slowly working on Dave's 70th Birthday Quilt. I'd sent out squares of white fabric to all his children, grandchildren, "adopted" children, and his older brother, and asked them to decorate their block with sharpies or paints or whatever they wanted. I love kids' quilt blocks, and I think my favorite on this quilt comes from the youngest...almost 2 years old (upper right). I'm slowly hand-quilting it,and if Dave's lucky, it'll be ready by his 71st! Please forgive the wrinkly photos!

And a little closer view...

Since I'm still in full-avoidance mode of my UFO's, I started another project I've wanted to do for a long time. Dave and I took our honeymoon to Japan, and we brought back many photographic souveniers. One of my favorites was of a tiny toddler, whose parents got her to pose in front of some "hello kitty" type of posters. I snapped her picture too, and always wanted to make a quilt of it. I'm making the flat-colored background up first:

I'll show you the finished product in my next randomly occurring entry.

Finally, let me tell you about my first ONLINE COURSE...at Quilt University. I'm taking "Realistic Fabric Portraits" with Marilyn Belford. For this, I selected a little picture of my granddaughter, Ana. It's a wonderful feeling to study and study and study a face you love, as you decide how to illustrate it in fabric. Marilyn is a generous teacher, with fulsome handouts and lots of daily feedback, but working as she does is very exacting. I'm ever more impressed with her work as I stumble along making my Ana.
Here are some shots of the Ana piece in several stages. Right now, I'm stuck on how to show her lovely curly blonde hair, but I'm sure Marilyn will come to my rescue..... BTW, I highly recommend trying the Q.U. courses; I know I'll go back.

First, here's my mischievous Ana around age 6:

Here's my working drawn pattern of the photo:

And here she is after several weeks' work, with me stuck on the hair problem:

So much to do, so little time......

What I've just finished....or almost

2009-03-17T16:14:00.011-04:00

We have a new baby coming into our family soon, so of course I asked my son, Alec, what colors they would prefer....pink, blue, yellow? They (foolishly) said it was "artist's choice." Hoo hah!

Now I love to go to the 5-cent baskets in quilt stores, and now have a HUGE basket of my own filled with pretty bits of fabric that I wouldn't buy if it were yardage. I pulled out all the fabrics I thought my grandchild might want to look at, went through my old stash of commercially printed fabrics, and cut out 3 1/2 inch blocks, putting them together fairly randomly. After I'd sewn several rows, I thought that the onlooker needed a calm space to rest the eye, so I inserted a large (maybe 12 x 12) square of a restful orange with white polka dots, and then kept on with my scrappy blocks. Stand back....better, but now the middle is boring. So I filled it with funky little appliqued houses. Originally, I was going to put a splended mola of fishes in the center, but I decided to move it to the back. Then, after playing for several hours on my design wall, I decided that the back had to be all REDS. The binding is a mess o' reds connected together in one long strip. The quilt turned out bigger than I thought. It's actually more like a floor blanket, but it got a nice reception at the Space Telescope Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University. That's where my lovely daughter-in-law, the astrophysicist, works. She was told to come to an Important Meeting in a room off the cafeteria, and voila!...there were all her colleagues, friends, and us family.

And here's the back:

In quite a different mood, I just finished a large piece (31 x37) based on a photo I took in Seattle. I call it SPRING COMES TO THE INNER CITY.

I've also been trying to hustle on doing a 12 x 12 for the 2009 SAQA auction. I've long been interested in Ms. Josephine Baker, and what an astonishing life she has led. She's a much more complex woman than the beautiful young black girl who danced almost naked in Paris! Here she is.........in progress.

Wait'll you see her with her JEWELS on!!! I call it THE MARVELOUS MS. JOSEPHINE BAKER.

Happy Dances

2009-03-17T15:09:00.016-04:00

If I could just stop clapping my hands and dancing around the room, I could get these boxed up and mailed off!

My SELF-PORTRAIT: IF YOU'RE HAPPY AND YOU KNOW IT...." was selected by Juror Pam RuBert for SAQA's juried exhibition: A Sense of Humor. It will go to Houston, Chicago, and Long Beach, which is much more traveling than I've done in years!

"MASTERPIECE FOR NANCY" was selected by Juror Bruce Hoffman to go into the SAQA 2009 exhibit: "Points of View". This show will debut at the Long Beach Quilt Festival.

THE WATER CARRIERS was selected by Jurors Judy Schwender, Caryl Bryer Fallert, and Freida Fairchild to show at the Yeiser Art Center in Padukah, which will run simultaneously with the National Quilt Show.

THISTLES FOR JANE was chosen by Jurors Jodi Walsh and Trudi Van Dyke for a juried exhibition entitled "Tribute to Fiber Art" at the Black Rock Center for the Arts, in Gaithersburg, MD.

Perhaps the one I feel most deeply about is SUE'S BLUE FISH QUILT, which was juried into this year's Sacred Threads Exhibition, which will be held in Reynoldsburg, Ohio, at the same time as QSDS and Quilt National, after which it will be sent to live with Sue's daughter in Chicago.

Finally, Diane Herbort invited those of us who bought some of the GORgeous fabric dyed by Heide Stoll Weber at QSDS last year to use some of it in a quilt that would be displayed as a special exhibit entitled "Inspired by the Fabric", which will be shown at the 2009 Quilters Heritage Celebration in Lancaster, PA in April. My piece is entitled A WINDOW IN IRELAND, and is based on a photo taken on a long-ago bike trip through Ireland. I just loved the colors and the chickens looking in the window~

What a wonderful time of life!

2009-03-17T14:18:00.012-04:00

Hey, if someone had told me how good RETIREMENT is, I would've done it earlier!

Well, its winding-down-from-the-show-time. All the quilts have gone home or to a new home. I feel particularly blessed in that regard. Two of my quilts ("Dear Mr. Obama" and "Home") were purchased by a gentleman who has a lifetime collection of political art, especially inaugural art. His collection is so big that his wife insisted he get it out of the house, so he apparently built a two-story building in their back yard to house it. I'm told that his will stipulates that upon his death, the entire collection is willed to the OBAMA LIBRARY! It doesn't get any better than that! Since President Obama couldn't make it to our show, at least part of our show will go to him! (If you want to see these two quilts, scroll down in this blog.)

The third quilt I made for the show was a simple one: The word OBAMA, under which was "11-04-08" and "1-20-09"; attached was a book for visitors to record their memories of this period. Here are a few of the comments which moved me:

Throughout the election process…I held my breath and prayed. I prayed….and held my breath. Election night I celebrated on U St. and danced in front of the White House. On Jan. 20th, I braved the cold for 8 hours to hear my President.
Yes, we can!
Yes, we did!
Yes, we will change the world.

My wife works at the federal courthouse at 3rd and Constitution, so we were able to be inside on a very cold inauguration day, but only about 200 yards from the Capitol. The thing I’ll remember most is taking our 16-mo old daughter to the event and thinking that she will grow up in an era in which there is no longer a glass ceiling for African Americans to ascend to the Presidency. She will never have a recollection of a time when being of African descent prevents a person from leading the United States government…how cool is that?!

At the People’s Concert, what I most remember is the peace in the moment. All the people of different colors and nationalities laughing, singing together,standing in the cold waiting to see our next President. The Joy of it all!

And here's what some kids wrote when they came to the show:

I like it.
I love it cause it expired me.
O to the Bama. ALL DAY!
Don’t H8T on Obama cause he’s da bomb. Like tic! Tic!
#1 is Obama.
Obama I love you!!

We even got some lovely comments on our quilts:

Moved me to tears~ C.H.

Most beautiful quilts I have ever seen. The emotion is overwhelming.
JS, Hedgesville, W.Va

Never knew such emotion could be expressed through textiles.
LB, Silver Spring

I cried! This exhibit brings back those tears. RW

I was emotionally moved by the pieces in this exhibit. I smiled and was filled with pride. MF

I have been to this exhibit five times – three times I brought friends. Each time I see something new and wonderful and never cease to be amazed at the talent of the quilters, but more – the love that flows from the quilters’ art work. JB

It's true. It was a love fest. And so is our beautiful book.

Here's some PR I sent out:

Thought you'd like to see our PR on our "new baby":

Our new book based on the exhibit "President Obama: A Celebration in Art Quilts" is now for sale online. Below is a copy of the description on the Blurb Book website. We're already a "best seller!" The book is beautiful, truly.

Here's the BEST part: ALL PROFITS FROM THE SALE OF THIS BOOK WILL GO TO SCHOLARSHIP FUNDS FOR ART STUDENTS AT MONTGOMERY COLLEGE, THE HOST OF OUR QUILT SHOW!

To find the book easily, here's the DIRECT LINK:

Direct link is http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/596799

The ObamaQuilters are 60 fiber artists who formed a grassroots, all-volunteer, multi-ethnic group of quilters from all across America. We produced a vibrant quilt show, which was held at the Cafritz Art Center of Montgomery College in Maryland, from Feb. 9-March 5, 2009. This book is based on that show, and includes photos of the quilts, the quilters, and copies of the artist statements, which in many cases, are as moving as the quilts themselves.

We ObamaQuilters are excited to share our passion for art quilts and our gratitude for being alive to see the historic election of President Barach Obama come to pass.

Tell all your friends! And won't these make lovely holiday/ celebration gifts????

The ObamaQuilters Show

2009-03-05T14:15:00.017-05:00

What a group! Through the internet, we forged bonds, of kindness, helpfulness, and obamaness. The day of the opening reception for the show, Feb. 13th, 2009, began with a luncheon at my place so that at least some of these women could meet each other. We had a blast! And what do quilters do when they get together? Show and Tell -- so we got to see Lucky's latest (including one in which she actually wrote out the entire inaugural speech plus her own comments!), a new piece by Sherry Shine (showing both Rosa Parks and Barack Obama in the same bus, which blew us away), and other gorgeous stuff. Here are some home photos:

...and here are some of us in Susan Shie's sketch book!:

Then there were more photos at the Cafritz Center:

And now there's our BOOK! All profits from the sale of the book will go to scholarship funds for art students at Montgomery College, the host of our show.

President Obam...

By ObamaQuilters

Book Preview

THE ELECTION

2008-12-30T17:09:00.009-05:00

I will never be able to describe in words the joy, excitement, pride in my country that I experienced the night of the election. I couldn't let down my guard until I saw the 11 pm postings, and then I couldn't stop crying and laughing...for hours. I woke up, still giddy, the next morning, and went to the Obama campaign office in Bethesda, which was being rapidly torn down. Many people came over to me as I gathered up my "Dear Mr. Obama" quilt, telling me how much pleasure it had given them, and it also made a great backdrop for photos of each other.

As I drove home with Mr. O on the passenger seat, I began wondering how many other ObamaMama's there were out in the country who, like me, was driven to make a celebratory quilt. I thought about how wonderful it would be if there were such quilts, to bring them together for the inauguration. So, after running the idea by several friends as a "sanity check", and asking Susan Shie if she'd be willing to contribute, I sent out this notice:

I have this crazy idea: wonderful "Obama Quilts" on display in
Washington, D.C. for the inauguration.

I see two major challenges:
(1) Can we get enough quilts to make it possible?
And,
(2) Can we find a great place(s) to display them?

I plan to tackle both challenges at the same time.

So, to you wonderful Obama-mamas out there, I'm trying to get a
sense of the "inventory" we could amass in the next month and a half.

I'm excited to tell you that Susan Shie has promised to send a large
Obama quilt to help us jump-start the effort. So, please tell me if
you
have an "Obama" quilt to display.

While this is going on, I am going on a hunt for places to hang
them. This week I'll start making phone calls. If any of you know
people I could call to get the quilts displayed, please let me know.

I'm open to all suggestions, comments, advice, and tips.

Sue

Well....within 30 hours I had over 40 quilters raring to go. So the first question was answered: we did have an inventory. Now where could I find a venue in a town that had no more hotel rooms left? After many days of fruitless searches, we lucked out.
One of my many emails crossed the desk of an art teacher (David Phillips) at a local college (Montgomery College), and he was heading off to a meeting with several people from their Arts Institute, and he thought that our proposal might fill a gap in their winter schedule that they were having trouble filling. He presented the idea and they liked it! In fact, they got excited too. The college had received a donation from the Cafritz family to build a new Arts Center, and that's where we'll be. It's a wonderful, modern urban museum space with high spaces, good windows, good walls. It's perfect. And the college is being so gracious to us: they will insure the quilts, unpack and repack them, have them professionally photographed and hung, prepare accompanying matrials, and do some PR work. They will make a DVD of all the quilts which will play in their lobby. They will print a binder of all the Artist Statements, which in this group, are sometimes even more moving than the quilts! They even hope to produce a book about this historic exhibit, the proceeds of which will go to scholarship funds for the students, many of whom, like Obama, came up the hard way and are inspirational in their own right.

Now, heading into the home stretch, we are a group of 61 art quilters: all-volunteer, grass-roots, multi-ethnic and very talented. We come from all corners of the US and as far away as Australia. We'll have two large Susie Shie pieces, a group quilt by Fiber Artists for Obama that was shown in Houston, a piece by Michelle Flamer that went to the DNC convention, banners, flags, portraits, and more. Many of the quilters (like me) have been moved to do more than one entry. It's going to be a FABulous show.

The show is called: "President Obama: A Celebration in Art Quilts".
It will hang at the Cafritz Art Center, 150 King Street, Silver Spring, MD.
Dates: Feb. 9 to March 5.
Opening reception will be Friday the 13th from 6 pm -->.

You are all cordially invited!!!!

You've seen my original Obama piece, but I'll share two other works (in progress):
"HOME" is made for Malia and Sasha (in my mind), and it depicts the happy new White House on a bright sunny day, with dad going off to the oval office, and the rest waving goodbye to him. The sun is so happy he's wearing sunglasses, but he could also represent the secret service guys whose job it is to protect all these wonderful people.

The second piece is to be an interactive piece, displayed with an attached notebook and pen. The title is "What was it like for you?" It's composed of many different pieces of plaid fabric to represent the diversity of us all.

One of the lovely spin-offs of development of this show was that a number of us were invited to be interviewed by Karen Musgrave who is with Quilter's SOS -- Save Our Stories, a project of the Alliance for American Quilts. The tapes and accompanying photos will be part of a public archive that will be made available for the public and future researchers and quilt lovers. The project has more than 800 interviews online, archived at the Library of Congress. (www.allianceforamericanquilts.org/qsos/)

Now, wouldn't it be lovely if this tribute show to a most popular president at a historic junction in our history could be seen outside of the D.C. area? Let us know if you want it to visit your town!

The Fall

2008-12-30T16:07:00.011-05:00

I finally put the finishing touches on my Pelican quilt, which is a collage of a bunch of photos Dave and I took when we toured southern Florida. We spent three hours watching them at the Bird Santuary run by Laura Quinn on Key Largo. These are such amazing birds, and when they come in for a landing, they look like pterodactyls with their 7-10 foot wing span. Some, like the guy in the center, are quite cheeky. You see that look in his eye? He's saying, "You got a fish...I know you do...hand it over!" It was fun to figure out how to attach all the shells (many sewed on, others glued), to make a wave (a piece of lace curtain), to show distance (size as well as size of chicken scratch quilting stitches), and to show a storm coming in from the right (luckily found several scraps of sky fabric). I even found a use for the tiny metal fish charms I bought. Now, having hung it in one quilt show, I've realized how heavy all that stuff is....and my horizontal lines are separating in spots, so it's going back to the shop for some overhaul. The photos are from before completion, but they tell the story.

Veggie Update: I added another veggie to my series..a charming beet, who allowed me to pose all her leaves all spread out on a beautiful silk moire background. Not an easy fabric to quilt, let me warn you! But it's so pretty when the light hits it just right. I call it "The Expansive Beet."

Good Things:
(1) first place for "Homage for Donna" at the Young at Art show in Va.
(2) Mississippi John Hurt sold at the SAQA auction and went to a good home.
(3) Viewer's Choice award for "Gotta Dance" at the Nimble Fingers show (a local guild)
(4) Two small pieces sold at Needle Chasers of Chevy Chase show (Homage to Donald Sultan & The Coneflowers)
(5) Masterpiece for Nancy was accepted into SAQA's 2009 "Points of View" show.

This ain't why I quilt, but it sure is nice when it happens. I quilt because I "have to."

Obama!

2008-08-14T14:26:00.005-04:00

I got a notice about two weeks ago that MoveOn.com was sponsoring an artists' call for ObamaArt, and I got so excited! I've been an ObamaFan since I first heard him speak at the last Democratic Convention. I've found myself cutting out photos of him and saving excerpts from his speeches, as I came across them in newspapers and magazines. I've read his two books, and I continue to experience him as the most remarkable political figure and the most inspirational since JFK. So I buckled down (that is, told my sweet husband, David, that he was on duty to make the suppers until further notice), and produced the quilt below within the two week window of opportunity. I photographed it and sent it in before the deadline, but I still need to do the label, the sleeve, and a bit more surface quilting.

The idea of the image is that from a distance, I hoped it would look like Mr. Obama is looking out of a multi-paned window. Up close, each pane is a page of a letter that I wrote to him. It's called "Dear Mr. Obama." If I'm very very lucky, it will be selected to be shown at the Democratic National Convention. If not, it will be placed on MoveOn's eBay page and auctioned off, proceeds to go to liberal causes. Here's a shot of the quilt, and a detail of page one.

What I've Done This Summer

2008-08-14T12:12:00.014-04:00

Well, the summer started with the discovery of a new spring veggie to add to my series: a ramp. I bought this little fellow for 5 cents and took him home and posed him and photographed him and drew him from several angles, and several hours later I began to realize that there was a funny smell in the air. By evening, my ramp was in the garbage can OUTSIDE. So here's the final product. It's only 9 by 11, and the letters are done by couching perl cotton.

You may notice a little red triangle at the bottom of the ramp; that's my new "secret signature." I tried all sorts of arrangements of my name, my initials, and finally fell upon this as I picked up some scraps of red silk from the floor! It'll be hiding in my quilts from now on.

The next piece I finished was unearthed during the above clean-up. It began as a study of negative space and flower suggestion, with just the outline of a line of coneflowers. I noticed that the color values were very similar, which was why I had set it aside for who knows how long. Now, finding it again, I kind of liked the similar values, and decided to continue that theme, adding a tiny inner border and outer border. It's hand quilted with metallic thread, and beaded for practice. I don't know whether it "works" or not, but I like it.

Another project I started is to work slowly through the Art Quilt Workbook by Jane Davila and Elin Waterston. I'm loving this book,and learning a lot! Each chapter teaches several things,and includes a list of websites to visit and artists to learn about, whose work illustrates the topic of the chapter. The chapters end with production of a small (9 x 12 inch, vertical) quilt. I'm only up to chapter 4, but here are some of the small quilts that have come from this work. The first is called "Thistles: A Color Study." My goal in this piece was to practice showing distance (which I did by having farther flowers be smaller and less distinct, and using overlap to show what's in front of what) and to break the borders. Here's the quilt, and below it I'll tell you what I REALLY learned.

You've probably noticed it already. The orange flowers, which were to be behind the thistles JUMPED in front of them. Why? Because warm colors come forward and cool colors recede. I hope I won't forget that again.

The next exercise, in Chap. 3, was to do a little pear from a pattern. Here's "The Pink Pear." I added the leaf, which is two-sided, and has a little bit of wire down the middle vein so the leaf is 3-D and can be "posed" in different ways.

The quilt made for the final exercise of Chap. 3 is called "My Lily" and is based on some lovely lilies that grow in the shady part of my backyard. They're short lived but have large flowers with fluffy, ruffled petals, strong red-orange pistels (or maybe they're stamens?), and sturdy leaves and stems. I must have tried a dozen times to draw one to get a "pattern" for a quilt, and finally a friend suggested that I lay tracing paper over my best drawing, and deliberately leave out lines, simplifying the image. I could do that several times until I got one that worked. That was a very helpful suggestion.

One of the artists that I discovered through this Workbook is Raoul Dufy, and I found his early work particularly appealing. There was one picture that looked like blobs of color, over which he would do an outline of a flower. I had just been practicing my hand at dyeing fabric, and several of my fabrics look like "blobs of color." (And some look even worse than that!) Anyway, here's my attempt to do an "Homage to Raoul Dufy":

A group of friends will be getting together to work through the book this fall, so I get to take a hiatus from homework till they catch up.

Another wonderful thing that I did this summer was to spend a week at QSDS, where the "big girls" play. It was exciting all week, just being in the company of so many artists working up and down the hallway in the hotel where it's held. Several times a day I would prowl through the Master Class to see how their work was progressing. Wow.

Now, I studied with Jane Sassaman, one of my very first quilt teachers, in a course she calls "Shape Shifting" -- but by the end of the week, I still had the same shape! If you ever have a chance to take a class from her, do so. She's organized, inspirational, kind and supportive...qualities that are hard to find in the aggregate. I think I was still stuck on thistles (pardon the pun), so one of the pieces I worked on was an abstraction of them; I'm going to call this piece (if I ever finish it) "Thistles for Jane." Below is a shot of Jane taking a photo of an early stage, and below that is a shot of where it stands now.

The actual color of the background is somewhere between the two pictures above. My next step is to decide where the borders will be -- e.g.,when the center is "done." My daughter, who is an artist, used to paint these enormous swirling abstract paintings, and I recall asking her how she knew when it was "done." She looked at me in amazement. "Mom, the picture tells you when it's done!" I keep listening, but so far no objects have spoken up.

I started a second piece in Jane's class; I got an urge to do a black and white study...so, of course, I began with a piece of the brightest pink fabric I had with me. You can see it below as it sits in my "to do" pile. I don't know if I like it enough to continue working on it, so I'll let it marinate a bit more.

TWO NEW PROJECTS

2008-05-22T15:59:00.011-04:00

At the end of April, I went to the Hudson River Valley art workshops to study for a week with Margot Lovinger. If you don't know her wonderful work, just google her. Margot taught how to use layers of sheers to achieve depth and dimension in quilt art. We all brought as many different colors of tulle as we could find, and it was a hoot as we opened our bags and the stuff exploded! We were asked to bring a photo from which we could work. We drew it's major outlines, blew it up in size using an overhead projector, and ultimately traced the image, using a lightbox, onto a piece of artist canvas.

We fused Wonder Under to large pieces of fabric which would form the major shapes in our picture, as you can see in this next picture....

and then we began to build layers of sheers to define shapes, make shadows, modulate color, and create depth.

The sheers are hand sewn through the canvas with tiny "tacking" stitches, often layer upon layer, to get the desired effect. Ultimately, we auditioned different colors of tulle to use as an overlay (mine turned out to be a vibrant purple!). The fabric picture was made 6 inches larger on all sides so that we could use the mounting Margot taught us. Foam core board was affixed atop wood framing. This layer was followed by one-inch foam, cut to the edges of the board, and topped with a layer of batting. The quilt-canvas is the top layer, and it is stretched around the framing and stapled to the wood in the back. The image, therefore, continues around the sides of the piece. Here's a picture of my final project, which I call "Water Carriers."

The second project I recently completed was to try to make a 12" x 12" square for the SAQA online auction to be held in October, proceeds going to support the organization. As an Old Folkie, I'd long wanted to make something in honor of one of my folk heroes, an old bluesman named Mississippi John Hurt. John was born in Avalon, Mississippi in 1892, and I got to hear him in a club in Washington D.C. shortly after he was "discovered" and shortly before he died (1966). John's family were very poor sharecroppers, but his mother managed to squeak out $1.50 for his first guitar when he was 9 years old. Nobody taught him to play his syncopated finger-picking style; as he said, "I just make it sound like I think it ought to." This wize, but gentle and soft-spoken man wrote some great hot songs, like "Nobody's Dirty Business" and "Candy Man Blues." This is my quilt for John:

Now go see all the amazing quilts that are piling up on the SAQA auction site, and buy one!

LONG TIME, NO POST...

2008-05-22T14:07:00.012-04:00

After a brief skirmish with breast cancer (lumpectomy, clean margins, no further treatments!), I got back to work. This little piece was the next thing I completed. It's called "Lily and her Dog" and was mailed out to Lily's mom after she'd sent a photo in their Xmas card. I learned that dog hair is hard to draw!

Meanwhile, I'd been working along on a Fractured Flower #2 challenge, sponsored by SAQA. We all got a large print of this gorgeous flower, and you can see that it's divided into 4 irregular segments. The idea was that we would do 4 separate "quilts", leaving unfinished edges around all sides of each piece. We were to photograph our work, mail the 4 pieces to the moderator of the challenge (Tomme Fent), who would then send back 4 NEW pieces (we'd never see our own again) which we combined into a finished quilt, which was then posted on the website. Here are some shots of this sequence: First, a practice piece I made:

And here's a shot of my four finished pieces, in parts:

Here's what I did with the new interesting and creative segments I was sent...

And here's a shot of the label on the back, showing the artists who did the various pieces. All in all, a very interesting and fun project.

That brings us to about March, when my first-born son (Alec) and his wife (Rachel) returned from Germany. They'd been living in Heidelburg and working at the Max Plank Institutes for a year, and as a welcome home present, I made a quilt based on some photos they'd sent of the castle. I played with things a bit, adding two little figures in the back (me and my hubby), a tourist with two camera bags on the left front, and my beloved travelers on the right. I took the heads from a photo of them at their pre-wedding dinner and dressed them up in winter togs for the Heidelburg chill. The photo below shows the work in progress.

They loved the quilt, until they saw their pictures on it. Two weeks later they hesitantly asked if I could just take them off! Geez. But I'm working on it.

Hey. Remember that Nancy Crow course I took last year? I promised to post the final project that we did, and I have just declared it "DONE." Now in full disclosure mode, I have to tell you that when our final projects were put up around the room in Nancy's great barn studio, I was forced to conclude that I am probably the worst student Nancy has had in several years. Mine didn't look anything like the sophisticated pieces others displayed on their design walls. But it's big, bright, and cheery, and has a -- shall we say -- happpy childlike quality to it.

Now Nancy Crow has long been a quilting idol of mine, and after I recovered from the course I took from her, I realized I'll always be grateful to her for making me realize that I loathe strip-piecing!

JUST FINISHED

2008-01-29T20:43:00.001-05:00

Here's my latest work, and I thought some might be interested in seeing it as a work in progress. It's called "A BIRD IN THE HAND..." (It's 27 x 22.5)

STAGE 1

STAGE 2

STAGE 3, and then came adding "the poop."

ODDS 'N ENDS

2008-01-29T20:12:00.003-05:00

If you've gotten this far in my blogorama, I thought you might be interested in a picture of Dave (and me)...above. (30.5 x 24)

I took a one-day course in "wonky log cabins", and tried to use some of my "african" fabrics. I called this " EYE OF THE TIGER." (32 x 26.5)

This little quilt was done as a study in negative space. (8.5 x 10.5)

A little piece to echo a very dramatic picture taken of my mom when she was in little theatre work as a young woman. [9 x 11]

This long skinny quilt was a personal meditation on two years of my life, as seasons in fabric (get it?)

This long lapquilt is based on a model taught in a mini-course by Donna Radner, so I call it my "DONNA RADNER KNOCK-OFF QUILT." [50 x 72]

RETIREMENT TIME

2008-01-29T17:37:00.001-05:00

Sue's dying and death not only knocked a hole in my heart, but knocked me on the head: time's a-wasting. While I loved my private practice work, I did find myself looking at my watch and saying, "OK, three more hours and then I can get back to my studio." And then it hit me: I'm too old and life's too short to be pushing away hours like that. So I gave myself and my beloved patients four months to wrap it all up, and find everyone who wanted one, a new psychotherapy home. In January of 2007, I hung up my "Doctor" hat.

Of course, right after that, my hip went out on me, and off I went to get my first bionic part, a new right hip. The living room became a hospital room, and we never did return the hospital bed because my hubby Dave did exacatly the same thing with his left hip right after me!

It was almost two months before I got back to my studio, which I had carefully tidied up before surgery. I sat down on my sofa and looked at my wall 'o fabric, my two sewing machines, my boxes, drawers, files, and said to myself, "WHAT WAS IT I WAS DOING DOWN HERE????" I felt overwhelmed. Lost. Where was my muse? My passion? OMG.

So I picked up a book on loan from a friend; it was the museum catalogue showing the work of Ayako Miyawaki, a Japanese fabric artist whose work always made me smile. She's one of my quilt-idols. Look at the cover picture and see if you could resist this fishface?

Ayako's work is so elegantly simple, so graphically strong, and so charming. I had seen a little black and white film of her at work in her living room. She'd bring back something from the market -- a fish or two, perhaps -- and would lay them on her table, reach into her scrap bag by her chair and begin to free-cut a fish.

Remembering that, I decided I would go to the spring farmer's market and buy something beautiful and make a fabric picture. Of course, I was drawn to a Japanese eggplant! Well, one week led to another, and before you know it, I was making a series of Spring Veggies. Here they come:

Three red peppers chatting among themselves:

two strawberries (13.5 x 19.5)

spring onions (note silken strings from unravelled fabric as roots)

a beautiful radish

bok choy

and last, A Fennel and A Scape

MY FRIEND SUE

2008-01-29T16:54:00.000-05:00

I had a dear friend named Sue, one of those warm, welcoming, huggable ladyfriends that you only find every once in a while. She too was a psychotherapist,and we kept discovering common tastes in clothing, decorations, jewelry, movies, just about everything except opera, which gives me shpilkes ("restless leg syndrome" for those again from a different village).

So Sue was going to redo her bedroom and make it entirely blue and filled with built-in cupboards theoretically big enough to hold her vast collections of clothes and shoes. In honor of this venture, I tried my first attempt at a crazy quilt, using blue fabrics which were piling up in my stash. So, here's Sue's Blue Quilt.

One day, several years ago, my friend Sue told me that the doctors had figured out why she'd been having such bad back trouble; Sue was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma. She was so courageous,so uncomplaining as she did battle with that dreadful illness. And Sue, who'd always been -- like me -- kinda chunky, began to lose weight, and as the weight dropped she told me over and over again how beautiful she felt. She went out almost every week and bought something lovely to celebrate her increasingly slender figure.

At one point, she asked me if she could give me some of her chubby clothes. She was particularly concerned about giving me her old Blue Fish clothes. Blue fish was a very expensive hand-painted line of clothing, made of cotton knits, easy to wear. Sue had 3 boxes set aside for me. I picked out a few tops I liked and then we tried to decide what to do with the rest, and Sue lit up with an idea. "You could make me a quilt", she exclaimed. "In fact, there's enough there to make two quilts, one for you and one for me!" I didn't have the heart to tell her I had never worked with stretchy knit fabrics.

So, I went home and began to cut up the clothes, putting aside all the painted designs, the funky labels, and the arty buttons, and cutting the rest into big hunks. Gradually, on my design wall, I built up a collage of these images, finding panels that had been skirt hems to be good border pieces. Eventually, with all the pieces backed with a non-woven interfacing, I began to sew and sew and sew. The back was constructed of panels of plain fabric and the quilting was done by tying, using the gorgeous buttons instead of knots.

I was able to give Sue her quilt and it made her very happy. She died about two months later. Here is Sue's quilt.

CHALLENGE QUILTS

2008-01-29T15:37:00.004-05:00

Several years ago, I decided to join a few guilds, and eventually began to enter the guilds' yearly challenges. In 2006, the Nimble Fingers challenge was to make a quilt based on the theme of A GAME. I had recently seen the Matisse show which had come through Washington, and bought a post card of one of my favorite Matisse paintings called "The Chess Game", which has lots of fabric-like elements to it. Here's my version of his painting, called HOMAGE TO MATISSE. (30.5 x 33)

That same month, another guild (PM Patchwork) issued a black and white challenge. What popped to my mind was an old black and white photo of my Zayde (that's "grandpa" for those of you from a different village!) that I'd always liked. Here's Zayde's photo, and below, you'll see my attempt to do him in fabric, which I call MY ZAYDE COMES TO NEW YORK. (23 x 28)

The following year (2007) the Nimble Fingers challenge was to make a quilt based on a song title. I was thinking about a new book I'd just been reading called "Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy" by Barbara Ehrenreich. What popped to mind was an old image I recalled of a group of young women dancing on a lawn, and that formed the basis of the following quilt, which is called "GOTTA DANCE." Several quotations from the book are embedded in the grass, and a longer quotation is on the back of the quilt. The girls and I won first prize for creativity this year! Below is also a detail from the quilt. [36 x 60]

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This year the PM Patchwork challenge was to make a self-portrait. Mine is called "IF YOU'RE HAPPY AND YOU KNOW IT...." and is based on my own little quilting studio. [30 x 40]

Finally, I even entered a challenge from a magazine (Quilting Arts). Compared to the wild and wonderful entries that were printed in the next issue, mine is a plain Jane, but here's what I submitted: it's called "MY LITTLE TREE HOUSE". [8 x 11]

TEACHERS

2008-01-29T11:19:00.002-05:00

One of my first important teachers was RUTH MCDOWELL with whom I took a 5-day class. I practiced for the class by making practice pieces from her books on flowers and veggies ("Pieced Vegetables"). In her class, I showed her a very old photo of my Great-Aunt Anna, around age 16, in the backyard of her house in a shetl in western Russia. It is a photo I fell in love with as a child, and which I've carried with me for years. First, here's the real Great-Aunt Anna:

With Ruth's tutelage, here's the wall quilt I made from the image: (26 x 44.5)

The next major teacher I had was JANE SASSAMAN, whose course was described as "for the drawing impaired and the hopelessly literal." That was for me! Having never had a course in art, Jane opened me up to the possibility of real creativity and to working out-of-the-box.
We were working from nature, and were asked to bring in flowers as models. The room by day #two was glorious with bouquets, but since I brought in wildflowers, they pooped out by the midday. My model, therefore, became a strange brown orchid depicted in a flower book. My resulting quilt is called The Ugly Orchid (although I love it). The two little orange squares were added as an afterthought because they "felt right". I had no experience with beads, so I just poured a few onto the flower and sewed 'em right where they lay. [20 x 25] (By the way, if you're as new to blogging as I am, you may want to know that to see any picture in larger format, just double click it.)

My most recent major teacher is NANCY CROW. I spent a week at THE Barn, which is probably the most amazing group studio space in the country. To prepare for this week, I really studied Nancy's latest book, poring over the pictures and not really understanding how her quilts were made. Once again, I practiced. I made a very small sample and hand quilted it. I call it Mini-Crow. (8 x 12)

Then I picked out my favorite of her quilts in the book and just tried to replicate a portion of it, which caused me to realize how subtly she uses color. Having never done string-piecing myself, and therefore having no idea of her construction work, I just patched along happily, using some new fabrics I'd ordered as a grab-bag from Cherrywood Fabrics, and what emerged I call "A Crow At G-Street" (my local fabric store). (29 x 32)

I'm still working on the quilt that was the Final Project of a week's worth of sweatshop hours of string-piecing, making what Nancy calls "new fabric". I'll publish that in a later chapter of the Trunk Show.

WORKING FROM PATTERNS

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Here's one of the first patterns I tried (the pattern is Third Weekend in October, but I call it "For Marilyn, whose favorite color is Orange.") This was all hand-quilted and took forever to do; it's a good thing I love my sister! (The pattern is by Ruth Powers)

Here's another shot of it before it was bound:

This pattern is Ami Simm's Doggus pattern, which was great fun to do, especially as I am a fan of her dog Madison's column in her monthly newsletter. It now hangs in the playroom in my daughter's house. I hope they don't notice the BIG MISTAKE in the block below!

Let's see: what other patterns did I do? Ah yes, this was actually from a kit for a Lone Star preprinted on a sheer fabric, which made the process much easier, I'm sure, than doing one from scratch, but it was still a challenge. (Pattern by QuiltSmart)

And this one, which I called "Da Bronx Bears" or sometimes "Boids and Bears" was my challenge to myself to try writing with my machine in free motion on the quilt. I did have to go over it with a sharpie, but I wanted to make sure some of the silly sayings my sister and I thought up were visible. For example: "he ain't heavy, he's my boidie" and "Boids make the best buddies." (Pattern by Carolee Pollack)

Then, I did this small quilt from a Malek pattern in honor of a friend's lovely Golden Retriever who died; it's called "Reve du Bolton."

More recently, for a break between larger projects, I worked on this lovely flower arrangement pattern, which I decided to quilt by hand. I call it "Hey, echo quilting is FUN!" (26 x 22)

Finally, here's my attempt to do something creative with a pattern by Caryl Bryer Fallert. I call it "IT WAS AN AWFULLY PLAID DAY!"

Well, I guess I'm making progress on learning to do this blogging stuff, but I do seem to be having trouble lining up my words with my photos. These older photos are also not so great in quality, but I think the newer ones to come are a bit better. It's also kinda frustrating that I'm trying to lay out a story of development and blogs are lined up with the newest things first. Oh well.

WEDDINGS & BABIES & SUCH

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Dave and I married about 3 years ago, and I decided to make our chuppah. I had found a number of exquisite japanese embroidered panels, each purchased in its own cellophane wrapper. They were so beautiful I was afraid to cut them. Then I found a pattern in one of Kaffe Fassett's books (Glorious Patchwork) for fabrics you hate to cut, and thus emerged our wedding canopy.

Over the next two years there were wedding quilts for my daughter Audrey (the Red Quilt from the same Kaffe Fassett book) and my son, Alec. These, and several baby quilts and charity quilts helped to hone my confidence. Here are a few of those I remembered to photograph:

This one is from a pattern by Studio 55.

IN THE BEGINNING

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It all started with my second grandchild. George was going to be born without a diaphragm. He was taken out by C-section many weeks prematurely and rushed to the neonatal ICU to be put on life-support systems.

That night I woke from a dream that all the people from both sides of the family were covering the baby with their hands to keep him alive and make him better. I knew I had to make a "hand blanket." Then I REALLY woke up and remembered that I didn't know how to sew...AT ALL.

I went to my computer and typed in something like "quilts.com" and typed out my story, and the most amazing thing happened! Women from the ether began writing to me, teaching me how to begin, and then what to do. So I had every family member send me outline drawings of their hands, while I went off to the local fabric store. THAT'S WHERE IT HAPPENED. Instant addiction! I've not been the same since.

George, now 5, is off oxygen (his "nose medicine"), has a belly feeding tube, and is of a charming and happy disposition. He loaned me his quilt for this Trunk Show.