My Facebook art quilt group "Art Quilts Around The World" has reveal day today. The theme is Folklore. I googled options and fairies and mermaids were common themes but I have done those in quilts before. I found the legend of Madre Monte (Mother Mountain) which is from Columbia to be interesting. The folklore story is about a woman who wears moss and leaves and a green hat that conceals her face. She lives in dense jungles and supposedly bathes in rivers causing flooding and heavy storms. She haunts those who steal other people's land and cast plagues on cattle owners who steal or misuse fields or ignore boundaries. She puts spells on people in the jungle when they walk and they eventually fall asleep with exhaustion and do not wake for hours.
I saw this woman as a earth mother type with all green skin and hair. I used one of my other portrait patterns and made it smaller to the required size. I reduced the size of her Afro as well. I chose 4-5 green for her skin tones and a tie dyed ruffly heavily textured fabric for her Afro hair. I envisioned lots of hair texture and viney stuff by using lots of textured yarns which I machine and hand couched to the quilt.
From my embellishment stash I pulled anything with a green leaf-silk and felt leaves; leaf and flower buttons; sequins, beads and even foam leaves. I found a great metallic special occasion fabric for the dress and used two green glitter nail polishes on the eyes. I stitched the turquoise background with a leave themed specialty stitch with a variegated thread to repeat the nature theme.
This photo shows a close up of the hair and all the funky fuzzy yarns I used to capture the jungle vines in her hair! I had a blast with this challenge once I found an idea and will use this quilt for Earth Day and other seasonal related quilt themes.
This was the original pattern that I adapted for the Folklore that I used for my 2014 Hoffman Challenge quilt. It looks different with green skin instead of brown.
The next challenge for this group I get to select and I chose "Kitschy!!!" Kitschy is defined as pleasingly distasteful, melodramatic, overdone, gaudy, tacky, sentimental, folksy, cutesy fun or hideously ugly. It is so bad it's cool! I discovered the word Kitschy in 2005 and I was thrilled there was a name for the style I embraced! I wear kitschy jewelry, have garden art and add something kitschy to many of my quilts.
I discovered some terrible gaudy cat eye glasses on Pinterest and will run with this idea for this challenge due May 31, 2016
I decided to not teach at the IQF Chicago Quilt Show April 7-9, 2016 but chose to attend the show and when the Houston Educational Department asked me to participate in Open Studio I said "yes." I am doing two demos-the first one on Friday April 8th from 4-6pm and I titled the subject as Selfie Portrait Quilt which is my whimsical first pattern re-marketed. I created two new sample quilts with some clothes instead of shoulder straps and expanded on eyeglasses with my favorite frame shape of cat eye!! I also love the Rosie The Riveter style 40s head scarves so that is new. I love polka dots and red/pink together so it was a fun project!!
Then I've been wanting to do a Packer themed version of this pattern for a while so I pulled some green and gold fabric and designed a football jersey and a cheesehead. Should the cheesehead point up or down? I had it both ways and went with "up."
Both quilts have nail polish for eye make-up and on the hair. Rhinestones are added to the cat eye glasses and the Packer girl got a necklace and background bling!
I plan to make a few more accessories before the quilt show such as a steampunk hat!
The other demo is called Fun and Funky Fabric Postcards on Saturday April 9th from 10am-12noon. I did this demo at Houston last October and will blog about this if I have some new cards to display.
I hope you will be attending the show in April because it is fantastic because of the classes, loads of quilt displayed and vendors galore!! Stop by at my demos and introduce yourself!!
I had seen a call for red themed quilts a while ago in 2015 from Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA) because they were compiling quilts for a Go Red For Women Campaign. They put a lot of the quilts on their Pinterest board if you want to see many more red quilts. I found out my quilt "Beauty School Flashback" was selected to be in the April/May 2016 issue back last fall. It is difficult to wait and not tell anyone what is going on. I do not subscribe to this magazine and today I tried without success to purchase the magazine. I was bummed but then I check my mail today and I had a complimentary copy of Quilters Newsletter!! Sorry my photography isn't the greatest but the glossy paper tends to create a huge reflection.
I have to say my quilt got an excellent position in the magazine layout and another photo of the detail of the lady's face. I made the quilt in 2010 for Joann Fabrics "Quilt Your Colors" Contest using only their fabrics (not easy when you want to use quilt shop fabrics!!) I came in 4th place nationally and was fortunate to win some prizes. Joann's never really promoted the end result of the contest and they never did the contest again. I blogged about this quilt back in the day so I'm not going to go into the construction of the quilt. It sure is a great felling to have my portrait quilt work in print!!
This is the cover in case you want to purchase it!
