Art Quilts Around The World Facebook Group: Folklore Challenge

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

New Open Studio Samples of Selfie Quilts for IQF Chicago in April

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!!

My Quilt Is Featured In The April/May 2016 Quilters Newsletter Magazine!! Woo Hoo!

 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!

Art Quilts Around the World Facebook Group: Book Challenge

 My Facebook art quilt group Art Quilts Around The World has a challenge reveal today and the subject is a favorite book. I thought about the many great favorite novels I have read and nothing jumped into my head that I would want a quilt made out of and the time spent making the project. I was looking at my quilt books for something unrelated and I saw my favorite quilt book "Pattern Play" by Doreen Speckmann and decided to use it as my inspiration for this challenge. Doreen was a quilter from Madison WI and I was a new quilter in the 1990s when I first saw her speak at the Darting Needles Quilt Guild in Appleton WI. She inspired me like no other quilter at the time because she used a variety of prints in each quilt and that is what I wanted to do and she gave me permission! She had a great sense of humor and she created characters called Peaky and Spike out of two triangles in her quilts.

Doreen's book was a book I used exclusively in the 90s and early 2000s. I saw her lecture and took a few of her classes. I made over a dozen lap and wall hangings based on the patterns in this book. At the time Doreen used templates but I have switched it up and use foundation piecing to have more accuracy these days. Doreen used to do quilting cruises and dance the Electric Slide at these events. On a cruise in 1998 Doreen died of a heart attack on the dance floor and the quilt world lost a great creative woman.

I created a version of Doreen's Peaky and Spike style piecing for this project using some of my favorite colors. I used a rayon variegated thread I bought in Houston and my new sewing machine's decorative stitches in the borders. It is not an art quilt but more traditional but it represents the challenge theme. I added the cute little button to keep with MY theme of having a portrait quilt!

This is the inner cover of Doreen's book where she autographed it and I love it to this day. RIP Doreen Speckmann!! The next challenge due March 31st is "Folklore" which will be a challenge for sure. I get to choose the challenge after that and I have it selected so be prepared!!

Gen X Quilters - Quilt Inspiration | Quilting Tutorials & Patterns | Connect: Bonfire BOM: Monthly Giveaways!!

 I am starting a new Block of the Month from Gen X Quilters and there is a monthly giveaway and any participants need to link up our blogs to their blog so here it is!! The title of the BOM is called "Bonfire" and two blocks either 9" or 12" are made and we can chose to swap blocks with another person if we want. I chose the 9" size to keep the finished quilt from becoming too large for me. The fabric in the second photo is the outer border fabric. The sample quilt used a solid beige and I'm so not into beige that I have none in my stash and this large scale floral seemed nice while it's freezing cold in January! 

This curved block reminded me of constructing block for the New York Beauty block-not difficult but lots of clipping the curved edge and lots of pinning. Sewing is very slow and accurate. Fun!!

Gen X Quilters - Quilt Inspiration | Quilting Tutorials & Patterns | Connect: Bonfire BOM: Monthly Giveaways!!

"All Dots!" Second 2015 Block of the Month Quilt Completed

 This is a BOM quilt I started in March 2015. It is called "Mishka's Playground" and the designer is Michelle Foster. Michelle has a Facebook page devoted to this BOM and it is called Aiming for Accuracy Quilt Along. Twice a month 1-3 blocks were emailed to participants and we made our quilt in any colorway we wanted. Each month when complete we would post our blocks to the FB page.

It was extremely fun to see all the great yet different color variations in this project. Some people had a patriotic or Christmas theme; some did scrappy and some did muted primitive colors. I chose brights with a white dot and a white background. I had plenty in my stash and bought several more. The BOM ended in October-November with the three borders. The triangle pieced border was time consuming but adds so much to the quilt! I did the borders while at quilt retreat in November because I could be uninterrupted and focused. I did the border in a rainbow color wheel order because that made sense to me!! A few people on the FB group page chose to not tackle the triangle border and that's their choice. One woman added extra fabric to the quilt to fit her bed. It was already 60" x 80" and larger than I usually like to quilt but it is such a happy quilt I went ahead with it anyway! 

I machine quilted with all white thread mostly in the ditch and added accented curved lines in the white fabric areas and echo quilting in the sashings and borders.

This is a photo of the backing fabric which is spiffy too! I repeated the color wheel colors and I found a repeat of a dot or circle. I usually don't pre-shrink my fabrics but did for the backing. After working on the quilt for a week or so machine quilting it the white fabric didn't look as white as it started out to be and was dingy. When the entire quilt was done I took a chance that the dotted fabrics would not bleed in the washing machine. I set the washer on cold and added a small amount of soap and crossed my fingers it would not bleed especially the dark purples. I opened the lid of the washer while it was doing it's thing and it was fine. I put in in the dryer to give it an old fashioned "bunchy" look! I added a sleeve it to hang on my wall so I can look at it better. 

The time now is to return to making portrait quilts. I am going to do two quilt challenges up next-the 2016 Hoffman Challenge due in July and a black/white/one other color challenge due in June for the Wisconsin Quilt Expo in Madison next September. Time to design!!!

2015 Moccasin Block of the Month Finished!!

This Block of the Month was discovered on Pinterest last December and the project started on January 1, 2015. It was presented by Gen X Quilters, www.genxquilters.com, by AnnMarie Chany and the monthly 9" blocks were emailed to me on the first of the month until December which had the HSTs and the border etc. I brought the project to my quilt retreat late November and finished the top-I figured out the sizes of the squares and triangles before waiting until December 1st. The project advertisement displayed the quilt in pinks, yellows, oranges, purples, white and dark navy blue. I chose this analogous color scheme because I just love blue violet and lime green together. All of my fabrics were solids, tone on tones and the purple is a batik-no obvious print fabrics. The approximate size of the quilt is 68" square. Basically a fun time except for a few blocks but I have never seen this block layout and using 9" blocks the quilt didn't get too huge.
I bought myself a new Viking Sapphire 960Q sewing machine in November and did all the machine quilting on it. I used an echo stitch in the HSTs and all the purple background/negative space. The background echo stitching is all going in a vertical direction as seen in the second photo below.

The third photo is the backing fabric which I found at Joann Fabrics-I was able to duplicate all the colors of the quilt in the backing fabric. I love the flowers and am terribly excited about this fabric. Unfortunately I could not find the remainder of the backing fabric to use when it was time to construct the border so I used the fabric I bought a year ago for this purpose. The next day I found the backing fabric-such is life!!

AnnMarie Chany is doing a BOM for 2016-she has published a book that is available on Amazon and I bought it as a Christmas gift to myself and will do next year's BOM.