Good News!!

This is my quilt called "My Friend is Bipolar" which I originally made for SAQA's "I'm Not Crazy!" exhibit. It did not make the cut for that exhibit but it did get accepted into the Sacred threads 2013 exhibit which was in the Washington D.C. area in July 2013. The quilt gets on their promotional postcard and is returned home-end of story-NO! I received an email from the curator of the Sacred Threads Exhibit stating the Mancuso Quilt Festival organizers want a 25 piece special exhibit at two of their quilt shows in 2014 and my quilt above was selected for this exhibit!! WOO HOO!!

The two shows are Quiltfest Destination Savannah (GA) in March 2014 and Denver Quilt Festival in May 2014. The Mancuso website is www.quiltfest.com for the official dates and other info on the two shows.

I am thrilled that my quilt that I put so much emotional energy into is getting recognition and more people from various parts of the country can see it!! This is not a quilt I randomly hang on the wall because the "manic" woman on the left is so frantic ad almost disturbing I can't look at her for a long period of time. I have made two quilts that have a social cause and this quilt proves that art isn't always pretty and it was stir our emotions. I have gratitude that my quilt has been selected for the exhibit and I can share it at these two quilt shows in 2014.

Just the Portrait Part of Quilt

This is a sneak peak of a quilt I just completed. When I attended both the IQF Quilt Show in Chicago and the Quilt Expo in Madison, the Wisconsin Quilt Museum in Cedarburg WI (which I have never been to) was displaying a yurt. A yurt is a portable structure traditionally used by nomads in Central Asia as their home. The yurt was covered in banner sized quilts and the museum was selling yurt kits encouraging quilters to make a quilt which will travel for over two years to various quilt shows. The kits were sold by seasons and had batting included-I chose the "Spring" kit which had three Jane Sassaman fabrics from Free Sprit. I chose those because of the great color combination of hot pink, lime green and blue. It also had great flower motifs.

The rules stated the quilt was to be 32" wide by 71" long and use the three fabrics included in the quilt. This is a size I have never made before. I drew up a design on graph paper with traditional quilt blocks and using my "Intro to Portrait Quilts" pattern I created three women to fill in the middle of the quilt. It was the first time I made a portrait quilt and had more than one person in the quilt.

I selected three skin tones, three hairstyles, three hair colors, three garment styles and each woman has one of the three theme colors in her clothing. I chose blonde hair to contrast with the black background, red/pink hair to repeat the pink in the quilt and blackish/brown to say consistent with an African American woman's natural hair color. I stayed away from browns (too boring) and oranges (warm tones clashed with the cool pinks and blues.) One woman got blue eyes to repeat the blues in the quilt and same with the green eyes.

When the quilt was nearly finished I like to look at it from a distant by taking a picture with my iPhone. I discovered the afro blended too much into the background. What to do? I laid some turquoise wool roving on the hair and decided it showed too much contrast and she looked like Bride of Frankenstein!! Then I tried a black thin yarn with sheer pieces of bright tricot knitted in and the colors where awesome but she looked like a black folk doll with braids and ribbons. No other of my yarns seemed to work. I ended up machine quilting it tightly with a Sulky shiny blue/turquoise variegated thread to look like a tight curl. I added some blue glitter nail polish to enhance it and I was satisfied with the results.

The woman with the afro got some "earrings" and the other ladies got glitter nail polish in their hair.

I may add some small rhinestones to the traditional areas of the quilt. The quilt is not due until May and that is why I am not showing the whole thing so no one tries to copy my design.

If my quilt is judged into the Yurt Display I surrender ownership of the quilt which is the hard part. I struggled for a few days with that rule and decided to give up ownership if the museum choose it. If not, yeah!!!, I get my quilt back and will enter it in a quilt show or two.

Crayon Challenge Quilt

My local quilt guild is having a crayon challenge which is due at the December 9th meeting. Any one who wanted to participate randomly selected a crayon. The rules were simple-no larger than 24" in diameter, no judging, ANY amount of the crayon color and it could also be a garment or non-quilt item such as a purse or tote. It way a very free and open challenge!!

I chose cerulean blue as my crayon color and I made this small (14' x 14.75") wall hanging. I have used the blue in the woman's eyes, jewelry and in the dots in the batik background. I also bound the quilt with the color but my photo accidently cut off the top binding and I was too lazy to retake the photo so this is what you get for an image of this quilt!!

Speaking of jewelry, I save my Mom and Grandma's jewelry from the 1950s and 1960s and this necklace seemed to work for this quilt. I bend it a bit narrower to fit and then hand tacked it to the quilt. The earring is a glued on rhinestone.

Other embellishments was some orange glitter for the hair, I used some of my blush from my make up case to give the woman a little color to her cheek and some white fabric paint to detail the eyes

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I love the study of value in this quilt-I'm actually obsessed with color and value and I love the high contrast of the pale skin and the background value.

I used my usual raw edged fused applique technique to create the image of the woman and machine quilted and secured the applique to the background

This is a close up of the face. The quilts will be on display at Spies Public Library Gallery, Menominee MI from January 2-Mid February. This is free to the public during normal library hours. c heck out the awesome crayon quilt challenges if you are in Menominee MI!

Art Quilts Around The World: Macro Challenge

 I am involved in an online art quilt group called Art Quilts Around the World. www.aroundtheworldin20quilts.blogspot.com is the official site. We have a challenge every other month that one designated member selects. This challenge was called "macro" which means close up and the size of the finished quilt is 11.5' x 16.5." I chose to deviate from my normal portrait quilt style and I went out into my garden in late October. I live in gardening Zone 4 and I LOVE my castor bean plant which is an annual I purchase each year for my garden. I love this plant because it is huge at 10 feet by October and it gives a tropical vibe to my garden. I also love the reddish pink stems and leaf veins.

To make the quilt I photographed a leaf close up. I chose a green batik for the background and a magenta batik for the veins. I then thread painted the textured detail of the leaves with three colors of Sulky Blendables 30 weight thread. I used a pink color for the veins, a yellow green for the horizontal lines/borders and a medium green for the inner detail. The quilt kind looks like the inside of an umbrella or a spider web.

I selected a bright psychedelic print for the binding since the quilt was sort of boring to me. I thought about embellishing the quilt since it was plain but the actual leaf was not glittery or shiny so I left. Is this a favorite quilt of mine-no but it may fit into an abstract category in a quilt show. Maybe...

This photo is of the actual plant in my garden. I enjoy it's hugeness and am sad each fall when the frost takes it out.

The next challenge is "Art Nouveau" and I am again challenge not by the subject but by the limitations of the small size to show all the details of this style of art. This one is due Jan. 31, 2014.

This quilt was inspired by Michael Miller's fabric line called "Heavenly Pixies" which to me looked like fairies but whatever it was adorable!! The yellow print is also in the line of fabric. I chose to use my tried and true Blank Quilting free download pattern which name escapes me which I tweak a bit. the pattern is free from their website www.blankquilting.com. This pattern is simply half square triangles, squares, rectangles and flying geese. I am a fan of the double mirror image style placement for a quilt design-no row quilts for this woman since I do enough of those at the quilt store I work at. I fussy cut the pixie border fabric because it was directional which was easy enough. I chose all my personal favorites-red and lime green for the color scheme (Counterpoint!,) polka dots, stripes and herringbone!

In this photo of the center I decided to quilt with a silver thread to REPEAT the silver in the pixie fabric using a Madeira rayon silver thread. It is a wonderful thread that feeds through my sewing machine with ease unlike the Sulky metallic thread which is totally sparkly but a pain in the tush!! I used only curved and circular lines for the quilting.

I embellished with only silver to REPEAT the silver theme-I used silver rhinestones in two sizes in various areas and I have these clear with silver sparkly buttons from Joann fabrics and they were placed in the center of some of the blocks. The key to embellishing to know when to quit!! Then I added silver jingle bells around the binding and in a few areas on the quilt. It makes noise when I shake it! Very festive!!
I call it "Pixie McGlitter" because on Facebook there was a page that talked about picking your "Santa's Elf"' name. You took the first letter of your first name and the month you were born and mine was Pixie McGlittter. I was working on this quilt when the Facebook name thing was posted so that's  my name inspiration since it made me smile! It is so cutesie-poo I couldn't resist!!
I will hang it on my wall after Thanksgiving.

Throwback Thursday: I Remember Doreen Speckman

I had a huge mess where I store a lot of my quilts. These are my non-art quilts which consist of my various holiday quilts, my quilts for teaching examples and other quilts I love and have been making since the early 90s. I found these three wall hangings that were from Doreen Speckman's first book and I had a bit of nostalgia. Doreen Speckman was from Madison WI and traveled the world teaching quilting. She was very gregarious, full of laughter and famous for her Peaky and Spike combination of triangles pieced together to get an elongated triangle. I was living in Appleton WI and was a member of the Darting Needles Quilt Guild and a new quilter and Doreen Speckman was the guest speaker. I was extremely influenced by her work-I bought her book and thru the mid to late 90s made a ton of these quilts and gave plenty more as gifts. I loved Doreen's humor and she indirectly gave me permission to combine prints, polka dots and stripes which I wanted to do but had not seen yet. I was able to take two classes from her and she autographed her second book for me! Doreen passed away when she was only 50 years old in 1999 and myself and the quilting work felt her loss. So finding these memories of her were special.

The first photo is called Scrap Lilies and my label says 1995. I actually hand embellished tiny seed  beads to the quilt! I had hand quilted all three of these quilts-thank goodness I quit doing that! I also mitered the corners of the borders and who does that anymore!!

This second photo is a layout I make a gazillion times and we used templates-oh how times have changed!! I still use this little quilt as a table topper at Christmas and still adorn it!

This is the same quilt but in more "Laurie" colors-I was finding my groove! I still tend to pick lots of polka dots and black with brights. My technical stuff is pretty sad on these quilts-bad bindings and the corners aren't straight but you have to start somewhere!

I am glad I put labels on these because they are 18-19 years old and it seems like yesterday I made these. RIP Doreen!!

Bella Bordeaux: Last In The Series

This is number five in a series using my same favorite pattern and a variety of batiks in the background. I love this pattern because of the face and swirly hair and all the fun embellishments I am able to add to the quilt to make me happy! I also love Timeless Treasures Fabric Tonga Treats Batiks. They sell them as charm packs, jelly rolls or yardage and I picked up this one with the forest greens and burgundies. When I work on my color wheel class samples I discovered I had NO burgundy in my stash. I guess I saw it as a "country/primitive" color and since I like bright hues I never purchased any. Same is true to some extent with the forest green but when I found this charm pack it was calling my name because it is a variation of red and green and I love that!! I chose burgundy as my raw edged fused applique color because I have done this technique with forest green before and thought burgundy was my "challenge" color. As I worked on the quilt it reminded me of winter in the garden and holly berries etc. This is not a Christmas quilt but a winter garden quilt. I named it Bella Bordeaux which is Good Burgundy in Italian. I love the Italian language and the other quilts had Bella in their names and the color or the quilt added such as Bella Gialla and Bella Rosa (purple/pink.) The other two quilts were monochromatic values or yellow and the other one was in all blues without Italian names.

Since I live where there are no fabric or craft stores within an hour, and I wanted a sprig of holly and berries, what do I do??-I make my own!! I drew out the holly leaves on Wonder Under fusible web and double fused some forest green batik together, cut them out and with some Sulky Blendables Thread I stitched around the leaves and added the veiny details. Then to make the berries I used red, black and a bit of magenta Sculpy Clay and made my own which bake in the oven to harden. I used a toothpick to make holes to hand stitch the berries into place. I fabric glued the three holly leaves at the stem area only to the quilt so it is 3D and then hand stitched the berries around the holly. I took a little red shimmer nail polish to the berries to "frost" them up!! And wa-la who needs Hobby Lobby!!

I embellished some cute red, pink and green snowflakes to the background area and some white hologram iridescent nail polish to the eyelid and one white rhinestone for her nose piercing and Miss Bella Bordeaux is ready! I think I will hang her at Pizazz Salon where I work because the color schemes match!!