Dot

Dot
40" x 40"

The theme to the Dinner @ Eight invitational exhibit was Affinity.  This was soooo easy for me, as I love and am attracted to so many things!  The hard part was choosing which one!  I decided to combine some of my favorite things, like colors in wild abandon, and circles (of which there are a lot of in this photo!), and repetition which I find so fun and oddly calming to a sometimes anxiety ridden world.  This piece culminates all of those and more.  I also got to have fun making the little dots, with dyeing lots of fabric, stamping circles on them, bleaching each piece, cutting apart all the circles and redistributing in different dye baths.  Then I boiled out the wax on each individual dot, and finished washing to process the dyes.  Lots and lots of repetition.  I also love that the little dots make up a big dot, much the same way that individuals make up a community (lovely little metaphor there).  I also love the expression "everything comes full circle".  And like my "i quilt", I wanted an iteration of the theme, dot, so I added an extra repetition in the middle.  Can you see it spelled out?  Brings back a bit of nostalgia for me in those old colorblind tests! 

Here's a close up of all those dots.  Each one was machine quilted with a matching color of thread.  So that was a lot of thread changes, a lot of starts and stops, and a lot of thread trimmings. Big thanks to Mistyfuse and Superior Threads for making art easier!

This quilt will be premiering at the Houston quilt show this fall!  Awesome! And TODAY is my special day to be interviewed on the Dinner @ Eight website!  Nice!

I Could Have Been a Bear

I Could Have Been a Bear
15" x 24"

Wahoooo!  My quilt got juried into What's for Dinner!  This is a super fun exhibit curated by Jamie Fingal and Leslie Jenison every year.  A big long table is dressed up, complete with chairs around it, and all the food quilts are placed on the table with interesting 3D art for centerpieces. It premiers at the Houston Quilt Show every year, but this is my first year that I thought of an entry for it, and made it, and got juried in!  I don't normally make quilts featuring food, but this year I have been on a bit of a health kick, which started with my diet. And since I eat a lot of salmon and fresh fruits and vegetables, I often think I could have been a bear.  However, unlike a bear, if I had to stand in a freezing cold stream of water to catch my dinner, I might starve to death!

Here is a detail shot of the berries.  I put Mistyfuse on the fabric first, and then individually hand cut all the berries.  After they were fused to the quilt top, I decided to add a little flourish of paint, aided by a new star bit from my electric drill.  Hey, a tool is a tool is a tool!

Here is a closeup of the salmon and the bear claw.  I also used a lot of Mistyfuse to make the fancy scales, fins, gills, and other fish parts.  I used a number of different pink fabrics and was surprised when some of my choices just did NOT work.  That is why they have to audition for their spots, because some work, and some do not.  The fabrics for the bear claws were fused onto black felt and quilted, then cut, and then assembled in layers.  I found the actual claws in the bead section of Michael's Craft Store, and I can tell you I was very pleased at such an awesome find!  It totally makes the bear claws work!

I had such a blast making this quilt!  It has been months since I have worked on an art quilt, and I can tell you fabrics were flying!  My studio became a giant pile of fabrics, both the ones I used and the discarded ones.  I also tried to learn something new for this quilt and tried doing some curved piecing for the background.  I was quite please at how easily that came together.  Youtube is an amazing universe of learning!

Night Ride

Night Ride
18.5" x 23"

This is the piece that I have donated to International Quilt Association for their annual fundraising auction in Houston this year.  It's a fun little piece I made from some left over batiks from my quilt, Blue Towers.

Here are a few details:

I love the cute little paper clip I found in the shape of a bicycle, and the hand stitching that adds some nice texture to the piece.
Thanks for stopping by!

Suburbs

Suburbs

is going to Oregon! I'm delighted my quilts get to travel so much.  In fact, since this one is going to a cool place in the worst August heat that central Texas experiences, I think I would like to go with it this time!  Unlikely for me, I hope you get to go!

Quilt! Knit! Stitch!

Suburbs