Mod Seven

Mod Seven

The Black and White Challenge ....
....was put forth by Barb Forrister.  After discussing for a while, the group decided to add a pop of blue and a pop of lime green.  We were to make blocks, any size, quilt them, and then expect them to be cut up and arranged to make this quilt.  The only problem was that we had no idea of where we were headed when we started.  Sometimes it is like that.  You have to trust the process.  And so we all began experimenting and playing with black and white.  Here are my results.

I began with some shaving cream and black paint.  The blobs were so interesting!  Then I used a toothpick to pull the paint and Voila!  I had jellyfish!  The quilting enhanced their subtle forms.  Just LOVE these! Sadly, they did not make it into the quilt.  This block had been misplaced in my studio until just last week.  However, I am happy now that they have been found!

Next, I wanted to try some paper laminate.  I thought it would be perfect for this challenge if I used newspaper.  Here's a closeup. This one was not selected for the quilt.  It hangs in a happy spot in my studio, as I just love it too!

Next, since this one was so fun to make, I decided to try some other shapes.  I used a freezer paper cut out stencil to make these three blocks.  Only one of them is paper laminate.  It was also not selected for the group quilt.  You can see what became of it here.  I think only the center one was used in the group quilt.  As for it's negative (the bottom image), I don't really know where it is.

I also made this little sample.  It was cut up and used in a few spots in the quilt.  I had wanted to make some blocks with batik, because I just love batik.  Unfortunately, I have a hard time getting black to dye as rich as I would like.  So I took my favorite circle from batik and used it to stamp some paint on a piece of organza.  It left a ghost image on the fabric below, so I just shifted the two pieces to get this array of circles.  I then added some strips of blue and black, and last, some pieces of blue dyed batting for the circles on top.  The solid black circles on top are commercial cottons, all fused with my favorite Mistyfuse!

You can probably not believe how chaotic it is after we all bring our pieces together.  It is hard to commit to cutting into them.  It is hard to commit to a layout because there are so many fabulous ideas sprouting.  We picked a common color palette to make the pieces fit together, but we all have very different styles of working.  That is what I love about collaborative work with our group!  It is exciting!
Here's a photo of the very beginning when we started throwing our work up on the design wall and trying to decide what to do with it.

Wow!  And, as a wonderful honor to our hard work, we were delighted to have earned a Judge's Choice Award as the Austin Quilt Show this fall.  Thanks so much to our tireless project director, Barb Forrister!

Triangulations

Triangulations
36" x 48"
by:  Frances Holiday Alford, Victoria Findlay Wolfe, Michele Muska, Leslie Jenison, Hoodie Crescent, and Kathy York

This last spring at QuiltCon, our group got together and started dreaming and scheming.

Frances Holliday Alford and Leslie Jenison

We had so much fun making Exquisite Journey, that we wanted to do it again.

Here we are all posing at the Interweave booth with a copy of our quilt on the cover of Quilting Arts!!

Between bites of breakfast we had many ideas floating around looking for a place to take root.

Leslie Jenison and Victoria Findlay Wolfe

Michele Muska and Leslie Jenison

The yellow one seemed to catch us all in a good mood.  And so, it was decided.

Hoodie Crescent and Kathy York

We would all make several 12" x 12" yellow blocks, quilt them, and then later decide how to arrange them into a quilt.  I had visions of daffodils and yellow submarines dancing around my head.  It is so funny, because before we started, I assumed that each group member would be making representational art for this quilt.  I saw applique objects of many types:  all in yellow.  I was so excited because I thought it would look like a beautiful yellow photo assemblage of our art.  And, that is not what happened at all.  We each independently decided to make a more abstract representation of yellow. And I love the yellow modern and abstract art that our quilt came to be!

Here are my two blocks... The first one, themed from an abstraction of a flower, is ready to be trimmed to the 12" size.  It is about 14" in this photo...

The second one is all stripes, all fused and slowly bent while simultaneously applying heat with the iron.  I love the way the gentle curves emerge:

We sent all our blocks to Frances, our tireless group leader and chief instigator.  Michele had a free weekend to go up and visit Frances in Vermont.  And then the magic happened.  I don't know how they came to decide to chop all our blocks in half diagonally, but it totally works!  I am amazed by their courage and artistic vision!! 

Though not a prize winner in Houston this year, we are so delighted that it is a Finalist.  If you are able to go to the Houston Quilt Show, I hope you get a chance to stop by the group category and take a look at our original interpretation of YELLOW!  Very fun!  Let's do it again!!

Little Bird

Little Bird
42" x 68.5"

We are so happy that our group quilt, Little Bird, was selected as a finalist in the World of Beauty at the International Quilt Show in Houston this fall! This was our first time to make an improvisational modern quilt as a group project.  It was so much fun!!  See more about our quilt at our group blog, Austin Art Group.  Here's a sneak peak at the back, and a detail of the cute little bird.

We also made a mini version of this quilt.  It was donated to IQA for the auction at the Houston show.  So, if you like it, you might want to consider bidding on it!  It is called Little Bird Too.

Little Bird Too 16.5" x 22"

Quilt Festival Pet Project Postcards

Quilt Festival Pet Project Postcards

I really wanted to make some postcards to help raise money for this no-kill pet shelter.  But honestly, I just didn't think I would have time to do it.  So this weekend, my daughter and I got out all my scrap fabrics that had fusible already on the back.  I gave her the scissors, a piece of white fabric (postcard sized), and told her to fill the space, and then press with the iron.  She is already familiar with using the iron and fusible applique, being all of 11 years old, and she set to work....and kept asking for more.  I am almost embarrassed that she made more than I did, but it is all for a good cause!  After she finished, I added some stitching to her work, and then converted the "top" into a finished postcard.  We were both super pleased with the results, and then I made two more.  Mine are in black and white, almost stark and minimalist.  For these animals the chance to live is just as simple as that, life or death.  It seemed fitting.  And, so I share with you our results.  And hope that you have a chance to buy one or more at the Houston Quilt Show to help with the fundraiser.  Or possibly you might have time to make some of your own and send to Pokey Bolton.  See project details here.  And your postcards do not have to have animals on them, they can be of anything!

Exquisite Journey

Exquisite Journey
90" x 45"

It all began at a quilting retreat in Vermont at France Holliday Alford's lovely home and studio.  Only I wasn't there, and didn't even know about it yet!  Frances is well know for her ability to get people together to work on fun and collaborative projects.  After the first round of efforts in Vermont, she extended the invitation to a few more!  I eagerly jumped in for a go, as did Leslie Jenison.  We got very minimal instructions, along with a sketch and a few photos.  Here is a link of an earlier post on my progress.  Eventually the first group, Frances, Victoria Findlay Wolfe, Michele Muska, and Hoodie Crescent, (see Hoodie's post for more info on the creation of this wonderful quilt!) sent us their panels for assembling the quilt.  Leslie and I had each completed ours, and we took on the task of putting the works together.  It was a mighty job, but we were up for the task....and had a great time!  How we went from this....

 to this.... is a miracle of creativity and synergy!

This quilt is so fun!  It has a path wandering through it, and many wonderful details along the way. When we first put it together, we couldn't decide the order of the panels, so we kept rearranging until we found this one.  Then we noticed that it was slightly hard to see the path because each person had different colors in their paths.  We united them all with a string of multicolored batiked dots that I had piled in a little box in my studio.  They worked!  ...and added a nice element of whimsy and seemed to pull together all the colors.

Detail of Hoodie's panel.  Love the plastic fish embellishments!

Here's a closeup of sewing one of the dots on the quilt.

This is me pinning the circles on to see how they looked.

Here's Leslie trying to fit this rather large and un-wieldy quilt under the machine.  We likened it to try to fold a piece of plywood in half and sticking it under the machine, and then laughed so hard we had to take a break!

Closeup of the actual stitching of the panels.  It took 2 of us to hold and guide it through the machine.

Hoodie's houses

 I also thought it was interesting the number of recurring themes and design elements.  There were a lot of houses, a few trees, fish and birds in the different panels.  Here are the houses:

Michele's fabulous houses on the hill.

These are my houses, both in the tree and on the ground.

Here's another view of my panel with the ladder going to the clouds.

Here's a view of one of Frances' houses and an adorable owl charm hanging on her tree.

Bird and tree imagery:

A detail of Leslie's work.  Love her bird and the ball of silk ribbon in the center.  Goes together so well with her fabric choices!

Leslie's nest.

Michele's wonderful tree!

Victoria's dancing dolls, possibly my favorite embellishment on the quilt.  So joyful!!

Victoria's garden.  LOVE this tall flower and the stitching!

All in all, this was a fun and wonderful project to work on together.  Exquisite!  And I love the way the quilt incorporates both the individual and the group.  We were so proud and honored to have it juried into the group category at the International Quilt Festival this fall in Houston!

And, last, Leslie and I were playing with a blacklight.  I don't remember why...., but our quilt totally glows!  And, you won't see this in Houston (because in Houston, the lights will be on.. lol!) Here are a few photos, taken in the dark, with the blacklight, of our glowing designs and threads.  Enjoy!!

Making Rocks

Making Rocks

Our group decided to make a collaborative quilt this year with the theme of cairns.  At first, I was full of many exciting ideas about all the possibilities of making artful rocks.  Then I just lost interest.  About a week before we were to meet and start putting our rocks together, I got an idea.  I wanted to sprinkle some dye powder, or sift it, onto a wet piece of cloth (already treated with soda ash).  I thought it might look kind of like the minerals in granite, which I LOVE.  Caution:  don't try this at home without a good respirator.  I did this outside, on a calm day and the dye blew EVERYWHERE.  And the reason you know that it did is because you can see every place it hits.  So as much fun as I had, I probably won't make this a regularly occurring event.  However, I was intrigued by the process and how interesting the little swirls of wind had on my dye particles, captured by the cloth.

After the dye was processed, I batiked some rounded rock shapes and overdyed with a few different colors.  You can see the wax on a few of these shots because it looks wet, or shiny.  I crackled the wax so that the dye would penetrate the rock where the cracks where.  I just love how it turned out.  Stay tuned.  At some point we will post the finished quilt.  Until then you can see some of our progress here.  My rocks ended up in the stack on the far left.

Last, I do really really like this technique and how bright it looks up close, but still reads as a neutral from far back.  Fascinating!  And it just shows that sometimes ideas need time to percolate.  They don't always show up the minute you need them.  That's okay, just how it works some times! 

Group projects

Group projects
I never thought I would make a worm.  But, here it is.

I am working on another group project and my panel is loaded with birds and fish and little houses and a big tree.  Photos will come later.  It's funny because I never would have thought to make something like this without the invitation to participate.  One of the many values of working on group projects!  Thanks Frances!

ps.  Love the bird, wish I had made it!  I just cut it out of some fabric that I already had, very cute!

How Cairns Saved My Life

How Cairns Saved My Life
and our new group project

Many years ago, I was climbing in Yosemite Valley.  Ambitiously I had selected Royal Arches as my route of choice.  For many reasons it was simply the most perfect climb in the valley.  First, it was a number of levels beneath my skill level.  This means that I did not have to worry (constantly) about falling.  It was a long route, 16 pitches, which means that I would have to carry a lot of gear, food and water.  Being heavier is not a goal in rockclimbing! (lol!) For more information about the route, you can click here.  You can see things like the fact that the route is 1400 feet of climbing, and it shows which way to go and where to start, all vital information.  The photo below shows my crude sketch (in red) on top of my photo of the valley, it is to the left of the actual rock formation known as Royal Arches.

And, while the route may look a bit intimidating, the climbing is fairly easy, even with the extra weight of gear, and though the guide book says it's about 2-3 hours of climbing, that was not my experience.  It took about 8 hours to climb up.  There are huge pine trees all the way up the route.  Many of the belay stations were under the trees.  I had a view of Half Dome...all day long! ....as I belayed my then-husband.  I am embarrassed to admit that I wanted to lead this route merely because I did not want to carry up our shoes for the hike down, and he happily agreed to let me give it a go!  Now, the crux of the story....getting down.

The guide book says to be very careful. DO NOT ATTEMPT AFTER DARK.  People HAVE fallen to their death attempting to get off this route.  We did not know when we started that if we had carried up two ropes, instead of just one, we could have quickly and safely rappelled to the valley floor.  We were left with the walk-off route which was not obvious.  We got lost multiple times, and it is not a place where you want to get lost.  And because we took so long climbing it, it was getting late.  And then I saw fresh bear scat and totally panicked.  The woods were filled with mosquitoes.  The exposed rocky descent was, well, exposed, and crumbly gravel...and we were up 1400 feet.  Not that it would make much difference if you fell.  After the first 50 feet of falling, it is sort of moot.... However, I didn't want to fall.  I wanted to LIVE!  And, someone, some very-nice-and-considerate-person (or persons) who came before us, left cairns to show the way.  This is the point of the story.  We are not alone.  We mentor those who come after us.  Show them the way. Teach, teach your children.  Be kind to others.  Learn from your history.

We have recently had an old member of our art quilt bee return to us, Susan Lewis Storey.  When she suggested a group quilt, cairns, I knew that it was right for me.  And in a way, a wonderful metaphor, because as in my last post I mentioned that art is a lonely business, as a group we support each other.  We teach each other new tricks and old tricks.  And so we move into our next group adventure!

Sherri McCauley brought a bag of polished stones for us to play with while we visited.  These slippery little rocks were difficult to stack.  See the Nilla Wafer box in the background for scale!