Posted 3/30/09

I can’t stop looking at it. I hope to catch Adam Bateman’s work in person, as it looks phenomenal. The linear quality and textures are just so graphic!

You can peruse his website here: www.adambateman.com There is also a bit about him and an exhibit of his work at the Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center that you can read about here. Thanks for sharing your work, Adam. 

Posted 3/23/09

This is my monthly journal quilt for March, 3/12 2009, 12″ x 12″, mounted to stretched canvas.

This piece started with a sketch from my sketchbook last month, and then took a different road while I was making it!  I started this piece with a purple piece of my hand dyed fabric for the background. I then used a foam stamp to print circles on the background with 3 colors of purple textile paints. I then added the two flowers by fusing fabric to the background. The purple circles are from a single piece of my hand dyed fabric that had tons of color variation in it. The green stems are from a commercial batik fabric. To finish the piece, I quilted it with wavy lines with a purple variegated cotton thread. I then zig zagged the edges and went to water the lawn. Happy spring!

This piece is for sale in my etsy shop.

Posted 3/20/09

The International Fiber Collective is working on a collaborative project, Interdependence (The Tree Project). They have been collecting leaves made with fiber techniques for a tree installation.

A quote from their website: “Much like a live tree is interdependent on its leaves and roots for survival, societies are interdependent on the greater whole, family units, communities, and countries.”

Another artist noted on her blog that they will be accepting leaves past their original deadline, so I found a few minutes (i.e. got up earlier) this week to make a few leaves.

The leaf on the left was made with leftover pieces from a larger work I created last year, which involved cutting up whole quilted pieces and re-structuring them. The leaf in the middle is made from painted corrugated cardboard coffee cup sleeves that were then machine stitched. The leaf on the right was created with a leftover piece of interesting fabric that a fiber friend gave to me, which I painted and quilted. This fabric is used for disposable gowns, etc.

Thanks for the project, International Fiber Collective! I can’t wait to see the final installation photos.

Posted 3/18/09

I thought I’d post the cute pics of our house, which is now on the market. You can peek at my art on most walls. We really enjoyed making a suburban home more fun, and certainly more colorful than most! I’ll miss my zebra wall. Here they are…

Posted 3/13/09

My life has been to the far side of crazy lately, and it has resulted in not a lot of studio time. Our house is now on the market so we can move for my master’s degree, which is the main cause of crazy. However, I was delighted to put the last layer of paint on my current big quilt piece last night. I thought I’d share some sketches I made while at a conference this week. They are certainly not mind blowing in any way, but they help me think about shadows and lines, and the practice is great. I created them with my watercolor pencils, water brush, and sharpie in my hand bound watercolor sketchbook.

Posted 3/3/09

Sake barrels, courtesy wikipedia and Dan Smith, photographer. First, aren’t these sake barrels beautiful?   Just amazing inspiration.

Second, have you heard of findaquiltteacher.com ? Go and check it out! If you are a quilt guild or a quilt teacher, you’ll want to see what’s going on. It is Ami Simms’ new project to link quilting teachers with quilt shops, guilds and others wanting to employ a quilt teacher.  I happen to have acquired a last name beginning with “A”, so you’ll see me listed at the very top! Teachers, if you are one of the first 100 to sign up, your annual subscription is only $15 for the first year. What’s not to love?
Would you like to make it easier for your guild to bring in speakers? Tell your program chair about FindAQuiltTeacher.com. They can find information about local, regional, national, and international teachers all in one place. Each teacher has her/his own web page with a photo, home town, a list of their specialties, the types of presentations they offer, a biography, and sometimes even testimonials from students and others.

For just $15 a year (that’s only $1.25 a month) your program chair can download a Teacher Fact Sheet for every teacher on the web site and save hours and hours of time searching on the Internet for the information they need to bring teachers to your guild for exciting and informative programs. These Teacher Fact Sheets have expanded contact information, fees and expenses, lodging requirements, contract preferences, experience, and more. It’s all in a standardized format and all on ONE PAGE for easy comparisons. Your program chair can create a reference book that will help your guild now and all year long.

With your guild’s subscription your guild will also be listed on FindAQuiltTeacher.com so that people who move to (or travel to) your community can find YOU! It’s a great resource you can be a part of right now.

What a great resource, Ami. Thanks!

Posted 2/23/09

This is my monthly journal quilt 2/12 2009, 12″ x 12″. I thought it would be wise to re-enter the world of improvisational piecing in preparation for my workshop with Nancy Crow in April.  I will be bringing my hand dyed, mostly solid, fabrics with me, so I tried this journal quilt using some scrap bin pieces of solid color cottons. I find that this piece doesn’t “look” like my work, which I think is mostly a result of the use of plain solid colors. If I used batiks, I think it would have looked more like my work. I used a simple motif of a hand cut “cross or t” shape and made sure to turn the cut piece 180 degrees when re-piecing it to the middle cross line. I quilted this piece with heavy black top-stitching thread.

I think the visual effect of the design makes it look pregnant, or as if it is convex and coming towards the viewer. I particularly dislike the right edge, where the crop turned out too thin. I think this is a product mostly of trying to fit it into my journal quilt format of 12″ x 12″. I’m pretty sure if I was able to have a more organic size, i.e. whatever size the piece just turned out to be, I would have been happier with the result. I am resisting my desire to paint all over this piece, which is what I really want to do, but in the back of my mind I know it won’t help.  Instead, I think I’ll move on to next months’ piece!

Posted 2/19/09

Branching Out (39″ x 43″, 2007) is off to spend a year on exhibition with The People’s Gallery.  You can join us for a celebration and gallery reception on February 20,2009 from 5:30pm-7:30pm at Austin City Hall, 301 W. Second Street.  My piece is in a lovely hallway location with no damaging rays. I can’t wait to see all of the other works!

Posted 2/17/09

When I dyed fabric in January, I forgot to snap a pic of this piece of fabric. I had gotten out my Mom’s old Reed pleater to try a bit of shibori.  While I didn’t enjoy that experience, I took this piece of fabric and wrapped it around a piece of PVC pipe in my garage. I used some loose rubber bands and poured the dye down the sides. This was sun yellow and mixing red/fuchsia.  Even though the rubber bands weren’t tight enough, it sure created a nice pattern on the fabric.

This Sunday, I headed back to the garage to dye some more fabric. I took a whole stack of light yellows, lavenders, blues and pinks that I didn’t want and overdyed them. I also dyed some plain white fabric. Here’s what I got.

I really enjoy the saturation of these colors! It doesn’t show in this photo, but the dark orange in the center is phenomenal. I overdyed with deep orange dye onto a piece of lavender fabric. Awesome. I purchased 3 new dye colors to mix with the primaries: maroon brown, deep orange, and gold, and I think the results are great. And here’s one more pic of my stash right now, which I think is a better range to take to my Nancy Crow workshop! Yes, there’s a lot of red, but I love red! The second photo is my stash after my January dye session. I know, I didn’t arrange the colors the same way, oops. But you can definitely see improvement.

After February dye session

After January dye session

“Before” fabrics

Posted 2/9/09

Detail, Lines IV, 13″ x 13″

What a great opening! I attended the opening reception for the Copper Shade Tree Gallery on Friday, and met an amazing group of artists! This show includes work of many wonderful fiber artists, whose work is diverse and interesting. I am excited to find their blogs and see more of these artist’s journeys. It was a real pleasure to attend and have my work as a part of the exhibit. Artwork that didn’t get snatched up at the opening will be up on their website this week!

Thank you, Gerald and Debbie for a great show.  “It’s not a quilt…or is it?” will be available through February 28, 2009.