Full Calendar

Spring has sprung in a very big way! The calendar is getting very busy and I am being a very busy bee in the studio as well. 

Let me begin by officially posting the news that Angelina's Eggs was accepted into the SAQA exhibition 'Balancing Act'. It will be showing for the first time at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, TX this fall and then traveling to both Chicago and Portland. I have also heard that my piece, Mariposa, which is still out on exhibit with 'Butterfly Whirl' will be travelling to Houston this fall as well. I will have two pieces showing in Houston! Boy do I wish I could go. Not in the cards this year.

SAQA MA/RI had it's first quarterly meeting here in Rhode Island at Blaine's Sewing Center in Cranston on March 28. We invited quilting guild members here in the state to come check out one of our meetings and Sue Bleiweiss, Allison Wilbur and myself provided demos of ways to finish an art quilt and on free motion stitching. Thanks have to go out to Blaine's for letting us use their facilities and machines and to Bernina who provided the machines. It was a great meeting and great way to start off the year for SAQA here in MA and RI.

The only time to breathe was Easter weekend because it started to roll again with the start of MQX in Manchester, NH. This was a wonderful large show full of vendors and amazing quilts. I didn't take or teach any classes but they were going on all weekend. Perhaps next year I will apply to teach. I got to see one of my favorite art quilts of late, which I watched being created online last year by very talented, Andrea Brokenshire. Titled "A Passion For Purple", this clematis is the most amazing job of both painting and stitching that I have ever seen. Kudos to Andrea for winning two ribbons and a Janome Memory Craft sewing machine. I was just tickled to see it up close and personal.

I didn't even get to blink before returning the next day to northern MA for the opening of 'Seasonal Palette' which is a SAQA juried invitational exhibition with the theme of the seasons. Sue Bleiweiss, co-rep for MA/RI SAQA filled in for Martha Sielman and led a walkthrough of the exhibition currently on view at the New England Quilt Museum in Lowell, MA. The show was inspiring and physically gorgeous with all pieces having been constructed the same size. 

Each artist also included a journal of their process which was fascinating. I could have spent hours just perusing the journals. Below are a couple of my favorites, as I am a lover of all things full of color and drama. 

On the left is a detail of Autumn Celebration by Benedicte Caneill from New York and on the righi is a detail of Reflections of Summer by Jenny Hearn from Johannesburg, South Africa. If you are in New England you might want to make a trip to NEQM before July 26 because this is one very amazing show.

Well the calendar continues marching on. This Friday, April 17, I will be up in Worcester, MA at the Sewing and Quilting Expo. I will be helping to man the SAQA booth, #812, all day with other MA/RI members. I will be bringing the SAQA MA/RI Trunk Show with me to display. Come by and say "hello". On April 25, SAQA MA/RI is sponsoring a lecture and photo shoot for registered members with professional photographer, Joe Ofria. Joe has been photographing fine art for over 34 years in the Boston area and will be speaking to our members about how to successfully use a point and shoot digital camera to get quality photos of your work.

Then it's off to Portland, OR for me on April 29 through May 4 for the SAQA yearly Convention. On Friday, May 1 from 7-10pm, I will be providing a demo on the use of fabric markers to enhance art quilts at the SAQA Maker Space at the DoubleTree Hotel by Hilton in Portland. This whole extended weekend promises to be so much fun. I will be posting from Portland, hopefully, with lots of pictures and updates of what is happening.

When I arrive home I will be joining Sue Bleiweiss and Cheryl Rezendes in jurying our SAQA MA/RI exhibition, 'Art As Quilt' which will open in September of this year at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, MA. The call for entry for all MA/RI and CT members is open from May 1 through May 31.

Phew! You may be wondering how anything is happening in the studio. It is happening every day. I feel so blessed not to be working outside the home and to be able to be in my studio every day. I enjoy a day off a week to play with my granddaughter, Riley but every other day I spend a good chunk, if not near all of my day playing with fabrics, markers, pencils and sewing machines. Above is a sample piece, in process, that I have done for my demo in Portland on using fabric markers to accentuate an art quilt. There are three of these sample pieces and their step outs being prepared.

COLOR Stories

COLOR Stories is the name I have given to a sketchbook journal I've just begun. I have a page here where I will be regularly posting progress in journal entries with photos of my process as I go along. I hope to 'sketch' several fabric paintings which will become a fabric journal when finished. Each entry I will be adding to the last post to create one long journal entry. I hope to both learn and teach a little about color, composition, value, balance and other elements of art as I create each piece in my own unique way. I'm sure there will be experiments along the way, which adds to the fun. While I hope to gain a fantastic journal at the end, the journey here will be the focus. To follow along with me simply click COLOR Stories, above, where you find the boxes highlighting my pages.

And when I get home from Portland I will be visiting my Exhibition goals again to crack the whip at completing a few more large pieces, starting with Empress of the Pines.

Goodbye 2014

I know that we are halfway through January, but it's been a busy end of year. I'm just getting around to reflecting. As I try to wrap up work on two decent sized quilts this month, I am thinking about how I pushed through the month of December half in a daze. From mid November through the end of the year, we have 4 birthdays, one of which is Riley's. The three holidays are enough in and of themselves! I'm tired.

On a personal level, I started 2014 with surgery and recovery. It was a tough start. Tony lost his Mom in the spring and my dear cousin, Jeff passed this fall. Tony's business took the hit of three of his clients shutting down for good. We buried our cat, Maddie out under the trees this year too. Our son Peter moved permanently to Florida, the first child to move far away. Quite a few of our plans went awry this past year and there were plenty of sad, difficult and teary moments. I must say, I am not sorry to see the year gone! 

However many challenges we faced, there were some bright spots for me, a lot of them tied to my studio. I became a SAQA Co Rep in early summer, working with Sue Bleiweiss to set in place two upcoming exhibitions in our region. Even with time constraints, I completed 5 pieces in 2014. Mariposa showed with the Butterflies and Their Kin exhibit in Texas in the spring and continued on to other venues. Nancy's Garden showed at the Whistler Museum this summer. I got a new addition to my studio, an HQ16, which has made the world of difference in my quilting.

There are still three, black furry, mischievous little elves (kittens) in my studio space. Blue, Bing and Teensy are now 9 months old and still wrecking my workspace daily. Left by their feral mommy, they are now part of the family. I got my first rejection letter this year with Queen Bee but she is so awesome I don't half mind. I am working with a mentor this coming year in the hopes that I will learn some business skills. The program was set 

up by the SAQA MA/RI region. In the latter part of the year I focused on setting goals and doing some much needed paperwork.

The last few projects of the year began with a blast from my past. I did much of my learning how to sew and construct as a teen making dolls. I thought it was time to get back into it, so I made Mary Lennox from The Secret Garden for my granddaughter Riley's Christmas present.

She came out pretty cute if I do say so myself!

After Christmas I returned to a UFO that I wanted to complete. I had done most of the hard part with the markers already. All it needed was some stitch work and a border. Below is the completed Monumental.

MONUMENTAL

20" x 27"

December, 2014

Commercial fabrics & batiks, silk background; fused & machine stitched; overdrawn with fabric markers

$750.00

I got some great Christmas gifts this year. One of which was markers and a sketchbook. It's tiny so I can complete my sketches quickly and move on to my stitching. I hope to use this sketchbook as a precursor to a body of work called, "In the Garden".

So goodbye to 2014. Hold on to your hat 'cause here comes 2015 with a huge bang!

The dragon and the wolf are calling my name. They are both neck and neck, as I work in a frenzy to get them done and photographed by January 31. Wish me luck! (Progress and pictures will be coming soon)

MARIPOSA at Texas Quilt Museum

 

 MARIPOSA

42" x 42"

November, 2013

Cotton batiks & hand-dyes, silk dupioni

Fused and machine stitched and quilted

Fimo, metallic and glass beads

Well it has been a long time since I have posted here, so I will try to pick up with where I left off. I have been busy in the studio. Less time here at my computer means lots more time in my studio. As you can see, Mariposa was completed in time to be entered into an exhibition, Butterflies and Their Beautiful Kin, at the Texas Quilt Museum and juried into the show. Not only will it be at the Museum but will join 25 other quilts on a tour around the United States through 2017 for an exhibition called, Butterfly Whirl: Contemporary Quilt Art.

"Mariposa is part of a body of work that blends both my love/concern for nature and my penchant for whimsy and storytelling. I am reinventing a hierarchy of imaginary royalty intent on the survival of their realms." 

There are six butterflies pictured in this piece: The Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, the Blue Spotted Purple and the Monarch make up her collar. The Blue Morpho is lighting on her hand. The Eastern Tailed Blue is flying and the Great Purple Hairstreak is on her chrysalis hair. 

This is my first time having a piece published in an exhibition catalog. The princess is on page 23. Of course, that is part of Velda Newman's Wings, 62" x 182", 1994, on the cover. In addition to the juried exhibition, 17 quilts were selected for an invitational show, A Flutter of Butterfly Quilts, in which Ms. Newman"s spectacular quilt Wings was a part.




There is a lot more that I need to post about and more things coming up in the studio. For today I will wrap it up. Most days I use my iPad to take photos and do most everything. The one thing it won't do is create posts on Blogspot. So I am going to try to get some pictures transferred from it to my main computer. Then I will update some more.

Mariposa Begins

In my last post I may have mentioned that there are two calls for entry that I would like to enter my work for consideration. The first of the two comes up in November and it is all about butterflies. Now previously I had decided not to rush to make up new pieces just in order to make a submission deadline. But somehow it seemed a shame that I was planning and in fact had done a preliminary drawing for Mariposa already. It would be a shame not to try, right? So above is a segment of the finished drawing for Mariposa. It took me three nights of drawing, erasing, redrawing and adjusting to get the final cartoon. It took only five minutes to have it blown up to size and then.....here we go.

Having an idea of what I want to do in my head, I set out to look for the 'right' background for her and the butterflies. Of course, nothing in my stash was right. So I spent hours combing through online fabric sellers. Nothing.

So I figured I'd have to make it up from what I had lying around. The butterflies are rather bland as they will be made representationally and not fancifully. So the background is a fanciful dance of bright flowers abstracted. Made from my silk doupionis and shantungs, it has a nice sheen to set off the butterflies.



Knowing that this has to be a quick masterpiece, one of the first things I did was contact my friend Gabriele Bullard of Fabrilish. She is the wonderful dyer that I met this summer in Lowell and the creator of the splendid skin fabric in Queen Bee. Asking for specifics, I expected her to say that she had nothing that fit my needs. She went a whole carload better and dyed me up some pieces to choose from according to my expressed needs.

Knowing that pictures do little to translate color to an artist, she mailed me twelve (yes,12) one yard or better pieces for me to choose from (she is in Florida, I in New England). I will mail her back what I do not keep and a check for the balance.

 Here is a little eye candy. 

I want Mariposa's skin to be yellow to yellow-green with shades of violet, blue or pinks to accent. This one is a hot contender.

She had told me about this one on the phone after she finished her dye runs. It seems to have a butterfly already in it.

This is another contender, as I love the yellow, greens going on to the right of the fantastic magenta.

Contender #3 has a great mix of yellows with pinks and violets.

So how does one pick from such amazing beauty. I am liable to keep the whole lot and send her a huge check. All these beauties were dyed on soft gorgeous cotton and she is charging $22.00/yd. A deal in my book!

This is just a small detail of a large piece that I AM buying..... just because. I love the depth and intensity.

So....back to Mariposa. I think the top piece will be the winner because it goes so well. 

If you would like to buy some eye candy too, you can get ahold of Gabriele at: fabrilish@gmail.com. I can say with certainty, "You won't be disappointed!"

I don't know how this is possible, given the extent of my bead and button collection, but I didn't have any butterflies in my stash. So I found some on Etsy and ordered them up. All are delivered but one order. Have you centered your gaze on the fimo beads yet. I just ordered a ton more. I wanted to see how big they were and if they would look OK with the piece. I love them.



So that is about it for now. Next week I will be continuing with the butterflies, one by one. There is a Monarch, an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, a Blue Morpho, a Blue Spotted Purple, and an Eastern Tailed Blue. Then I'll be on to Mariposa herself and her green chrysalis hair. I will take a few more progress photos but want to keep some secrets. 

Progress on Queen Bee

"Queen Bee" has been on my worktable and work board all through this summer. I have the intention of entering her into a call for entry in January. PAQA-South, (Professional Art Quilters Alliance-South) has an exhibition call coming up called Art Quilts whimsy, April 23 - June 22, 2014, Page-Walker Arts & History Center, Cary, NC. Even though I take "Queen Bee" pretty seriously, she fits the definition of 'whimsy' quite easily. So here I am pushing to get another quilt done for a deadline. I really am my own worst enemy!

So progress? The first thing I did was blow her up to size. She should finish out with her border at exactly 60" x 60". I want her square and cannot exceed 60". We'll see what happens when I get to the border. After blowing her up, I redrew areas that needed tweaking with a sharpie marker.

I decided to do things a bit differently with this piece so the first thing I started on was the lilies. I drew them with fabric markers onto fusible backed muslin, paper still attached and fused my colored petals onto the muslin. 

This will allow me the opportunity to adjust things a tad on the board by moving each of the flowers where I wish them to land. As I satin stitch the flowers onto the background all the raw edges will be covered. I cut each flower carefully down around the edges. Now I can move the whole flower around.

There are two groups of lilies in the quilt, a red-orange and a yellow-orange. Here is a look at the yellow-orange one. I moved on to doing her bee skep hair which has a primary fabric of a honeycomb. Below you can see how her beehive came to life.

Sometimes things just drop into your lap. The three shots of hand-dyes are all from the same piece of intense and exquisite hand-dyed cotton. 

When I was in Lowell for the Quilt Festival, I spent my last half hour looking quickly at the vendors. Some buttons to my left caught my eye and as I passed a booth to get to the buttons this piece stopped me in my tracks. 

Without hesitation, or even knowing it's price, I grabbed hold of it and bought it on the spot. It is perfect! I would like to mention that it comes from a dyer in Florida, Gabriele Bullard. Her pieces were amazing and I am trying to get another piece as we speak. Her website is not up yet but she gave me her card with her email, fabrilish@gmail.com. If you don't dye your own and you need something spectacular, I highly recommend getting in touch with her. As difficult as you can imagine it was for me to cut this piece, it had to be cut and has become Bee's gorgeous skin.

The first piece I cut was the most important. Her face and neck had to be from just the right area with a mix of pink, peach and yellow.

Here you can see that I defined her neck with some of the lavender areas of the same fabric. The addition of her aqua eye brings her to life. 

Add to that her already created beehive and my black and white drawing is beginning to pop off the paper.

I continued creating her skin areas, her arms and hands. You can begin to see what I mean when I said that this fabric was perfect. I added shadow areas to both arms and the hands to help give them dimension.

I had chosen a print for the background and a batik for her dress and had it all in place with the edges basted and on my workwall for quite a while. After living with it for a while, I realized that I hated it. So I went to my silk cache and chose 5 beauties to become my background. I drew a swirly background on my cartoon with a colored marker and started in. All my silks are kept folded in my large armoire. Getting the folds to come out is brutal. They really should be kept on a roll, but I just don't have the space.

I created pattern pieces with tissue so that I could butt each shade up to one another. They were backed with fusible and ironed to the deep blue shantung which I had the most of.

You can see how invaluable Super Mario is to the whole process. I wanted some difference and movement so there are 5 shades of blue and green making up the background.

Having the background ironed in place, I pinned it to my workboard and started pinning each of the fabric colored muslin pieces in place. Bee's eye pops even more with the teal background next to her.

You can see that the dress pieces are missing from the mix. I am currently working on redrawing the honeycomb on Bee's bodice. Not easy making honeycomb move with the curvature of her body. Once I get the drawing right, I will use my window light box idea to draw it out on my choice of fabric with fabric markers.

You can see in this one how the more violet areas of the fabric were used to provide shadow in the arm. Her honey pot and the honey are next.

I worked for a long time trying to get the right amount of fluid movement in her hand. She will be supporting a bee with her index finger. Bees, of course, go on last.

And here is the placement, so far, of the lilies around her face. Stems and leaves will slide under them, creating the look of a garden.

So that is where I left off with the Queen. Just a few more key areas to design, and cut and then I can iron the finished composition into place and start sewing everything into place. I see a solid two months work left here.

But then I realized that the counterpart to "Queen Bee", "Mariposa" the butterfly princess, has a perfect outlet for a call for entry in Texas.  Butterflies and Their Beautiful Kin is an upcoming exhibition at the Texas Quilt Museum with a deadline to enter of November 15, 2013 (which is coming up rather fast - "can she do it?", you say). The exhibition will premier in June of 2014 and travel until 2017. If I want to enter this I need to move my butt. So I started my redraw of "Mariposa" last night.

Far from complete, "Mariposa" has a large neck ruffle made of butterfly wings. More of a portrait than "Queen Bee", there will not be as much going on in the background. Her hair has, of course, remained styled into a chrysalis.

Her eyes are now open and intent on the butterflies that will be flying around her left hand. This piece will come in at 40" or above and will be square as well as "Queen Bee".













Well, I best stop fooling around with this computer and get to work! You will be seeing next how Bee's dress is shaping up and how Mariposa is beginning.