Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Markings anyone?


So I have been working on a UFO this week. It is a mixture of cotton, Radiance ( a cotton and silk blend) and Dupioni silk. While on vacation I had a vision of it all finished.

The only problem, to make the vision a reality, I have to mark the quilt top and plan out my quilting. This is new for me. First I never mark anything and second, it will have tons of starts and stops. 

Also, since before sending my machine back to Bernina for service a couple of times, I couldn't use Rainbows thread by Superior in the 830, without constant breaking.  So I decided to do a test today. 

Here is my sample.....


I am loving the Rainbow thread on the Radiance fabric. I had no breakage, no tension issues.... Nada...just turned it on, threaded it and off I went!

One hitch, now I have to mark the whole top, 6" at a time. Good thing it is only 30" x 30" :-). 

Monday, July 29, 2013

Quilt Odyssey 2013, Hershey, Pa

I went to Quilt Odyssey in Hershey, PA this weekend.  My quilt, In the Spotlight, was juried in. :-)



Had a wonderful time and ran into good friend, Teri Lucas, and my FB friend McLisa Tangerine Starfish Snipes.  I love Lisa's work, but have never met her in person.  She is a fantastic quilter.  If you have never seen her work, check her out.

Both my husband and I were wowed by the special exhibit of Sharon Schamber's quilts.  Sharon is a Master Quilter.  I have heard her speak before at Empire Quilters, but this was the first time that she has shown a collection of her work, actually hanging together.  If you haven't had the pleasure of checking out her work, take a look here

Once moving into the actual show, it was a feast for the eyes.  Although, I forgot that it was as small as it was.  Don't know why I thought there were more quilts in previous years, maybe because there were so many large quilts this year.  Once again, my commentary that the vendor room was almost twice as large as the quilts and had better lighting :-(.  I go to these shows to see the quilts, I try to only buy things that I can't get at my LQS's, like Superior and Aurifil threads in large cones/spools.  I prefer to shop at LQS's to help support the LQS, who are getting undercut by the large stores and will one day be forced out of business.  Anyway...  I did enjoy the show.  Just wish there were more quilts.

Here are some of the quilts that caught my fancy...

Lorilynn King's A Pocket Full of Paisley's, which won First Place in Wall Quilt Category.  This piece really wowed me, especially since I am making a paisley quilt now myself.  She digitized all the paisley's on her embroidery machine and then appliqued them on top of the pieced/quilted background.




Mary Kay Price's All that Jazz.....




Missed grabbing the quilt maker's name on this piece that took Best Pictorial Quilt..




Melissa Sobotka's Chihuly's Gondola...  The colors are stunning!




Barbara Persing's Magnolia....  the color's here are muted. but so striking.  The magnolia and brown background are painted/shaded on white fabric and then the various commercial prints are pieced.  Since I have been thinking about playing with paints, this piece really spoke to me as it has a great balance.




I was so enthralled with this Mallard, that I don't know how I missed taking a shot of the signage, missing the quilters name and the name of the piece.  My sincere apologies, but it is stunning!  Her threadwork to highlight the head, using a thread with just enough sheen to make it catch the light is amazing!  I also love the way she quilted the water.  It really looks like the ripples are moving as you look at it.





My girlfriend, Donna Chambers, also had a quilt juried in...  Mermaid Mariah & Her Circle of Souls.  This piece gives homage to the African-American folk legend that a black mermaid traveled along side of the slave ships.  Her job was to save the souls of the dead slaves thrown over board in the middle passage during the slave trade period. She is said to have plenty of hair, which Donna shows flowing wildly as she cleanses herself in the bathtub.  The souls that she has saved are always on her mind and are represented in a circle surrounding her.


(If you follow my blog, you would have seen Donna's piece in previous posts about the African American Mermaid gallery exhibit in Charleston, South Carolina that Donna and I both had pieces in.)


Mary Jo Tatum's Noel....



Nancy S Brown's Penguins 




Lisa Calle's Red Velvet


The quilting in this piece is amazing as well!




Bethany Nemesh's The Shell Collector, is done all in Dupioni Silk (I love dupioni :-)) 




Sunset on Cayuga was pieced by Cathy Rice Messenger and quilted by Mandy Hares Applebee of Yellow House Quilts.  My shot of the full quilt was too blurry.  But here is a close up....

The amount of detail quilting in this piece is mind boggling.  You really need to check out Yellow House Quilts on Facebook to get a better feel of the amount of work that went into this piece!  Just look for an album called Sunset on Cayuga.



Another quilt that I a) didn't catch the name or the quilter's name (sorry) and b) the picture of the quilt is too blurry.  But here is a close-up.  I just love, love, love the quilting!


 Hope you enjoyed the virtual show.  As you can see I am really drawn the art quilts and detailed quilting, so I apologize to those fantastic quilters who had work in the show and are not pictured here.








 

Monday, July 22, 2013

I can't believe I haven't posted this yet...

Boy.... have I been delinquent.  You saw my last post was from something that happened in May and I just posted about in on July 19th!  So I will be in catch up mode for the next week or so. :-)

Here is the finished piece of Robert and me, in 'Can you see me?'.  I thought I had blogged about making it here, but it appears I never did!!!  I started the piece as part of a Craftsy class by Lola Jenkins, called Thread Art, using a picture of my son taken while on a family vacation last summer.  I made the piece at the end of 2012 and still can't believe I didn't blog about it, as I love my reflection in his eye glasses.  (Facebook friends have seen it, so sorry if you are seeing this twice.) 

You know how you have an idea of how to do something, but when it works out, you are like WOW, I like that!  :-).  This is a whole cloth quilt, with one exception.  The eye glasses are appliqued on top of his face.  They were made by enlarging the original picture and printing just the glasses on fabric, then appliqueing them down.  His profile, the hair, mustache and beard are all done via thread painting on the top only.  I then colored everything else in using Inktense pencils.  I had the top completed and quilted everything except his face back in the December/January time frame, because I couldn't get the courage to do so.  I was afraid of messing him up..  I finally got the inspiration and courage to quilt the face, then decided to make it 'not square'.  I looked at quite a few other portrait quilts online and I must say, studying them, really helped!

Anyway, here are some pics, I thought I would share..

I really love the quilting in the nose and chin area.

The face is quilted using YLI Silk thread that I had brought a few years ago when a local shop was closing.  So happy I had it on hand, as it worked perfectly for such dense quilting.  Lucky for me I have another 30 or so spools of it in various muted pastel colors!

I think I will do more portraits to get more practice on how to truly represent the faces natural contour.  :-)


Friday, July 19, 2013

Kimono Inspirations

So a couple of posts ago, I shared with you the piece I was making for my Fiber Arts group, FANE's, Kimono Inspiration Exhibit at the Northern Stars Quilt Guild Show, World of Quilts, held the first weekend in May.

Well, I want to share with you not only my finished piece, but some of the other works of art as well, but since we have an exhibit opening soon, I will tease you with mine....  (details on the exhibit can be found below).

This is Pathways....



This was my piece.  I must say I had so much fun with the piece, from design to adding the 'fringe' at the end.  I am really happy that I joined the group, because they are really encouraging and since most don't focus on the machine quilting, it has opened my eyes on how to add texture to a piece with embellishments.  So slowly but surely, I will be expanding past just crystals as surface embellishments :-).  It is quilted with both Aurifil 50wt cotton and Superior Sew Fine and Art Studios threads.

There were 26 Kimonos in all and they really looked good on the stands that Jane and the team built.  The quilts are designed to be hung on stands that allow you to see front and back of  both the center piece, as well as he 'sleeves'.  But they can also be hung on a wall, although you will only see one side of the Kimono.


Lucky for FANE, two different galleries are interested in hosting the exhibit of Kimonos.  One in August and one in October.  The first is a show at The Quilt Gallery at City Quilter.  The exhibit runs from August 13 - 31, 2013, on 25th St, between 6th and 7th Ave., NYC.  The Gallery is open Tuesday thru Saturday.  All Kimonos will be for sale via The Quilt Gallery.

As information for the second exhibit draws near, I will share it with you as well.

Hope you like my Kimono and stop by the exhibit in NYC to see all 26!