A bit over a year ago, I was dumbfounded and elated when Larkin Van Horn invited me to participte in an art quilt show she is curating to be titled “It’s Good to be Green.” All quilts are to be 18×45 inches, and please, no Kermit the frogs, she said. Almost instantly I had an idea to do a quilt about the water spirits that inhabit the streams and lakes. My first thought was the ruselka from Russian mythology, but after doing a bit of research, learned they aren’t such nice creatures, so I amended that to Naiads.

The show will open in March (In Tillamook, Oregon, I think), and we’ve been asked not to share the finished products until after the show opens. Best of all, Larkin will be producing a CD catalog of the show so you can all go see it, even if just “virtually.” However, Larkin did say it would be OK to share pictures of in progress, so here you go. This first picture is of a very rough sketch for the overall piece (the left white paper—use medical exam table paper!), some sketches for the naiads, batting cut a bit larger than finished size in the center with an extra bit of batting on the left for the tree, and on the right, possible fabrics for the background:

It’s kind of interesting since I initially thought the entire quilt would be green…green ladies (remember the “green naked ladies” from my Tree Spirits 2 quilt?), green hair, green water, green sky. But after having made Windows of Hope for my Journal quilt this year, I felt the need to add color! I also decided not to crop out the sides of my design wall…I’m always curious bout other people’s studios, so thought this would be “honesty in blogging”…teeheee… lots of stuff gets stuck up there!

A while ago, artist and art quilter Thelma Smith surprised me with a box of manna from heaven, aka hand-dyed fabrics! I was so thrilled! This glorious piece had a perfect spot for the banks of the river (that’s the part that is missing), but before I cut it further, I wanted to take a photo. Isn’t this a glorious piece of cloth? Thanks Thelma!!!!!

I got the background together, fused to the batting; the stuff pinned to the lower right and left are sheers that will go on top of the water, which is made from the fabrics I worked on during the dye workshop with Carol Soderlund (check my blog entries for October 2007):

I’ll post about the naiad figures in my next entry on this piece….

Oh boy! Deborah (whom many of you know from her blog) took some wonderful “Neighborhood” shots for me of my 2007 Journal art quilt hanging at Quilt Festival in Houston this year. Mine is in the center, bottom row, in soft green. The pipe and drape walls are a standard height..about 8 feet. The white pages you see to the left of each journal are our written journals to accompany the quilt.

For those who don’t know, Journal quilts are wonderful little art quilts. In past years we have done a single small journal, the size of a piece of copy paper, each month for January through September. This year, the final year of the Journal Quilt Project (organized by Karey Bresenhan and the good folks of Quilts Inc., who put on the “Mecca” shows in Houston, Chicago and now Long Beach), we were to make a single larger quilt 17×22 (same as four sheets together). For more info about my 2007 journal quilt and the book about the journal quilt project, check this link and this one for the book review. For a link to many on-line images of the 2007 journal quilts, click here or here.

Here’s a close-in shot of my journal. If you look closely, VERY closely, you can barely see the black hanging sleeves. IQA (International Quilt Association… www.quilts.org) does a brilliant job at hanging, because you never really see / notice the hanging apparatus. Instead, the emphasis is on the quilts. By using black drapes, black rods, blackened chains, and covering the ends of the large rods (on the larger quilts…not in this photo) with cloth sleeves made from the same fabric as the curtains, the hanging apparatus just disappears allowing viewers to focus on the quilts.

And here is a “wide angle” view of the neighborhood. When I first went to quilt shows and took photos for people of their quilts hanging, I did what everyone else does: take a picture of the quilt. Then when I got into shows too far away to visit, I realized what I really wanted was not a picture of my quilt (after all, I know what it looks like!) but a picture of what it looks like in the venue. These pictures from Deborah are exactly that!  You can also see that IQA covers the light  poles and cinder blocks with black, too, helping light the quilts (the ceiling and lights of the convention center are about a mile above the quilts) without being obtrusive.

I can see my quilt, see my neighbors, and get a nice feel for the show and exhibit area.  Thank you Deborah!

As I mentioned last month in my post about the book Creative Quilting: the Journal Quilt Project, this is the final year for this fantastic journey. Instead of making nine paper-sized quiltlets each month, this year’s assignment was to use three (or more) techniques used in journals in the book to create our 17×22 inch (vertical orientation) journal quilt. Here is my journal quilt for this year:

For several years, I have had lurking in my brain a quilt about peace, and the horrors of war, and its innocent victims. The need to create that quilt stems from a visit to Hiroshima in 1996 when my mom invited me to accompany her on a trip to Japan. She had served in Japan in 1946-47 with the US Occupying Forces, and fell in love with the country, its people and its culture. This quilt is a test-run for several techniques which I hope to use on the large Peace Quilt one of these years.

Mom has a photo album from her two years there, plus her travels to mainland China (before the Communist Revolution, which came two years later), Thailand and Cambodia. One photo in particular, above, was riveting: a somewhat melancholy girl sat on a make-shift swing someone had fashioned from the rubble of a bombed-out building in Tokyo, 1946. Mom purchased the photo from a Western photographer, but doesn’t know any more about it. For my first technique, I took a digital photo, manipulated it to improve sharpness and give a faded “old photo” look, and printed it on fabric. If ANYONE has any idea who took this photo, please tell me!

That photo alone, though, wasn’t enough to carry the quilt, so I decided to include some of my photos of the ruins of the Hiroshima dome, the cenotaph to mark the deaths of all the victims of the atomic bombs and the Children’s Peace memorial.

That memorial features an origami crane in the sculpture because cranes represent good luck and long life. That led to the second of my techniques: a thermofax screen.

A what you ask? Do many of you remember dittos from school, before we had photocopying machines? We the ditto masters were made with these machines that can also be used with a special plastic-coated mesh fabric and a carbon photocopy (or pencil drawing) to create a stencil. I ended up having to order away for the stencils (fabulous service from Pam Relitz of Flying Images, rockitz@tds.net), but can see that I need to save up to buy one of the antique thermofax machines so I can make my own screens! (If there is anyone out there in blogdom who has blogged the process with photos–Gerrie? Rayna? send me a link and I’ll add it here).

I made my origami cranes, photographed them, traced out the exact lines at the angle I wanted, and had several screens made, then used metallic and regular paints to screenprint onto the background batik fabric.

I was having trouble coming up with a coherent “whole”, however. In browsing the Creative Quilting book (while waiting for hubby who had just had rotator cuff surgery and was at post-op physical therapy), I spotted the ogival window shape in Larkin Van Horn’s piece and new I had my organizing element. I rooted through my sheer fabrics, intending to dye or paint something into which I would cut windows, when I came across a rejected but HUGE painted sheer piece (about 48×60 inches) that was the first attempt at one of the overlays for Tree Spirits 2: Song of the Solstice Grove (can be seen on my website here). As I tossed the piece over the batik the tree trunk landed on the left side of the quilt…PERFECT!

After sketching out the location of the windows on the quilt, getting a nice balance of large and small yet permitting the screenprinting underneath to be revealed, I made a paper pattern which I placed under an old storm window. I used a heat-tool (aka stencil cutter) to cut the windows in the sheer fabric. Since synthetic sheer fabric is notoriously wiggly, I lightly sprayed the sheer with basting spray to adhere it to the storm window before cutting; because the fabric was light, I could see the paper pattern underneath and cut the windows exactly in the correct places (a metal ruler helped on the straight edges!). I then placed the sheer over the background, couched (stitched) gold yarn around the windows, and quilted the entire piece.

The serendipitous placement of the treetrunk on the left led to the overall quilting design, with bark, grasses and leaves and branches. In the background of the overlay I used a basketweave pattern, while I used a swirly cloud motif inside the windows. Finally, I couched two twisted lengths of the gold “yarn” (more like a fine cord) to what would become the edges, added facings which were turned to the back, and stitched down the facings.

I hope you like it…and thanks to all who managed to read all the way to the end!

BOOK REVIEWS:

Karey Bresenhan’s book Creative Quilting: the Journal Quilt Project, (available here) came out about this time last year, and I intended to blog about it then, but life got away from me (what a surprise). Even if I didn’t have five (!!!) journals–small art quilts– in this book, I would recommend this 272-page tome heartily. I think this book will become a benchmark publication of where art quilting is in the earliest years of the 21st century. It is truly a remarkable, inspiring, and educational book that belongs on the shelf of every person who loves art quilts, whether they make art quilts or not.

So what is a journal quilt? The idea was to explore something each month–instead of writing in a paper journal, to document the month in cloth and thread and fiber and whatever, while also keeping a brief written narrative. The finished pieces were to be the size of a U.S. piece of copy paper: 8 1/2 x 11 inches, vertical orientation. I joined the QuiltArt list in late 2002 just as the first year’s journals were being sent in to hang in Houston. I signed up in early 2003 as soon as possible to participate the coming year, in part because I figured (happily I was wrong) it would be the only way I would ever have a quilt in Houston. For my January quilt, I wanted to involve my son, then in 3rd grade, since he was sometimes jealous of my quilting time. I asked and received the OK from both Joshua and Karey to use a piece of his second grade artwork as my very first journal:

I cannot believe, now, how many firsts were in that quilt: first time using metallic thread, first time painting on fabric, first time fusing sheers and beading on a quilt! Now, those techniques are standard fodder for me. It is simply not possible to over-state how much doing the journal quilts has contributed to my development as an art quilter. This is the quilt and the project that launched a career! Best of all, it not only made it into the book, but is also included at thumbnail size in the introduction. You should have seen 13-year old Joshua’s eyes grow wide and fill with pride when I got the book and promptly opened it to show him HIS artwork (as interpreted by me)! That look is a gift from him to me that I will treasure forever.

The book is divided into seven chapters:

1. Series
2. Stories
3. Flowers, Plants and Trees
4. Animals and Insects
5. L andscapes and Special Places
6. Faces and Figures
7. Abstract

Some of the most amazing works are those where the artist worked in a series in a given year’s journals. Maria Elkins and Rachelly Roggel’s are the ones that first spring to mind. I don’t think ANYone, in the six year run of this project has better utilized the potential for stretching and development through these quiltlets than Maria. By clicking on her name you can get to her gallery page, and from there view each year of her journals…prepared to be inspired and exhilarated!

The stories are equally amazing, from inspiring to heartbreaking. Some are humorous, like the woman undergoing chemo who left her hair on the sofa, literally (and used a tuft of fake fur on her pictorial version). Others are heartbreaking, documenting loss of loved ones and tragedies both personal and national.

The book is not a project book, but each entry shares the materials and techniques used by the artists. If it can be done to, with or on fabric, I think it was done in one of the journals! If you want to learn how to do a technique, you can go search out classes, technique books or magazines, such as Quilting Arts, that will teach you the how-tos. Creative Quilting is a book to savor and dip into at random, enjoying the journey.

I was honored when Karey opened the section on Plants, Flowers and Trees with three of my journal quilts, including a full page (nearly life-sized) reproduction, above, of this quilt which features one of my photos printed onto cloth and quilted intensively. Also included are my January and February 2006 journals:

2007 is the final year of the Journal Quilt Project. This year, instead of making a different journal each month, Karey asked us to make a single piece 17″ wide by 22″ long (or four pieces of paper together) that used at least three techniques that were featured in journals included in the book. When the International Quilt Festival in Houston opens to the public on November 1, I will be able to share my journal for this year.

Even better, nearly ALL of the 400+ journal quilts in the book will be on display in Houston, in the order in which they appear in the book. I wish I could be there to see them, but will be content that I have had the unbelievable opportunity to learn and grow through this remarkable project.

This past weekend I was fortunate to be able to present my trunk show / lecture “With a Dash of Color” to the Amoskeag Quilters Guild, based in/near Manchester, New Hampshire, and teach a machine quilting class on Saturday. Alas, I have very few pictures! The talk is one I have done many times before, but I always have fun and hope to turn on a few lightbulbs for folks. Basically, we all respond to color, but not all of us (me included!) have an intuitive grasp of color. There are a number of ways to put together a color scheme for a quilt, and that’s what I talk about using my quilts as examples. (read to the end for info on that bit above!)

The next day I taught a class on machine quilting and decorative threads, but snafu seemed to be the order of the day (did you all know the origin of the word snafu? I am told it dates to World War 2, or perhaps earlier, and stands for—uh, well, I’m going to clean up the language, but substitute the expletive verb that seems appropriate: Situation Normal All Fouled Up). When I arrived at the venue, the power was out to the entire building! And for a machine class. Fortunately for me and the students, the morning is mostly lecture and there was a good window, so we moved tables and sat by the only natural light and went through the basics. By the time I was nearly done, the power returned!

For the class I tried something new. I had an assortment of Superior Threads re-wound onto bobbins (a service Superior provides for teachers). As a result, I could offer a kit with ten “micro-spools” that included three bobbins of Bottom Line (60wt. poly), and one each of metallic, Glitter (a holographic thread), Brytes (30-wt cotton), King Tut (variegated 35 or 40 wt cotton, forget how heavy), MasterPiece (50wt cotton), Rainbows (variegated 40 wt poly) and a solid 40-wt poly. The kit runs $15, and is seems students were OK with that…the same as buying two spools of “fancy” thread. I offered a choice of either silver or gold–photo above (for the metallics baggie) and warm (pink/red), cool (blues) or earthtone (greens and browns)–photo below, so students could pick one color and one metallic. To my surprise, earth was the most popular! Don’t these threads look like a color feast?

Let me know what you would like in a thread sampler? I’d love to refine this kit!

It must have been a nerve-wracking day for program chair Cary Flanagan (who was in the class…visit her website at Something Sew Fine) and guild president Sue Ann Walker, who were trying on a Saturday morning to find an alternate location…to use immediately! Thanks to both for their efforts!

Above are the two sections of the class….it was held in the cafeteria of an office building. The good news is that the students had PLENTY of table space, but it meant for a bit of “projecting my voice” (i.e. being even louder than I usually am) and getting some exercise getting around to all 18 students. Still, I’ve heard it went well. As always, if there is anything I can improve, I always want to know because I can’t make it better if I don’t know it needs improving!

I met one of the students, Aline, on Friday evening and she told me about this miniature she is working on, which will FINISH at 7×7 inches. She brought in a quarter of it and let me photograph it…that’s what you see at the top of this post. Yes, that is inches on the ruler, Those itty bitty triangles of pink and green are half square triangles…smaller than a 1/4″ finished size. I took one look at it and said “you are FLIPPIN’ INSANE!” and I stand by it LOL! The tiny straight line is a “piece” 1/32 inch thick. I love looking at them, but I could never, EVER be that accurate! Beautifully done, Aline!