Remember back when the world looked like this? Yes, that was a bit over 3 months ago–hard to believe in the torrid heatwave right now!

Well long ago and many degrees cooler than now (about 75 degrees cooler to be precise), I began work on a piece for a juried exhibit / book, and I’m thrilled to say that my piece was accepted.  Mary W. Kerr, author of Cutting Edge Art Quilts (see my book announcement blogpost here), came up with another great idea for an exhibit:   “Dare to Dance, An Artist’s Interpretation of Joy.”  It worked so well, she sent out an invitation to make a quilt 18 x 30 inches for possible inclusion in a book on that theme.  Immediately I KNEW what my image would be… but it would just need to get squeezed into a very busy time period when I was also writing three articles, doing new artwork for the articles, AND prepping and filming my Quilting Arts DVD (post about that here).

The image:  Mr. Wiggles a.k.a Pigwidgeon a.k.a. our pug!   See every time he gets hungry, he puts his feeties up on your leg.  When you look down at that sweet pug mug and ask, “Are you hungry?” he immediately hops, then drops onto all four feet and begins The Circle Dance.  Always counter clockwise.  Several times.  Accompanied by a hop or three.  Then he scootches around behind me (after I’ve creaked my knees into standing) and nudges me into the kitchen by pushing at the back of my calves with his sweet smooshed-in face, just to make sure I know where to go!

I’m excited to see my article on backgrounds come out in an upcoming Quilting Arts issue (blogpost about that here), and this is yet another example of how backgrounds make a difference.  But first, I needed to get a photo to use as my model for his wiggly body:

First I had to capture the correct curve of his body. This too MANY photos because they were mostly blurred because he was moving too fast!

Then we needed to get the “putting down the dish” thing:

First attempt at putting down the dish. Decided the proportions and bowl at the top didn’t work.

So….

So this time I managed to take a photo with my left hand only to get the proper perspective, which would then be at the bottom of the quilt.

Once I had my working photos, I fuse-collaged the dog, the bowl and my hand, and my slippers.  Next:  choosing a background.   Hmmm.   Let us just say I tried MANY colors.  If a color contrasted with the warm tones, the blues/purples blended in.  If the color contrasted with the purple and blues, the pug got lost.   Some prints were blah.  Some were too visually busy.

The red contrasts well with everything, but was a bit much for me. I know this will hang in our home, but it was just too much red.

So how about blue? Egads, NO!

So then I tried blue. Definitely not this one. Nice batik, but not here–washed out AND busy. Blech!

So off to try my favorite turquoises.  Hmmm.  Not so much.

OK, but not great. The dog and my arm stand out well, as do the dark slippers, but the food dish kinda mooshes into the background.

Tried another turquoise, with more visual texture. This was NOT an improvement. OK, moving on….

OK, so yellow and orange won’t work for obvious reasons, don’t want browns, red doesn’t work, neither does blue or turquoise.  Don’t want that much purple.  That leaves (drum roll) green.  So how does that work?

Definitely better. However, this fabric looks much better in the photo than it did in person. It is a “fractured ice” type of pattern, and it looked pretty flat and dead in person, but the color was definitely working for me with pug, arm, dish and feet!

Here’s another green. Again, the “print” of the batik is a bit flat, and perhaps it is a bit too briht, but like the red strips on the side. For quite a while I planned on vertical stripes of red.

I really liked this print, but the yellow of the sunflower petals was a bit disctracting.

The solution? PAINT! A thin (very thinned) wash of blue paint knocked back the contrast a bit. Just enough visual “life,” not too contrasty, not too flat. The Goldilocks choice: Just Right!

Then comes the quilting.  A couple of times I have tried this method, and I like it–not all the time, but often.

Here you can see the back: I do the thread-coloring (aka thread-painting) with a batting behind the figure as a stabilizer. Once done, I trim away the excess (not trimmed on the pug). Notice the fabric on the left, unpainted, with the painted background…just a bit of difference on the yellow petals.

Can you say “LOVE MY JANOME”? This is the 8900–every time I think they can’t make a machine better, and yet they do. LOVE quilting on this baby (I call him Gandalf because of the silver front, and it has to be a guy because he’s so big!).

Tomorrow, the completed quilt!

And the good and bad news are the same news.  And you my be wondering WHY in heaven’s name would I show you a photo of our fridge decked out in white, gray, stainless steel, and coolers.

The fridge, draped in white and gray cloth and white board and stainless steel. Why? To figure out how a white or stainless steel fridge would look instead of the black we currently have. Stainless steel wins.

Ahem.  This moring I decided since it was rainy, damp and chilly to fix hot oatmeal and add some frozen raspberries.  The good AND bad news when I opened the bag from the freezer:  they were already defrosted.  Ooops.  Checked freezer.  Many items could be called “previously frozen.”  Called local appliance store, and no repairmen available until Tuesday, but the nice gal reminded me about defrosting the bottom, in case the condenser coils (behind a panel inside at the back) were crusted in ice, which can happen with the humid weather we’ve had, especially with a leaky gasket seal which we also have.   Bad news:  no ice buildup inside.   That meant a bigger problem.  On a thirteen year old fridge.

So, sigh, we went to the appliance store and bought a new fridge today.  KaCHING!   And we don’t yet have a water hook-up for an ice-maker and no time to schedule one before I leave for California to teach, so we’ll deal with that in August.   But we’ll now have a nice, reliable Maytag fridge as of about 8:30 tomorrow morning!

And the progress:  I’ve been beavering away for months and months on many assorted projects, hence the absence of posts here.   I’ll eventually get you caught up on my doings–oh yeah, other bad news:  I actually WORE OUT the track pad on my laptop!   It started acting up, so instead of having a entire week to quilt, I’ve either ferried teenage boys hither and yon (both of them) OR spent 8 hours (4 hours Weds., 4 hours Thurs.) driving to and from the Apple Store in Portland to get the issue diagnosed and repaired.  The good news is that the repair was $91 (plus gasoline), and not a new laptop needed.   So I’m still behind on work, but getting closer.   Now…back to projects:

As part of the Janome America artist/teacher program, I perodically do things / projects for them in exchange for their support / loan of a machine.  One biggie this year was being able to use a Janome 8900 on the set of my Quilting Arts DVD!   I was so happy to be able to demo on the machine I use at home and love, and they were happy to have it onscreen.  Then I’ve been wanting to do a special item for them since last fall, but good things (like articles and DVD) kept happening.  Finally, I am now able to give you a sneak peek at something I’m working on for them:

The quilting, as you can see, is partially done on this banner/tablerunner/long quilted thing!   I’m having a ton of fun and will share more when I can.

Having fun with a lovely floral, colorful thread, and quilting!

Now, back to hoping the frozen stuff doesn’t go bad by morning (yes, in cooler, with ice) and hoping no new calamity crops up tomorrow so that I can actually, what a concept, work in the studio!

What a nice way to start the day!  Reading my morning email, sipping my cup, and there’s Quilting Daily from Quilting Arts editor Vivika DeNegre, so I click on it.  It’s about my forthcoming article on the difference a background makes!   You can see it here:

http://www.quiltingdaily.com/blogs/quilting-daily/archive/2013/06/13/choose-backgrounds-for-art-quilts.aspx

Thanks to my friend Pat D. (Waving across the US to Mill Valley, California!) who suggested I submit this article concept.  I’d been sharing with my small, wonderful, essential-to-life online sketching group, trying to decide which background to use for my Tea with Milk quiltlet,

Tea with Milk, published in the recent Quilting Arts Coffee or Tea? Challenge. Of course the answer is tea! From the time I was in grade school, my Irish-American papa fixed me tea for breakfast. Still have my cuppa daily!

which was included in Quilting Arts a couple of issues ago. Pat thought my decision process would make a good article, so I submitted it and …WOOT!… Quilting Arts accepted it.  I’ll share the whole little quilt once the magazine is published.  Until then, here is “Tea with Milk” and an option or two when I made it.

Dark is good for contrast, but this lovely deep blue just looks kinda dead here.

Love the contrast, like a table when you are snug indoors in winter, but that’s not the feel I wanted for this quiltlet.

Love the contrast, but don’t like the vertical: looks like the items are going to slide off a table that has been tilted up!

Love the feel of this breezy aqua, but the cup gets lost along the edges. One option would have been to use this, but then darken the left edge of the cup with thread.

The yellow is so cheerful and “morning”, but the top edge of the white pitcher gets lost, and I didn’t want to darken it with thread. An alternative would be to outline with an ochre just a tiny bit to create an edge.

Getting closer. Good contrast with all three elements, but the value-change in the print distracts from the items.

Hi all! Just wanted to share the good news that Janome has profiled me and my work on their website, here! As many of you know, I sew on a Janome, currently the brilliant Janome 8900.  As their website says, I’m “powered by Janome!”

Powered by Janome

When I began art quilting and using a wide variety of threads, I was frustrated.  I had a top of the line machine, a good one, from one of the major manufacturers, but it was crabby about threads.  That led me to search for “MY perfect machine.”  After a couple years of fruitless searching, I heard about the Janome 6500:  Eureka!

The discovery of the 6500 began what is now a nearly 10 year relationship with Janome America, and I will say yet again how grateful I am for their support over the past decade.  When the 6600 came out, they offered to upgrade me.  I couldn’t believe they could improve on the 6500, which I loved like I hadn’t loved a machine in 20 years.  But they convinced me to try the 6600, and it WAS better.  Each time, they find ways to make small improvements to their machines (the 7700 followed by the 8900) — including by actually listening to customer feedback (what a concept! YEAH!).

So I’d love to invite you to head on over to Janome America and see their post (dated June 7, 2013).  It was a fun email interview and you might learn a couple new things about my thread-filled life!

PS:  I don’t do custom quilting for others, just my own work.

PPS:  my Quilting Arts Workshop DVD (or download) on Fused Collage and Thread-Coloring will be available in mid-September as a download and at the end of September as a DVD.  Watch this space for updates as we approach late summer!

The winner has been chosen using a random number generator at random.org for the free copy of People and Portraits, it’s number 22!  My comment list says it is Anne, so please contact me via the Contact page on this site with your name and address, and Lark will send you a copy.  Congrats and thanks to all.

Martha Sielman and Lark Crafts have done it again:  another wonderful survey of art quilts today, this time with the theme of People and Portraits.

Art Quilt Portfolio: People and Places by Martha Sielman, published by Lark Crafts

The book includes profiles of 21 major artists from around the world and galleries with works by another 120 artists based on themes:

• Happiness
• Contemplation
• Community
• Icons
• Family and Friends
• Work
• Play

There are several ways to approach this book:

• Sit down and devour it at once from cover to cover
• Dip in at random, opening a page to works by people you may or may not know
• Savor a section or an artist at a time
• Grab a favorite beverage, find a comfortable place to sit, and reward yourself with a half hour or hour to read and study the artists you admire
• or all of the above

I started by devouring the book, seeing whose work was in the book, were my favorites there (yes!), whose work had I not seen before?  If you’d like to do the same, read to the end of this post for information on how to win this book, thanks to Lark!

I appreciate the more in depth look we get at each of the featured artists.  Each feature has a one paragraph introduction by Martha, followed by five or six images and writing by the artists (I’m presuming in response to questions from Martha). The commentary covers both technique and substance.   In Bodil Gardner’s section, I enjoyed learning that she includes sheep to add a dash of white to a piece, and that cups are her symbol for women sharing and getting together.  I love reading about Collette Berends’ life and inspiration and also about the wide range of materials used.

There is a very good range of styles and techniques represented as well, ranging from the cartoon-style of Pamela RuBert to Bodil Gardner’s whimsy to Jennifer Day’s and Jenny Bowker’s realistic portraits.  Lastly, this book has the dates the quilts were made. I LOVE THIS because I enjoy looking at the works in chronological order to see the artist’s progression in style, theme and technique.  I do wish they had included the artist’s home country (recognizing that a number of them were inspired by life in other places), and it would have been wonderful if there had been room to include a small photo and bio of each artist, perhaps in the index, but I realize that we all want to see more quilts and there are only so many pages you can squeeze into a book.

From a technical standpoint, almost all the photos are crisp and clear.  The majority show the edges of the quilts; you can tell those because of the drop-shadow used on the page.  Others are clearly cropped to be in a rectangle.  I vastly prefer seeing the entirety of the quilt, not cropped, and wonder at the decision to do this–I wish they hadn’t.  I also wish there were some detail photos:  the first time I flipped through the book quickly, I actually looked to make sure these were all quilts, as I couldn’t see the stitching on many pieces.  This is a function of two things:  the quality of the photograph submitted by the artists and the size of the original quilt (the larger the quilt, the more detail is lost as it is shrunk to fit on a page).  For example, Julie Duschack’s “Monk in the Doorway” is very large, about 4 feet tall by 6 feet wide.  I saw it in Houston and walked as close as I could get to see the stunning quilting on the large black wall; alas, only a portion of this stitching shows on the page:  a detail photo that included part of the stitching would have been wonderful. These are, however, minor quibbles about a book that is well worth adding to your library.

Bottom line:   You’ll love this book!  And I’m thrilled to say that Lark has offered a copy to a reader who comments on this blogpost!  Thank you Lark!  So please leave me a comment.  Tell me what you like to see in portraits, whether your preferences are abstracted, photo-realistic, close-ups, painted or appliqued, tell me what is it that speaks to you when you see an art quilt portrait.  On June 12 I will pick one person at random (I’ll use an online random number generator based on the total number of comments); I’ll need your email to contact you with the good news, which I’ll also post on this post as the last message.