It's All In the Details: fabric collage class

In all my years of teaching at Greenbaum's Quilted Forest, I think my current class line-up is my favorite! In March, I taught Serendipity Quilts, which is based on Susan Carlson's book of the same title.  It's only a 6-hour class, so students typically don't get to the quilting stage of their projects.  In fact, they discover that it's the finishing touches added later -- in the 7th, 8th, or 10th hour they've spent on their collages -- that really makes the piece come alive!  It's all in the details.

Here are some of the works-in-progress by my students:

 Anne's two colorful fish.

  

Carlene's flowers (with Angelina fibers at their centers).

Shelley's amazing green-eyed cat.

Alice's smiling sun.

I hope to see these pieces when they're quilted and finished.  Great work!

As always, your comments are welcome and appreciated.

Two members juried into regional show

Congratulations to our members Deb Sorem and Erika Close, who recently learned that their quilts were juried into the 2013 show Fabrications: The Art of Quilting. 

Deb's "The Signal and the Noise"

Erika's "Meyer Lemons"

This is the second year for this annual juried show of art and contemporary quilts, which is sponsored by the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show.  It opens on March 1 with a First Friday reception from 5-8 pm at Franklin Crossing.  This venue is on the corner of Franklin & Bond in downtown Bend.   If you can't make it for the opening reception, the show is open for viewing until the end of March.
 

Fabrications is the only juried exhibit of art and contemporary quilts in Central Oregon.  Quilts were submitted from Oregon, Washington, California and Arizona for consideration.  Jurors selected quilts that represent original design, excellent composition, and unique surface and finishing techniques.

Both Erika and Deb have logged many studio hours over the past year, as their work clearly demonstrates!

Painted Canvas Challenge

What has the Fiberexplorations group been up to?  Getting ready for our next challenge, of course!

On Sunday, our group got together at Deb's for a canvas-painting extravaganza.  Using only primary colors, we painted a large piece of 7-oz. cotton duck cloth.  We moved around the table, rotating from yellow to red to blue, giving each person multiple opportunities to use the three colors.

Lisa decides where to paint next.

 Then we added white highlights.

All hands in!

 The finished cloth, after adding bold strokes of black.

Layers build up as we added details.

Hearts, fireworks, flowers, leaves, swirls, ladybugs . . .

A truly collaborative project!

The paint has had a week to dry.  At our upcoming meeting Mon. night, we'll each receive a bag containing a portion of the painted cloth.  Stay tuned to see how we'll use it in our next challenge!

Please remember that your comments are always welcome and appreciated.

Mid-winter frost

Yes, I've been absent for awhile, but I have a backlog of photos and stories to share.

 In this case, there's no story -- just photos taken around our property in early Jan. after a few days of cold weather and heavy frost.

 A garden ornament was encrusted with white.

 

 A fence was transformed.
 

 Spider webs that looked crocheted.

And long-needle pines wearing ghostly-white.

  Beautiful.

"Letters" Challenge Unveiled

Our annual holiday potluck was held on Dec. 17th at Deb's, and after a great meal, we exchanged fabric postcards.  This year we added Put a bird on it to the holiday theme of our cards:

Our holiday fabric postcards.

 A few members were unable to attend the gathering, including Torrie (a huge snowstorm kept her on the other side of the mountains), but she sent a photo of her postcard:

Torrie's postcard

 Before unveiling the "Letters" challenge quilts, Chris showed a really cool gift she made for her daughter, a cover for her e-reader:

Chris's e-reader cover.

Inside the e-reader cover.

And the challenge quilts . . .

"64 by 64"  -- Torrie

 In 1964, Torrie began corresponding with a penpal in Australia, which has developed into a lifelong friendship that's continued to this day.  They've even met in person twice!  This quilt is a testament to that correspondence; the blue in the center represents the ocean that separates them.

"DNA" -- Chris

"Egg" -- Nancy

(title to be added) -- Deb

"Love" -- Patty

"Madrona"  -- Erika

"Postcard for my Family" (in progress)  -- Maureen

Detail of  Maureen's "Postcard"

"The Signal and the Noise" -- Deb

"Too Much Noise and Not Enough Transparency" -- Deb

Lisa's "Plork!?" (the sound raindrops make when they hit the ground)

My "Blue Secrets" (not yet quilted)

Another challenge with varied and interesting interpretations of the theme.  That part's always a thrill to me.  What will we do next?  Stay tuned to find out!

"Letters" challenge deadline approaches

A week from tomorrow is our annual holiday potluck/meeting.  We're having it at Deb's again because it was so much fun last year (and she didn't mind hosting again this year!).  We'll each show our finished pieces for the current "Letters" challenge and much of it will be a surprise.   Interestingly, it seems that there's been much less previewing of our work in progress this time than there was with past challenges.

Soon after the "Letters" theme was suggested as our next challenge, I had the idea of secret writing.  I was also playing around with some encaustic wax projects and wanted to incorporate that  into this challenge

Here is the encaustic bit that I'll add to my "Letters" piece:

Layers of writing on watercolor paper, dipped into encaustic wax.

Previously, we've shared our challenge quilts throughout their construction.  Some members were simply excited to show what they'd done so far, while others sought specific design feedback (Do the colors flow?  Does the quilt have enough contrast?  Does it keep the viewer's eye moving through the piece?)  One of the beautiful things about our group is the willingness of members to share their knowledge and their generosity in offering valuable suggestions in a completely noncompetitive manner. We've created a very supportive environment where members feel safe enough to show work that may they feel less than confident about.  Unfailingly, someone will speak up about the elements of that design that do work, and others chime in with thoughtful ideas and suggestions, sharing even their favorite tips and tricks.  Such encouragement is like a shot of confidence for the recipient.

So it seems that we're all growing more confident and have less need to get feedback while our challenge pieces are in progress.  I'm excited about that.  I've often thought it would be more exciting if our challenge deadlines were actually unveilings where we'd see each others' quilts for the first time.

That being said, I realize I'd have even less reasons for posting on this blog if I didn't show my work in progress (or my design dilemmas, and of course there have been plenty this time, as always). 

A section I've pieced, including rust-dyed silk (left), deconstructed
screenprinting (blue spirals),  and a Thermofax screenprint (lower middle in blue).

Hand-dyed silk; 3 needlefelted pieces incorporating hand-dyed cheesecloth,
rust-dyed silk, wool and silk rovings.

Still much to do to get this finished by next week.  The ideas continue to flow, so I'll keep working on it until it feels like enough!

Deb's quilt accepted into Road to California Show!

Fiberexplorations member Deb Sorem recently learned that her quilt Grandmother's Secret Flower Garden was accepted into the juried Road to California Quilters' Conference & Showcase "The Best in the West."  The show runs from Jan. 24-27, 2013 in Ontario, Cal.

Gwen, Cora, and Harper in "Grandmother's Secret Flower Garden" by Deb Sorem.

"I took my granddaughters' names and worked them into kaleidoscopes," Deb said.  "The traditional Grandmother's Flower Garden pattern was a favorite of mine, and my mother made one for me as a wedding present.  I repeated the shape of the hexagons in this contemporary version." 

You can see the pieced hexagons in the blue sky background above

Detail.

This ingenious design could have easily worked as Deb's entry for our current "Letters" challenge, but I think she's done something entirely different for the challenge!  Here's one more detail shot of her quilt:

Detail.

Deb's granddaughters' names are Cora, Gwen, and Harper.  I think I've successfully deciphered each girl's name in its corresponding flower.  If you want to give it a try, click on the first photo to enlarge it.  (Hint:  each flower blossom spells out one of the girls' names in both its normal orientation and in reverse image.)

My "answer"  to the puzzle (and I sure hope it's correct!):  Clockwise from the top left, the three names are in the order given in the  first photo caption above.

New samples for winter classes

It was a very busy week!  I didn't get any photos at our meeting last Monday because of poor lighting, but next month should be a different story.  That's our holiday potluck dinner, where we'll exchange fabric postcards (this year we're adding a distinctive Portland spin on the cards: Put a bird on it!) AND unveil our Letters challenge quilts.  And it will be at Deb's, where the lighting is much better.

Last week's stormy weather was good for keeping me at home, working on the samples for the three new classes I'm teaching this winter at Greenbaum's Quilted Forest (Salem OR).  In fact, I turned them in just one day late, and that was because I kept adding tiny details to my fabric collage (Hello Mr. Sun) to create more definition.  That project is for my Serendipity Quilts class from the book by the same title (Susan Carlson, author).

"Hello Mr. Sun" class sample.

I still see areas that beg for more detail, but I had to stop and get this guy delivered!  That's okay; I'll use it in class at a teachable moment -- an opportunity to show the impact made by the tiniest of details.

Eye detail of "Hello Mr. Sun."

Detail of lips on "Hello Mr. Sun."

My sewing machine was so sweet and compliant as I did the free-motion quilting on Mr. Sun.  I used rayon threads for the soft gleam they impart (light gold for the sun and a medium blue for the background). 

My next duo of samples is for the Zen Quilts class, and is based on the concept of Zentangles, a type of doodling I've played around with for the past 5 years. I just now clicked on that link and visited their website for the first time in quite awhile, and I am WOWed by its popularity.  There are even yahoo groups set up for sharing the tangles that people have come up with!  (tangle is the term for a specific doodle design).

"Zen Quilts # 2 & 3"

 My third new class is the one I'm most excited about.  For me, surface design on fabric is all about making discoveries, and I love sharing those techniques.  When you combine fiber reactive dyes with a soy wax resist, you get batik!  To make my sample for this easy batik class, I simply cut some of the pieces I've made and stitched them together: 

Samples for my soy wax batik class.

With Thanksgiving behind us and my class samples finished, I'm ready to concentrate on pulling together all my ideas for our Letters challenge and choosing a starting place. 

A busy Sunday

Tomorrow night's our monthly Fiberexplorations meeting, but I just received word that we need to change the meeting location.  On such short notice, I offered to host it, and just sent out an email telling everyone.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that everyone checks their email and sends an RSVP so I don't have to track them down by phone.

The downside to hosting is that I've been living as if the entire downstairs was my studio, and some cleaning is definitely in order.  (That means less time to sew today, when I'd planned on working on the samples for my 3 new classes.)  On the other hand, I can share my work-in-progress from the 5-day Rosalie Dace workshop in early October.  It's still pinned to the design wall (though partially stitched!) and would've been too cumbersome to take to the original meeting location.

Work in progress from 2012 Rosalie Dace class.

One day last month, the Salem Art Group got together for a "play day" at Nancy Eng's studio.  She does the most beautiful encaustic work (and is very generous in sharing her supplies!)  Here's the encaustic piece I made:

"Relent" (mixed media encaustic).

"Relent," detail.

 Though I'm still a novice when it comes to encaustics, I love it.  The smell of the warm wax, the tactile appeal of the finished surface, and compared to quilt-making, the almost-instant gratification! I've been considering ways to incorporate encaustic wax with textiles, and at least for the current Fiberexplorations challenge, Letters, I've found one way:

A "waxed" letter."

 I haven't decided how to use my waxed letter in this challenge, but I did leave a blank, unwaxed tab at the top of it (on the left) so it can be stitched onto fabric.  It sits on the table, beckoning and encouraging me to finish the class samples and get to work on this challenge!

There's one more thing I want to share, circa 2006 (?).  I taught a series of mystery quilts and this was one of them.  I rarely finished any; I just worked through all the steps on each so I'd be prepared to teach them.  This one was found with one row sewn in upside down, but it had already been "unstitched" and only needed to be sewn in again.  Presto -- a new quilt top!   (I was always partial to the geometric designs that relied on strong contrast in order for the design to pop.)

A "building block" mystery quilt (in need of a good pressing).

Please leave a comment, even if it's just to say hi, and come back again soon.  I promise to take photos at tomorrow night's meeting!