Fiber Revolution Show

Yesterday I attended a SAQA meeting run and organized by Susan Ferraro, SAQA rep for CT.  It was held at the University of CT Art Gallery at the Stamford, CT campus, currently home to a Fiber Revolution show, Fiber for the Imagination.  The show will run until Oct. 30 and you can find out more about it and get directions here.  I'm only going to post about half of the quilts today, so please come back tomorrow to see the rest.  Here they are in no particular order.

The "purple" wall.

Windows 1-6 by Natalya Aikens.  These are six individual pieces mounted on stretcher boards.

Reverberations  III  by Benedicte Caneill

Luminous Suns  by Carol Schepps

Nike Cutsumpus and her quilt, Safranum I

NIght Noise by Kevan Lunney

Men in Menopause by Lisa Chipetine

Me and my quilt, Fern Dance II

Lost in the Amazon by Katharina Litchman

Earth Bubbles by Judy Cuddihee  This piece is very three dimensional.

Cutting Corners by Barbara Mc Kee.  I'm afraid that this photo is not very sharp.  Sorry, Barb.

The photo imagery is incredibly sharp in the quilt in person.

Circle Composition by Benedicte Caneill

Despite III  Both Sides Now by  Melissa Fowler

Blushing Triangles 3  by Gloria Hansen

That's it for today.  Please come back tomorrow and see the rest.

Tag Sale

Last Saturday my book club, Purple Circle, had a group tag sale at Judy's home. Judy got married recently and you can read about it here.  She and her new hubby were merging two households so they decided to have a tag sale to get rid of some of the unnecessary "stuff".  At a book club meeting we agreed that we all have a lot of that stuff and wouldn't it be fun to have a group tag sale.  The group has been together for 25 years and thought that this would be a nice legacy if we donated all our proceeds to charity.  Since breast cancer affects so many of us and one of our group is currently going thorough it, we decided to  make the Susan G. Komen for a Cure the recipient of our money.

It was an iffy day, weather wise, but the rain did hold off till late in the day. We had about 12 tables laden with our oldies but goodies and more big things on the ground. Judy's house was the perfect location with its long driveway and huge parking area where we had our tables.  She lives on a cul-de-sac so there was plenty of customer parking in the street. Not everyone in the group could make it for one reason or another, and some members came and went, but there were plenty of us to hold down the fort.  We got rid of a lot of that "stuff" and what was left was loaded into our cars and taken to Good Will. 

Mini Art Quilts

This isn't really new work, but the first time I've shown it online.  The Northern Star Quilter's Guild, of which I am a member, puts on a fabulous quilt show every May.  One of the exhibits this year was a showing of mini art quilts made by members of a small art quilt group that meets each month before the regular meeting.  The members decided to make  small quilts, either 6"square or 8" square illustrating a technique that had been shown or talked about during the year. I just got my two pieces back today and thought I would share them here.

The first one, Ginkoes, illustrates discharge stamping.  I used a Hot Potato stamp, a Clorox Bleach pen, and hand dyed fabrics, some by Cherrywood Fabrics and some of my own. I liked the surprise of what color would show through.  I kept the quilting to a bare minimum.

The second one, Lichen, was a lot of fun to do.  I took Tyvek paper and painted it dark green, cut it into rectangles, then put them between parchment paper and ironed with a hot iron to shrink and distort it.  I mixed three different colors of metallic pigment powders with acrylic medium and brushed that on top in certain areas. I stitched them to black felt that had been fused to Peltex, then went all around the edges with three different colors of metallic threads, joining the pieces at some points.  The finishing touch was gluing down some fancy beads and pearls in similar colors.  I am very fond of this piece, but it only looks good up close.  From a distance it just looks very dark.

These pieces were attached to white card stock and lettered beautifully by Debbie Bein.  They were attached to black ribbon and suspended in front of black fabric, so that the white squares seems to be floating.  It was a very dynamic  display and go a lot of favorable attention.

There's a Fungus Among Us

My sister, Ruth, sent me pictures of this very interesting fungus she found growing near the golf course she plays on Long Island.  At least we think it is a fungus.  I couldn't resist dragging them into Photoshop Elements and playing with the colors.  I'm not sure how they would work in a quilt, but I'm thinking about it. 

Succulents Revisted

This past Saturday our Fiber Revolution show in Stamford, CT was cancelled due to the impending remnants of the hurricane.  I decided to make good use of this "found time" and finish up the quilting on this little quilt.  I had done a similar one a few weeks ago, but that one is going to the Silent Auction at Quilt Festival in Houston, never to be seen by me again.  I wanted to have one for my portfolio so I made this one.  It's a slightly different format and a little bigger, 26" x 18".  It uses the same digitally altered photos of Hens and Chicks, a garden succulent, and my hand dyed fabrics. You can see those pictures on my Aug. 17 blog, Succulent Succulents.

Here is a detail.

I like the way the quilting shows up on the back.  Click on each picture for a better view.  

  

 

Seeing Red

Today the Scrapbag Quilt artists hung their show, "Seeing Red"  at the Library in Newtown, CT.  The show will hang until Oct. 3.  The challenge was to make a quilt 24 inches square interpreting the word red in any way , with the stipulation that the quilt be at least 50% red.

We do a different challenge every year, but this year our group has dwindled in size and we were afraid that we might not have enough quilts to make a good show, so we asked local members to make two, if possible, and invited alumnae to participate.  Lynne, who has moved to Vermont, sent us two beauties and Anita, who is living in Arizona sent us one and five more from her local quilt group, the Back Street Mavericks, for a total of  six wonderful pieces.    We ended up having 20 quilts to hang and the diversity was amazing!

Loraine Sample, Gilbert, AZ   October Moon and Lynne Croswell,  Ludlow, VT  Strata

Carolyn Cooney, Danbury, CT   In Full Bloom

Norma Schlager, Danbury, CT  China Memories

Carolyn Cooney, Danbury     Barnside

Barbara Drillick     Brookfield, CT   Study in Red

Barbara Drillick   Brookfield, CT     Red Ferns

Barbara Polston     Ahwatukee, AZ        Primarily Red

Susan Vassallo     Gilbert, AZ    Red Tide

Anita Vecchia     Gilbert, AZ      Sailor's Delight

Alice Garrard   Redding,  CT   A New Guise for Old Ties   (Made entirely from Neckties)

Norma Schlager   Danbury, CT    Poppies

Susan Vassallo     Gilbert, AZ    Jeweled Pomegranate 

Nike Cutsumpas     Danbury, CT     Red Orchard

Nike Cutsumpas    Danbury, CT     Cochineal

Margaret Clayton-Amey    Oxford, CT    Butterfly in a Red Garden

Loraine Sample    Queen Creek, AZ    Botanical

Janet Bunch   Woodbury, CT    Hot Topics

Red Quilts

I belong to a wonderful group of art quilters called the Scrapbag Quilt Artists. We meet weekly in member's homes to share inspiration, assist with technical challenges and support each other, both creatively and in our personal lives.

Every year we have a challenge and then exhibit the results at a local library. This year's challenge is "Seeing Red". We were to create a 24 inch square piece interpreting the word in any way we wanted, but with the stipulation that the quilt be at least 50 % red. These are my two offerings. The first, China Memories, uses photo transfers from my trip to China two years ago. I used many different red fabrics----silk Dupioni, velveteen, brocades, Pane´velvet, and a commercial print with Chinese characters. I used Shiva Paint Sticks for the stencils, then free-motioned quilted around them. The finishing touch was applying the tassels that I purchased in China. In China red has many positive connotations, such as courage, loyalty, honor, success, fame, fortune, fertility, happiness, passion, and summer. It is also associated with weddings, where the bride traditionally wears red. I saw a lot of red in China.

My second quilt, Poppies, was inspired by a drive through the area outside of Portland , OR where flowers are grown for seeds. You can see huge fields that appear to be one solid color from a distance. I tried to translate that feeling into fabric. I used fused cotton and lots and lots of thread work for the poppies. The poppy in the frame is three dimensional.

We will hang our show this Friday, so stay tuned for more pictures. In the meantime, you can see two more here on Lynn's blog.

Puttin' On the Glitz

I wrote awhile back about how some of us are making little quilts based on the challenges at Project Runway.  Most of them were pretty hard to translate into an art quilt, but this one worked.  They were challenged to make an outfit for a drag queen going over the top with glitz and glam.  I went into my stash of glitzy fabrics and came up with this turquoise lame´, some very loosely woven metallic mesh, and some big fat sequins on a ribbon header.  It definitely needed beads, but there was no way that I was going to spend several hours on hand sewing them, as I usually would.  So I mixed some metallic powder into acrylic medium and used that as a glue.  It doesn't look very good, but this is just for fun.  

The quilt really is squared off, but I find it very hard to photograph a small quilt and have it look square.  I could have sworn that I was straight on when I took the shot, but I guess I wasn't.
Hand sewing would have looked so much better, but I have a real quilt to finish for a deadline and I had to get on to that. 

Blue September

Just when so many of the flowers in the garden are starting to look a little tired, the Caryopteris is at it's magnificent peak.  This deciduous shrub starts to bud in late July and blooms in mid-August and then blooms it's head off all through September.  I cut it way back this spring because it wasn't looking very good and perhaps that's what it needed because this year it looks better than ever.

It also pretty to cut and makes a perky little bouquet for my kitchen table. 
I took this with a flash and love the way the background diffused to black.
We are having a spectacular weather weekend here in the Northeast.  I feel so sorry for those in Louisiana and elsewhere who are bracing for yet another hurricane.  At least they are prepared this time, but it still must be heartbreaking.