Monthly promts

I just realized that I never showed you the small pieces that I made for the last two monthly prompts, so here they are:

RAIN.....I searched all through my photos and I couldn't find anything. I guess I don't take pictures on rainy days. I found this one online and thought it was perfect. The misty flowers and the rain lines were already there. I just stitched over them by hand, some with two stands of pale gray floss and some with a sliver metallic thread.

REFLECTION.....When we went to Tuscany last fall one of my favorite places was the small island of Burano, part of Venice. It is known for the brilliantly colored buildings. Supposedly they were painted those vivid colors so that the fishermen could find their homes after their fishing expeditions. Now the island is known for their lacework. I just did minimal machine stitching on this one.

Protest #2

I just finished my second piece for the Tiny Pricks Project. If you don't know what I'm talking about, please scroll down to my last post which will give you all the details.

This quote was directly from his Twitter feed a couple of weeks ago and is so typical of his rants and  his being more concerned about crowd size than anything else.

I was happier with the lettering on this one. I originally had printed the words on graph paper, then transferred to fabric. After stitching a few words I realized that my spacing was very uneven so rather than beating my head against the wall I thought I would get much better results if I used the computer to print the words. Why hadn't I thought of that before? I chose Helvetica Neue pt. 38 since it was the same size as my hand printing and looked very much the same.

I used a vintage heavy linen luncheon napkin and two strands of embroidery floss. So much better than my last one on a thin linen hanky. My carry-overs do not show on the front, a big plus. I used three strands for Fake News and the Twitter bird.

I think this is my last one, although it was fun and cathartic to work on. Has anyone else been inspired to join me in this stitched protest?

I will be joining up with Off the Wall Friday.

Protest

Anyone who knows me well, knows how unhappy I am with our present president. I stopped watching CNN because I usually would end up with knots in my stomach listening to the outrageous things he had said. Some nights I couldn't fall asleep. And it wasn't CNN making up Fake News about him. These were videos of him speaking, usually sounding like a fifth grade playground bully. He has sided with our enemies like Putin and Kim Jong Un. He has alienated our long time allies. He has taken away regulations that were put there to help with the climate crisis that we are in. But then he thinks that's all a plot against him and big business. He daily tweets things that are insulting and demeaning to anyone who doesn't totally agree with him. He exaggerates and lies about everything. I could go on and on but then I just make myself more upset.

I should also say that I have never been political before. I am neither Democrat nor Republican, but this last election pushed me over the edge.

I did make one political protest quilt, Presidential Fabrications.  I felt so good making it and it went to a good home. I had no intention of selling it, but someone fell in love with it and it is now proudly hanging in her home.

Sooooo, when I heard about this project started by artist, Diana Weymar, I knew I wanted to participate. She started embroidering Donald Trump's most outrageous quotes onto vintage fabric. Now it is a constantly growing textile protest immortalizing the president's words in stitching. It is called "Tiny Pricks Project" (a wonderful double entendre) and you can read all about it here, and at  the Tiny Pricks Project website , and in this article in the New Yorker.

I didn't think that I had any vintage fabric and then I remembered a stash of old handkerchiefs tucked away in the back of a drawer. I had several to choose from and picked this one with crocheted lace. I had many false starts with the embroidering before I settled on using one strand of #5 perle cotton. I am not happy about the way you can see my thread carry-overs on the front and I think I will use a different thread on the next one. Yes, there will be another, a quote directly from his Twitter a couple of days ago. Stay tuned. I hope to have it done by next week.

If you share my political views, please participate. She hopes to have 2,020 by 2020.

I will be linking up with Off the Wall Friday.

Fun Collage

I had fun using some new-to-me techniques, namely alcohol inks on Yupo Paper. It is actually a synthetic paper that works perfectly with these inks because it is nonabsorbent and you can really play with moving the inks around to form new patterns. The hard part is knowing when to stop. There are numerous videos on YouTube.

One of my fiber groups, FANE, made several of these 4" x 12" boards. I can't remember what the boards are called, but they are a hard smooth surface on a wooden frame. Perfect for gluing things down.  I was away away in the winter when they were being purchased so at the last meeting when I saw the cool things people were doing I took one board home. Now I wish I had taken more.We could do anything we wanted and some people used fabric, but mine is all paper, metal, and buttons. I should have shown you the two different Yupo papers I used before I cut them up. They are both in shades of blue and green, but one is a denser pattern than the other. I also used some pieces of metal that I had embossed on my embossing machine and then treated with alcohol inks. I used sections of a tree die cut and some buttons from my stash. Click on the picture for a bigger view.

Below are three other Yupo papers in different colors and patterns. I'm hoping that they will find a way into my cards or other collages. 

The sheets that I purchased are 5" x 7", but it comes in several sizes. It is rather pricey, so from now on I will use one of those great 50% off coupons from Michael's.

I am linking up with Off the Wall Friday. 

Radiant

When my order from Spoonflower arrived last week I was delighted with the true color. It is exactly like the image I sent them. I enjoyed quilting with various colored threads to match the fabric. This was done for my Fiberworks monthly word challenge, this time Radiant. I showed my smaller version last week, a 4 x 6 piece that is all hand embroidered.

You can't tell from this photo, but hung now on my design wall it almost seems three dimensional. It just leaps off the wall. It is also a tad brighter than this photo.

I will be putting both of my pieces into our exhibit, Inspiration-Exploration, which will be hung at the end of September. I like my Escargot Begonia piece, shown last week,  because it is interesting and different and I like the Hibiscus for the vibrant colors. Now I have to attach each of them to a 30 x 30 black canvas, which will be painted first with black gesso since we could not find that size canvas in black. All quilts in the show will be displayed on said canvases. We did this last year and it gave a nice cohesive look to the show. More about the show when we get closer to it.

I am linking up with Off the Wall Friday.

Pleasant Surprise

I have been a member of SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) for many years and a JAM (Juried Artist Member) of same group for several years. One of the perks of being a JAM member used to be that you would have one full page of a quilt of your choosing in the annual Portfolio book. It was a lovely, large soft covered book that was distributed to galleries and museums and was available for purchase. I was so pleased to be in several issues.

A few years ago the powers that be decided to discontinue the annual Portfolio and replace it with Art Quilt Quarterly. As the name suggests it is a magazine that comes out four times a year. It is also distributed to galleries and museums and can also be acquired by subscription. I was in issue 14 with my political statement quilt, Presidential Fabrications. 

Issue 16 arrived in the mail yesterday and as I was browsing through I was thinking of which quilt I would enter for the next issue. Much to my surprise my quilt, All the News That's Fit To Print was on page 91. I didn't think I was eligible so soon, but apparently I was wrong. 

This quilt was made for an exhibit put on by my FiberWorks group. I copied several pages of the local newspaper onto fabric and then cut it up and sewed it with fine line piecing. I got most of the newspaper headings online and tried to have a wide variety. It has been a favorite piece of mine, so I am glad that it is "out there". The red in the quilt is actually a bright red, not as dark as shown in picture. The whole quilt reads a little darker than it is in person.

Being in the Portfolio and the Quarterly have been instrumental in my participation in an invitational show at an important museum and being asked to enter another prestigious show. 

In addition to the Portfolio section of the magazine there are several interesting articles and spotlights on different artists in the art quilt world. You can buy it at Barnes and Nobles, but I don't think they carry too many issues or you can buy it online or subscribe at the SAQA website, given in the first paragraph.

New Work

I know, I know, I haven't blogged in two weeks, but I did finish a couple of things. You may remember this small piece that I made from a close-up photo of my Escargot Begonia. It was made for the prompt for that month, Curve.

We have to choose one of our small pieces to enlarge into a bigger piece that will be mounted on a black 30" x 30" canvas for our exhibit in September. I sent the photo to Spoonflower and had it printed at 24" square.

I was very pleased with the true color that they achieved. I had altered the photo in Photoshop Elements with a  Posterize filter. I free-motion machine quilted it following the blocks of color and changing thread colors as I went.

Detail

Last month's word was Radiant and I chose this picture of a Hibiscus flower taken at my friend's home in Florida. The colors were amazing.

Again, I put the Posterize filter on it. The colors really were this intense.

My interpretation on a 4" x 6" piece. I enjoyed doing the  hand embroidery on this little piece, even though it took a long time. I decided that I want to made this one larger, too, and Spoonflower is printing it 26" square, so that I don't have to chop off the top and bottom as I had to do here. I'm hoping that the colors will be as dynamic as they are in the photo.

I am behind on my month's words and have to make it up and do two this month, Rain and Reflection. I am using my own photos for all of them, but I may have to cheat a bit with rain. Don't think I took any rainy day pictures, but I will look.

I am linking up with Off the Wall Friday.

Alleluia

I finished up the quilting on my stained glass window. Now all I have to do is bind it. It will have a very narrow black border, narrower than you see here.

When this was hanging on my design wall with the lights on you could see all the quilting lines and it looked terrific, but to take a picture with the lights on you get a spotlight affect. 

Here you can see some of the quilting. I mixed up the designs as I went along, just having fun. I changed the thread colors, top and bobbin for all the colors, even the two shades of gray. I did this on my Bernina because of all the thread changes. That would have been a pain in the neck on my Sweet sixteen. Also the size, 18" x 36" was very manageable on the Bernina. 

I will be linking up with Off the Wall Friday.

My Lady

I purchased this lady head planter a few years ago and she resides on my front porch for the warm months. I always try to plant something that resembles hair. For a couple of years I did Creeping Jenny and that grew so rapidly that I had to give her periodic haircuts. But for the past couple of years I have used succulents. They don't need as much watering and stay nice and neat.

The succulents that I chose this year were different than last year.

I'm not crazy about the tall plant in the back. I have already cut it back, but it's not doing what I wanted it to do and I may replace it.

But I LOVE this succulent and the way it is hugging her head as it grows and cascades down. Succulents are not known for their flowers and rarely have them. When I purchased this plant back in May it had one teeny, tiny red flower and I thought it was a one time thing. But it keeps getting more. They close up at night and open during they day. So charming!

I also try to have one big plant on the right side of her head that looks a bit like a fascinator, those small hats that some Brits wear to weddings, when they are not sporting huge hats.

The flowers are growing like crazy in my gardens and containers. We had a cool rainy Spring and beginning of Summer, but now it is glorious, hot and sunny most days.

Thinking inside the Box

I showed you my Box City a while back. It was made for my FiberWorks group where we were to make a display using little boxes in any way we wanted. It started out to be just matchboxes, but evolved into using any kind of small boxes. The variety was amazing.

We finally found a venue for our boxes at a charming bakery in Oxford C, The Oxford Baking Co., that has a gallery in their upstairs space and we hung the show this past Sunday.

Jessica Tell sent images to Spoon Flower and had them printed onto fabric, which she quilted and combined with interesting papers.

Chris Wilkinson used Home as her theme, since she was moving into a new home.

This is my Box City with wire armatures wrapped in different variegated yarns. I had so much fun finding different ways to pose my people going about their day

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Susie Lehman used games as her theme. All of the game pieces came from her home.

 Nike Cutsumpas put her famous black and white doodles in the boxes and then put them all in this shadow box, (boxes in a box). It was hard to photograph because of the glass. You can see my image reflected.

Barbara Drillick used a variety of objects sewn into her boxes in her usual meticulous style and lined with colored papers.

Ruth Savasta used travel as her theme and made each of her boxes into a shadow box with a photo travel destinations.

Beth Johnson used jewelry boxes gifted to her by her husband over the years. She combined these with some interesting painting techniques.

Paula West's them was Rock, Paper, Scissors as her theme. A lot to look at here.

Be sure to click on the pictures to get a bigger view and see the amazing details.

I will be linking up with Off the Wall Friday.