Other Artists – Page 32 – Artquiltmaker Blog

Spiral Creations

We had show and tell at the CQFA meeting. Linda always shares with something interesting and this meeting was no exception. She showed Sea Glass III.

This piece is about 8″x10″ and is gorgeous! I adore it. It comes out of a lot of work that Linda does. She is always working and moving forward in her art. I admire her greatly. You can see more about this piece on Linda’s blog.

The people at Always Quilting were quite impressed with our machine quilting skills even though none of us had really ever driven a longarm. I think it was because, like Linda, we all have a little bit of practice machine quilting. I also think a lot of us doodle consistently.

How I Learned the Librarian Glare

Tea towel tour 4 – melyssa_marie’s towel
Originally uploaded by ritapizza

I have always been an admirer of tea towel embroidery. I have a lovel “collection” from my great grandmother and godmother of towels depicting wash days, various other chores, fruits and veg, etc. I like the idea of having things that you use every day be beautiful.

When I was a tot, my godmother determined that I needed to learn to do embroidery. She bought me the little squares of blue stamped cotton and floss. Every day we were together she would show me how to backstitch and outline stitch, etc. The one place we butt heads was splitting the floss into strands. On one piece, I used the entire width (??) of the floss to stitch some hair on a little blond cutie. My godmother was mad and that was the end of those stitching lessons. I had learned enough and put those skills to good use even today.

Flickr’s RitaPizza named me as a contact so I went to look at her pictures. This embroidery piece really caught my eye. I love the stylized face and hair and think changing the pinup inot a mermaid was clever. RitaPizza has a lot of fabulous pictures on her Flickr site that I haven’t even begun to delve into. Go take a look and enjoy her work.

Be*mused Lovelies

I am wasting time again and went over to see if Jan at Be*mused had posted anything lately. I was rewarded to find some bits and pieces of lovely, cheerful sewing. She also mentions Liberated Piecing a la Gwen Marston, of which I am huge fan. Jan’s fabric combinations are gorgeous and, did I mention, CHEERFUL?! I love the blocks and pieces that she has made and can’t wait to see the outcome.

clipped from bemused.typepad.com

Holed up

clipped from bemused.typepad.com

PIQF 2008 Day 3

PICT2941
Originally uploaded by jlapac
As I mentioned, the quilts were much more cheerful. I don’t think there were enough of them to think of ‘cheerful’ as a theme. However, I did notice two themes: leaves and hexagons.

I would say there were at least 30 quilts that incorporated leaves – full leafy leaves, colored Autumn leaves and thin, spiky leaves. I found most of the leaf (and by association, tree) quilts to be quite calming.

After breakfast and before we headed back to the show, we went to visit the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles. They had three exhibits on. he major exhibit was a group of Radka Donnell quilts. Many of them were from the 1970s and had been used. They were all bed sized and I think it was hard for me to appreciate what she had accomplished, because there was nothing to compare them with. Many of them look like the backs of quilts I make now. They were all best viewed from far away and that is the good thing about the new-ish space. The galleries were large and enabled us to stand back. My favorite was So Bubbly and Clear. TFQ liked some elements of The Pool of Nazzissos. The other gallery had quilts from a variety of artists including Faith Ringgold (prints) and Laura Wasilowski. A log cabin quilt by Terrie Hancock Mangat kept our attention for a long time as there were lots and lots of interesting fabrics. Finally, the last gallery had 8 Double Wedding Ring or wedding quilts. Most were the normal DWRs, but one looked like a cross between the Winding Ways and the Flowering Snowball. I wasn’t able to find a reference for it yet, but will post it when I do.

Back at PIQF, another theme I noticed was that many quilts used a hexagon shape. I don’t remember any of the traditional Grandmother’s Flower Garden type layouts. I saw one that used the hexagon shape for the base of a Crazy quilt and one that used hexagons to make flowers.

It was really interesting to see themes pop out.

We visited the vendors. I did buy a few fabrics, but passed many of them up. Best vendor award goes to: Erica at In Between Stitches from Livermore. She was friendly, funny and willing to have someone bring us Moda swatch packs of the Fresh Squeeze fabrics from their store. I love vendors who don’t complain and have a great attitude about customer service.

PIQF 2008 Day 2

Last year, after PIQF, I went home depressed. The quilts were so grim. Every year is a new year, however and I am really pleased with the quilts. They are much more cheerful and I am finding lots to look at in many of the quilts.

The quilt to the side is by Carol Stapleton of San Mateo. She did an amazing job! I talked with some people who know her near the quilt and they said that she does a lot of miniatures. This one is well designed/coordinated (e.g. does not suffer from the two quilt in one syndrome), but looks like it could be several miniature quilts on their own. The piecing is meticulous. Many kudos to Carol!

Yesterday was a nice day. We got up in a leisurely manner and went to a ‘difficult’ breakfast. The food was marginal. The difficult part was that the restaurant puts baking mix in their pre-made (!!!) omelette mixture!?! Apparently, the cooks didn’t know how to make an omelette from scratch either. Talk about stupid! I won’t be going there again.

We finally arrived at the show at about noon, right about the time people were going to lunch. We looked at all the quilts in the back of the hall and then took a chocolate break.

I felt much more organized and able to take in the quilts after photographing a bunch on Wednesday eve and not trying photograph right away on Thursday.

After our break, we went back to photograph the quilts in the back hall. There were still people around, but it wasn’t difficult to get in between groups of people enjoying the show to photograph. We ran into Linda and Terri and Maureen. Terri was signing her books at the Always Quilting booth. Her newest book, Old Maid’s Puzzle is available and she was signing those books as well.

We didn’t do much shopping. We visited some vendor booths looking for more background fabrics for the baskets we made last year. It is kind of a buttery yellow and we were finding mostly gold, lemon or banana yellow. There is (was??) a Moda Marble Mate Dot that we used for a couple of the blocks, but we didn’t see anymore of it.

We ended the day, exhausted, at 19 Market in downtown San Jose. It is a modern Vietnamese bistro and the food is excellent. This is our third visit and we really enjoyed the food. The waiter was also cute and just friendly enough to not be annoying. He had a good sense of humor as well.

PIQF 2008 Day 1

PICT2528
Originally uploaded by jlapac

TFQ and I went to the PIQF Preview tonight and it was wonderful. Apparently, most people who attend, attend to shop. I saw two ladies leaving with Jem Platinums! We have started to attend the preview in order to take photos. I barely looked at the quilts, but just shot photos (http://www.flickr.com/photos/artquiltmaker/sets/72157608068541986/) so I wouldn’t have to worry about the crowds. It was great! And I know I will be much less cranky tomorrow when I can just look at quilts.

I am thrilled to say that people entered cheerful quilts. Not exclusively, but my overall impression is cheerful. I am so happy, because after EBHQ and APNQ, I was getting worried about the state of quiltmakers’ psyches. There are also a lot of quilts with a ton of details on them, so I think people have just been sititng in their studios for the past four years waiting for Nov.4. I didn’t look much at the vendors, but will work on that tomorrow as well.

Eddie’s Quilting Bee is about 2 miles away. We went there before the show opened and looked around. I bought an 8.5″x4.5″ Creative Grid ruler and a pattern for a tote bag from Gail Abeloe for Tracey Brookshier Design Studio. It is similar to the Eco Market tote, but has a square bottom and no side panels. It will be interesting to try it out.

The tree quilt above is called Leaves on a Tree and it is, coincidentally, by Gail Abeloe. Gail is the owner of Back Porch Fabrics in Pacific Grove. Nice work!

Picking Fabric

Avoiding work, I was browsing the blogs. I clicked on Pink Chalk Studio and came across this photo of, what looks like, fabric selection during the design phase. I admit, I didn’t read the post…yet. What struck me about this photo is that it is my ideal way of picking fabric. I would like to have the space (physical and brain) to heap up fabrics and look at them kind of jumbled together. This photo of these jumbled together fabrics give me an idea of how they would look in a project.

The problem comes in the actual execution. Sigh. I know that if I take these fabrics out of the closet and jumble them, I will most certainly have to refold and put at least half of them away.

I know I have to do something like this (make visual decisions visually), but I seem to have a brain block. Perhaps I need a studio assistant? HAH! Or just continue to work on cultivating enjoyment of the entire process.

clipped from pinkchalkstudio.com

Ode to Mother

My mother once told me, when asked how old she was, that she was 29 . I don’t know if she actually was 29 at that time. Ever since then, when asked, I start to tell people she is 29 and then I have to remember that I am older than 29 so she can’t possibly be 29! The 29 effect means that I always have to do the math to figure out how old she is.

Today is her birthday and she is once again, 29. In honor of her birthday, I thought I would show some of the quilts she is working on.

This is a quilt for a friend who took care of the dog when my mom was running back and forth to hospitals and the nursing home earlier this year. The print is a dog print and, as you can see, she is clearly influenced by my dot habit.

This is the back and I think the way she highlighted the Very Hungry Caterpillar motifs is a good use of the Eric Carle fabric.

This quilt also uses pet fabric as the background for the hearts. The hearts are a pack from Keepsake Quilting and are raw edge applique’d to the background. I like way the placement of the hearts creates movement.

My mother is quite prolific and willing to try anything. As a result, she is a great inspiration to me.

Weird and Wonderful Wearables

Deirdre sent me a link to these weird and wonderful “wearables”. They are really creative and inventive, but I don’t think that they are truly wearable. I really admire people who think outside of the box in such a way that they can come up with an outfit for a sumo wrestler type. Enjoy the inspiration!

clipped from www.worldofwearableart.com

County Fair Quilts

I love going to see quilts at the various county fairs in our state. I have been to a number of them, but I would still, someday, like to say that I have been to all the county fairs in the state. One thing I like about visiting county fairs is that I am reminded of how much creativity is going on nearby.

Not only do I enjoy the quilts, but I also enjoy seeing the tatting, the crochet, the tole painting, etc. I am really inspired by seeing the preserves, artistic cakes and the table setting displays.

Last weekend I was fortunate enough to be able to visit the Los Angeles County Fair. As I have mentioned previously, I dislike the way they display the needlework. They are all behind glass cases and they often have dress dummies placed right in front of the quilts, which makes the work really hard to photograph. Most of the photos I took are more fragments of quilts rather than the entire thing. Enjoy anyway!

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30