A Long Post In A Long Heat Wave

What would we do without AC???  Those of us in Massachusetts  have been in a week-long heat wave.  We may break a record today.  At 10 AM the temp is already 100 degrees !!!

It hasn't mattered all that much because I've been hard at work in my sewing room getting ready for the Lowell Quilt Festival.  I just mailed off my 3 Cohesive Pieces to the NEQF for the SAQA exhibit and am about to deliver another 3 to the BMQG.

I did venture out on Wednesday, though, to meet fellow BMQG member, Gwen Marceline,  at Quilter's Way in Acton a great quilt shop with very friendly staff and a great selection of quilting fabrics for the modern quilter!  I used one of their machines while Gwen taught me how to "face" a quilt, for which I'll be forever grateful!  We followed thesillyboodilly super-duper-easy-way-to-face a quilt  tutorial, which I couldn't quite follow myself.  Now that Gwen walked me through it holding my hand step-by-step, I can't imagine why I couldn't follow it which shows to go you how seriously direction challenged I am!   I love these facings and I think they're quite appropriate for art quilts.  And they so fit the modern quilt aesthetic even on large quilts.

The guidelines for the Boston Modern Quilt Guild's LQF Mini Quilt Challenge are that they must be no larger than 2 feet in either direction  and this color palette.  So here  are my two mini-quilt entrees and they are the two that I faced. 

I began "Run Janny Run" as the first for a series on the fleeting moments of my memories.  As a child I was a runner who used to run in a citywide road race on the fourth of July and I won many of these races and was quite proud of it. I would probably have been diagnosed as hyperactive because I never stopped moving, therefore graduating to bikes as a form of constant movement as well as competitions and "shows" that us kids put on in our little neighborhood doing tricks on bikes. We dressed up our bikes all spiffy with baseball cards hitched to the spokes of the wheel with clothespins and with streamers flowing from the handgrips.

We also played many ball games from day to night so the many round shapes reflect this.   I did have a bike that was green but it had to be red for this piece!  Those largish houndstooth checks also reminded me of another summer love of mine, when I went to a summer program of doing crafts every Saturday where I made key chains for my relatives out of gimp. The bold black diamond shapes on white reminded me of summer carnivals and racing flags.  I also had a fascination with flowers and ladybugs.  Again I had to run upstairs to fetch another carving to print these little suckers and hand embroider them.  And we were all especially enamored with blowing dandelion flowers as they went to seed!

"Run Janny Run"

 Soon after I started "Run Janny Run" "Fugitive Memories" began to insist itself into existence.  I didn't even know what was coming of it but I had to put the first one I was working on aside to do this next one because it simply pushed its way into life as if the various elements jumped out of my drawers onto my table and practically arranged themselves.  My shibori dyed fabric squares are mixed with commercial fabrics.  Again, the dandelion motif wanted to share in both quilts!  And some of my tiny bird carvings came to life on some fabric that I painted blue and white as I was working on painting the background for the girl runner. Some pieces of decorator fabric that were recycled to me from a freecycler were just the right hand to lend some soft and lush texture to the right of the birds in flight. Those bottom silks came from the same source - I love to reuse and recycle in my art whenever I can.  The tree photos I took at the top of the Lake Quanapowett and played with color in Photoshop until they practically caught fire!  I can't tell you any more than this as I did not plan this at all and it chose what it wanted to be rather than the other way around, as it often goes with us artists.

"Fugitive Memories"

The sleeves are also a new design for me.  It's a "D" shaped sleeve and I followed another online tutorial for this:  tallgrassprairiestudio./hang-your-quilt-hanging-sleeve-tutorial.html.  I like it more than my usual one and I think it'll hang better. 

Back Of  "Fugitive Memories" showing the facing and the sleeve on top.  The facing
 does not show at all on the front of the quilt.

Back of "Run Janny Run"

Gee's Bend Homage Quilt Done

At the retreat last week I started this quilt for Joshua's 18th birthday gift.  It's an homage to Gee's Bend Quilters:

Pieces of some of his own jeans are in here, as well as some of my own snow dyed fabrics mixed in with commercial fabrics, simply quilted true to Gee's Bend fashion.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year! 

 

It's sunny and bright here today - I choose to view it as a good omen!

 

I must say I had a good time snow dyeing and I'm pretty happy with the results of my first time experiments, so I'm glad to share some pics with you!

 

Right:  I used Cerulean Blue, Chinese Red and deep Hansa Yellow for this one and simply layed it down and scrunched it up to fit the size of the dishpan, layed on a pile of snow, squirted the dye and let it melt and set for about  8 hours.  It was cold in the garage so it took awhile.

 To the right: this is a long, narrow length of fabric that I just wrung around pretty tightly and layed down without tieing or binding it up. Because there was so much fabric in places, the dye didn't cover the whole piece. 

Below that is a detail of this same piece with what seems like the "typical" snow dye effect.

This piece, to the left, is more of a snow dyed shibori.  I twisted it up tightly and tied it off repeatedly until the whole length of fabric was twisted and tied, about 5 or 6 times, so it left lots of white undyed.

 
 Detail of the same shibori. I love the dark, intense colors along with the white!

Like my new outfit?  When I opened up these pieces, I could see that the entire underside was still white because the sweatpants were so thick, the dye hadn't penetrated so I just turned it over and left it for another 6 hours and it turned out perfect! 

 

I love the colors and the pattern, and in this case, that it covered the whole outfit!  A great fun way to start a new year!

Now, I better go clean up after myself and get upstairs. 

I have a lot of carving to do! I've drawn up my design for the 2013 year of the Snake print.

 

 

And I have to hit the drawing board for yet another print edition along the lines of light/dark and dreams/fantasies!