Fiber Artistry Exhibition at the Orange County Fair

Announcement card featuring all the quilts

I was lucky enough to have The Sunflower selected for the Fiber Artistry Exhibition at the Orange County Fair.  Jamie Fingal (http://www.jamiefingaldesigns.com/)  curated the exhibition.  The quilts were arranged in a gallery-like setting on white walls.  The Sunflower is a dye-painted quilted using Hollis Chatelain's method (http://www.hollisart.com/)  Even the binding is dye-painted to coordinate with the background. The quilting was done with a variety of colored threads to bring the flower to life.

The artist with The Sunflower    

The Sunflower

Parfait Dyeing ---Part 2

This is the result of the parfait dyeing.  I also did a two-tone fabric.  I am not being as aggressive as I should be about pushing the fabric into the other colors and allowing things to intermingle.  I think my inner perfectionist is coming out. 

Quiltart @ 15

I can now reveal my Quiltart @ 15 project which can also be seen in the context of the other entries at http://www.quiltart.com/15 .  The challenge was to create a 15 inch square work for the Quiltart list's fifteenth birthday.  My quilt is designed to highlight fifteen things I have learnt from belonging to Quiltart. Can you find them all on the quilt?  I chose to use cotton, silk organza, machine embroidery and quilting, and TAP transfer. TAP is a product developed by Lesley Riley for image transfer. It can now be bought at http://www.ctpub.com/.  Their blog entry for June 27, 2010 has a link to a 90 minute tutorial on using TAP.  I wish that I had had access to it when I created the project! 

Fabric Parfait

I signed up for one of Shelagh's Challenges (http://shelaghfolgate.blogspot.com/) which just closed.  The first step was to dye a fabric parfait (she swears that they are calorie free so I will see what the scale says this week.)  This is another form of slow fabric (fabric which sits and "percolates" for several days).  This is a picture of the fabric parfait in the garage, hence the less-than-perfect photo.  I cannot give out any more information----I have been sworn to secret by Shelagh. But..... tune in for more in a day or two!

Slow Cloth

These are samples of a type of slow cloth I created for one of the City and Guilds exercises.  The fabric was painted with a base paint, and the the second color was added.  After the paint was worked into the fabric, it had to sit for several days without my peeking into the closed bags to see what was happening---so I had no idea what would emerge until four days later.  I was pretty pleased with the results for my first attempt with this technique.  I actually liked the back side of the green better than the front!  The grey reminds me of a stormy wintery sky.

Serenity Bag

This is my take on the Serenity bag pattern by byAnnie. (http://www.byannie.com/).  It was made as a class sample but no one signed up for the class.  Hopefully I will be able to offer the class again in the winter.  The quilting on the flap followed the fabric design.  I used Hobbs Tuscany Wool batting as well as Texture Magic to bring out the quilting. The quilting was done with Superior Thread's copper-colored metallic thread which behaved beautifully.  Instead of using headliner foam to shape the bag and give it structure, I used fusible fleece.  When i make the bag again I will enlarge the pattern slightly so I can use 1/2" seam allowance.  I found 1/4" too skinny.  The lining fabric which was in my "resource centre" frayed a lot, making construction a bit challenging with the skinny seam allowance.

Embroidered Jacket

This jacket was embroidered using my Bernina 830 and the jumbo hoop. The designs are by Embroidery Library http://www.emblibrary.com/.  Multiple designs were combined using the Bernina Artista v.5 software. There were many hours of stitching involved, especially as I changed some of the colors and the color order. This was a project which I had to "babysit" all the time. Many of the threads were from Ricky Tims' Art Studio line (Superior Threads.) The others were from Superior Threads' Nature Color line. The jacket is a slightly stretchy cotton. 

A Thank You from SAQA

These beautiful flowers arrived this afternoon. I was wondering who they were from. I opened the card, and they were a thank you from the SAQA board for my presentation on mailable art at the Chicago Quilt Festival

From Fiber to Fabric is available again

I have kicked myself for years for not buying from Fiber to Fabric when it was published in 1997. At that time quilting was fun, but I had not been seeking out lots of information. Now that I take my quilting more seriously and am a City and Guilds student, I was thrilled to find it in e-book format on C & T Publishing’s website. (It is also available in a print-on-demand format.) While I do not yet own an ebook reading device, I was readily able to read the book on my computer as it is a .pdf file. Unlike most quilting books, there are no projects…it is a reference book to be used as necessary.

One caveat---the book is about cotton quilting fabric, threads used in quiltmaking, and batting. It does not cover textiles made of other fibers such as wool and silk. Secondly the discussions on batting and threads are a little out of date, as these fields have burgeoned in the last two years since the electronic edition of the book was released. In the chapter on batting Ms Hargrave discusses some specific battings, while the thread chapter is much more generic, but does not talk about many of the specialized options available in the current marketplace.

For quiltmakers who want to understand the fabric and thread they are working with, this well-written book will tell you everything you want to know---and possibly more! The information on the processes used to create woven cotton fabric is extremely detailed and well illustrated. The information on how thread is produced is also well-illustrated and easy to understand. Ms Hargrave devotes a section to testing fabrics. While this may not be important for fast and easy quilts, it is important for heirloom quality quilts designed to last a long time. Although most quilters will not go to the lengths described to test their fabric for most projects, the information is there to use as needed.

For years I have suggested to interested students that they borrow the book from a library; now they can own a copy.

This is the link to the ebook (it is hard to find it directly with C & T's search function.)  http://www.ctpub.com/productdetails.cfm?PC=1659

Happy make-it-and take-it participants at the C&T Pulbishing booth

A few links to photographs of  my make-it-and-take it at the Anaheim CHA Trade Show
Fabric postcard on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
C & T's Publisher makes a postcard
A few of my postcards on loan to their booth

This was the first time I had done something of this nature.  It was a great learning experience for me.