Crazy and Embroidery

Details of the crazy-framed blocks below. The maker embroidered images of Victorian women reading in the block centers and fainter images that could be from particular works of fiction along with authors and titles on the crazy frames. The theme is particulary appealing to me!

Crazy Quilting Framing Embroidery

Another new crazy quilt, blocks or crazy framing for embroidery. This one with sepia-toned themed images.

Detail, The Wise Virgin

 

Log cabin blocks.

The Wise Virgin

A very small, 11 by 18 inch quilt. I think it is photo transfers, embroidery, applique and some log cabin-type piecing.

Detail, Crazy Quilt

Detail of previous post's picture.

Pastel Crazy Quilt

 

This was a small quilt. The sign said about 25 by 68 but it looks "squarer" than that. I'm pretty fastinated by crazy quilts. I've always liked the idea of them more than the reality. The Victorian ones tend to be dark and for all their use of scraps, have a similar feel one to another. In the past few years ones that have distinctive, lighter qualities have begun to show up. This one is all light colors and there is quite a bit of tatted lace included. Summary of the artist's statement: Part of a series of dragonfly quilts, made from vintage kimono panels with stenciling, stamping and beading.

Here They Come: Quilt Odyssey Quilts

This is the amazing 3-D quilt. I don't think I've seen another like it. I've tried to give a sense of the sculptural quality in the photos. It hangs about 4 inches out from the wall and the stars and the hanging pocket areas have depth. That is they are constructed to create valleys or, conversely, to stand away from the wall and make three dimensional shapes. The wonderful thing about this piece is that is it fully constructed, it isn't just a surface that shaped move off of, the piece has a two planes about 4 inches apart that the shapes are engineered between. Interesting and unusual.

Quilt Odyssey in Hershey

The ride over and back was pretty, found great raspberry softserve! The quilt show included the $100,000 Quilt Challenge (updated to remove link since it is no more!) quilts to date and specific Quilt Odyssey entries. There were not as many quilts as I've seen at some other shows but still a good trip and a good show. The quilts were set up so that clear plastic tape made an X cross in the middle of each viewing bay. This prevented visitors from seeing the artist's statment in many cases. If I get really ambitious I'll transcribe some of the statements into this blog when I post the pictures starting tomorrow!

Hershey Show

The Hershey Quilt show is this week! Something to look forward to and lots of new pictures! I think I'm going Thursday.

African Prints, detail

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Detail of the quilt, below, showing an applied piece that looks to be a portion of a motif cut directly from African fabric.

Using African Fabric

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I buy African fabric when ever I see it and can afford it. I suspect other quilters do also but I don't have a lot of ideas about what to do with it. It is characterized by large scale prints and I know I am always reluctant to cut these up because they are so graphic as a single piece of fabric. I like this use. We can see the whole motifs in some places and in others the artist has chosen to fragment the images.

Alphabet Detail: L and M

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Detail of the quilt below.

Alphabets

  

IMG_0023v2 Originally uploaded by LauraMoore

I really love alphabet representations of all sorts: children's books, fonts, monograms and this quilt.

http://www.LibraryThing.com

I heard Abby Blachly, a Librarian from LibraryThing speak on Friday. She gave a great demo of the site, pointing out features I didn't know it had and really got me intersted in it. I've had an account for a year or so and really never did much with it but this weekend I spent time adding more books, looking at the tools, reading group posts and viewing the profiles that have many books in common with me! It was pretty compelling!

Goals

As my birthday month approaches I am becoming vigilant. I've learned that it is a good time to think about change and its progeny: milestones and goals because this is the time of year when it comes to call whether I've planned for it or not. What about:

• At least one entry in this blog per week?
  
• I'd also like to finish my zinnia quilt
• Post more pictures (any pictures?) of my own work even though it isn't good enough, is derivative, isn't finished and so on (!).
  
• Write more posts that are creative and fun. One creative post per month?
  
• Take an art class this year.
  
• Be less stressed.