When the Root Children Awaken

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Originally uploaded by Laura333

I uploaded more quilt show pictures. This one has got to be one of my favorite quilts of all time. I seem to remember the images from an earlier publication of the book?

The quilt itself looks like it includes velvets and satins and possibly beads and bits of embellishement. When the quilt is viewed directly you realize the texture is the result of very skillful use of mottled and maybe hand-dyed fabrics, impossibly detailed applique and lots of intricate embroidery. I really think the piece is created entirely of cotton fabrics and floss.

Living Analog

I've been living off-line for the past few days. I had a busy non-digital weekend. I wish there had been more time to work on my stuff.
Last week I came across a thought provoking post about clearing out unnecessary baggage. I've been mentally totting up what I can get rid of every since:

• Excessive pride.
• Not taking risks, especially creatively (I've been trying and this is harder than I thought it would be).
• Time-filling activities that I don't really want to do when I could be making stuff.
• Mentally scolding myself so much.
• Worry (This is actually getting easier. The older I get, the more things that happen, the more I live through, the more I know there just isn't that much to worry about...)

This is a list to work on some more...and it is also a good example of why blogs are kind of amazing.

Flickr and My Own Private Quilt Show

I'm experimenting with Flock. It's a new (to me) browser with lots of social networking stuff built in. It is too distracting to use at work so I'm trying it at home. One attractive feature is integrated Flickr upload tools. However, I did end up using the Flickr upload tool to add lots of new quilt pictures tonight. The week is getting to long too work on any projects and I've used up all the supplies I need to work on the redwork quilt.

What I did Instead

So since I'm not feeling productive I've wandered around the house taking pictures.

Things on the the shelves in my studio. I used a Photoshop brush for the first time to "sand" the edges. I'm trying to learn...

Buttons in plastic boxes. I've been collecting them since I was a really little child.

Another amaryllis, one of the last for this year.

The 25 dollar flower show bulb. It's called Temptation, and it was!

Springtime comes to South Philly.

Lazy Saturday

I don't seem to be able to do much to day. I didn't sleep well last night. I worked on my redwork quilt the first part of the night and tossed and turned for the rest of it. I made many of the embroidery block when I first got my Bernina a couple of years ago so I guess I could consider it a sort of UFO and count it towards my Great Unfinished Project Confession but now, honestly, it has grown far beyond those couple of dozen early learning pieces.

I'm intending it to be an actual bed quilt, queen-sized, and I've made a lot of progress. This kind of traditional piecing is mindless but soothing. You cut the pieces precisely, but since it is fabric and fairly forgiving, you don't really have to stress much about it. Then, especially for a simple quilt like this one, you sit at the machine (always my friend!) and stitch for as long as you want to and not really think about anything. After I got the the point last night where I realized I would have to embroider more squares to finish it out and I didn't want to set up the embroidery unit, I picked up some scraps and started to play with how small I could piece something.

Craft Show Favorites

My Goodness, it's been days since I've posted! We visited the Smithsonian Craft Show and saw some beautiful things. I think there were more fiber crafters and paper artists than usual and I found plenty to be inspired by. Favorites were:

Jung-Ok Chung's embroidery looked as though it was simply laying on the surface of the fabric. I had to sort of rotate my view around the pieces to figure out if and where the threads were entering the fabric. Her work floats.

Virginia Rose Kane's botanical collages were intricate and interesting.

The images on line don't do Lucrezia Bieler's work justice. You can look at these detailed and delicate paper cuts long and much and find new things to see. Talking to the artist herself confirms the thought that goes into the work. They are delightful.

A view from the balcony.

The Original

Painted Threads: Mixed Media Paper Quilt- Finished?
Here is a link to the original inspiration. For some reason I can't make the picture show up. What an awesome piece!

The Tea Bag Quilt

I am completely fascinated with and enamored of Judith Coates Perez's quilt on the cover of Quilting Arts. Painted Threads: My second cover! I absolutely loved the look and the idea that tea bags were used in the construction. I had to try. Since I always have tea bags in every stage of use I went, fished some out of the pot of iced tea I was making and laid them out to dry. The results of two days effort is below.At this point there actually isn't much about it I like. I chose a pink to grayish color range for the back ground and the tea bags didn't disappear but that isn't my real problem with the piece. I don't like the composition and I'm not sure if it is because I mixed a photo with the delicate line drawings on the tea bag paper or if the the balance of the elements is just all wrong. The glare on the surface is from oil pastels and not from a glossy acrylic medium. At this point I'm trying to decide if it is worth it to continue to work on it or just to try again.

But making it was compelling. I had fun doing it and I'm busy sorting out what I learned.

Mrs R. O. Backhouse

My great aunt's favorite daffodil. Through the magic of Google I learned that Mrs Backhouse was the hybridizer. Apparently she was legendary. It is fitting that my aunt, a legend herself in many ways, favored this bloom. I was pleased to find and buy it at a late summer garden show at Winterthur and I was delighted to see it in my yard. It was like an old friend on my door step. Not a great picture but I took lots and none came out. Try again tomorrow.

A Friday (Hurray) in Spring

Daffodils, Friday (and leaving work a bit early) and Orchid Formosa Oolong Jade Tea.

An Amaryllis Break

The Amaryllis have been amazing this winter. They are very fancy show girls. Entering in January, kicking their heels way up high and coming back again and again, with waves of buds, for curtain calls

A Finished One

This is the finished quilt that the denim rounds are the remainder of. This quilt was the project I worked on in the fall Library Quilt Group. It needed to be simple and mostly portable and I don't really hand quilt. Much recycled denim was on hand and the picture tells the story. The area inside the fringe-y frame provide a nice little area to experiment with techniques. I did some machine embroidery and cut it up and some free motion couching (fun) shown here, and of course added lots of different cotton prints and flannels.

Hand-Dyed and Painted

I think of these as an unfinished project because I would love to use them for something -- so that sort of sits in my mind. But I don't have an idea that feels right to me. I have at least a dozen pieces ranging in size from about a third of a yard to about a yard and a quarter. I had a wonderful time dyeing the fabric and I'd like to make more -- I don't think I can let myself until I use some of what I've already made!
These are two of my favorite pieces. Both 45 inch squares.
This is two separate pieces of fabric, both hand dyed and recently stamped and painted with acrylic paints. It was fun and interesting to add the images and paint.
Rounds of denim and commercial prints left over from a finished quilt. I started painting those along with the dyed fabric. I have an idea for these that was inspired by the Fiberforce quilts I saw at the Pennsylvania Quilt Extravaganza - maybe I can get to it soon.

So the denim bits are about time and the lengths of dyed fabric are about inspiration or the will to cut into the fabric! The will to use things up is a problems for me. A really good idea can get me over that hump though.

Next...

I have had this print fabric for a very long time. It looks like a Kay Nielsen illustration and I've moved it all over the country (along with the denim that it is inset into). The fiber is wool yarn free-motion couched onto the surface. It is an approximately 15 by 18 inch panel. I like the way it looks but I'm not sure what to do with it. A bag maybe? So, I guess it needs a plan and then of course, an evening or so to complete.

The Great Unfinished Project True Confession Continued...

Next round of unfinished projects. I'm reminding my self here that the goal is to motivate me, to catalog my inventory and try to identify the barrier that is keeping me from finishing the project and the solution or way around the barrier. I want to add another goal today that has suggested itself from looking at lots of other blogs since that day last week when I went exploring. The additional goal is to actually think about my creative process. The notion that I have one is new. I've always thought of myself as reasonably creative but I've never thought about how I get to that point. It will be useful to learn what helps that process. Maybe it will give me a head start when I have some time to work on projects.

This is another easy one. It is about a 12 by 12 square of solid silk scraps that I'm doing some bobbin work on. The goal is to finish it up, back it like a little quilt and give it Miss Paula to hang next to her on the book case. The only barrier here is time and the motivation to finish. I start much better than I finish.

Miss Paula,
doesn't the little quilt match her nicely!