A Quilt-centric Summer.....

Sometimes all deadlines seem to collide into one small window, right?   Usually, it seems to happen near the holidays but, for me, it happened in June.  Many deadlines came to a head, and a few unanticipated opportunities that I simply could not pass up.  So, what I am trying to say is that, at times, I am my own worst enemy.  It seems that a good deadline is often needed to propel me across the finish line with some of my art projects.
I will write a separate post about traveling to Cleveland to tape two segments for "Fresh Quilting", but I wanted to write about the studio activity surrounding that and other projects.

First, I wanted to show you our little "quilt-turning" while the San Antonio Modern guild 

had its retreat in Kerrville at the Creations retreat center.  Have you heard about it?

Creations is an amazing quilt shop:  so well-curated!  They purchased the house across their shop parking lot and renovated it into a fabulous retreat center.  We love driving up there twice a year!

The "camp counselors" organized this quilt turning and each attendee brought a quilt to discuss.  We toured each others' rooms to see the quilts.  Fun!

I was surprised and thrilled to see Urban Artifacts was being carried in the shop!

I reside on the same shelf as Marcia Derse, and that gives me a lot of joy...

I knew Marcia's fabric would play well with mine, and vice versa.

 Okay, so I probably didn't really have time to go on that retreat but I MADE time to go because I love my sister guild-members and I didn't want to miss out on the fun.  Our guild is the best, people.
There is such generosity of spirit, acceptance, and mutual support with very little "drama".  I am a happy member.

Hi from the studio!  I'm standing in front of part of my very-full design wall.

These UFO's are haunting me...

Now, here is what I worked on back in my home studio:

"Hedgehog Social" is a digitally-printed piece that is based on a quilt I constructed

last year.  I took the photo of the quilt and altered the colors in PicMonkey, 

then printed FQs on the Spoonflower site.

The beautiful graffiti quilting is done by Joanna Marsh.

The theme of the month was:  facing the quilts!!!

Joanna Marsh, of Kustom Kwilts and Designs did the marvelous quilting

that I denoted for this piece, as well as the beautiful graffiti-style work on the Hedgehog quilt

and all the obsessive matchstick quilting that I requested on the others below.

Her work is just amazing and I am grateful to be able to collaborate with her.

This is another digital piece, part of a series that has begun this summer.

It is called "Summer of Love: Psychedelic Produce" (I know... it is a bit crazy)

This is an altered image of a cross-cut Napa cabbage.

I improv-cut and re-pieced the central portions of all four cabbages.

If you look closely you will notice that there are two tones of pink and two tones of yellow, a "glowing" one and a "flat" one (hello Nancy Crow-language).

I love the way this little subtlety makes the quilt sparkle.

Isn't the quilting amazing?!

Here is the back, a custom-printed Tula Pink fabric.  Gorgeous!

I love to put facings on most quilts as I love the clean edge they create. 

My facing has a curved corner.

This piece was created with solids sent to me by the sponsor of my segment on Improv Piecing

for "Fresh Quilting" series 200.  The quilt was ruler-free cut with a rotary cutter and machine-pieced.

Joanna quilted it with narrow matchstick lines that are slightly organic.

By the way, my new and perfect batting combo for pieces that will go to shows is this:

Quilter's Dream Orient (a silk/cotton blend) as the base, topped with Quilter's Dream Wool.

This combo is lightweight, will quilt to a very low-loft, and the wool prevents creasing during shipping.  It is just what I have been searching for.  Most double-bats get so weighty! 

This is just great.

This quilt is another digitally printed image, altered in PicMonkey and printed FQs from Spoonflower.  The image was taken under the pier at Wrightsville Beach NC when I traveled there

to stay with a friend after Quiltcon Savannah.  I created the negative space borders to reference

the architectural details seen in the pier.  I love this quilt!

Same batting:  Quilter's Dream Orient topped with QD Wool.

Organically matchstick quilted by Joanna Marsh.

This quilt, called "Interchange I", is a ruler-free improv quilt I constructed 

as part of a Nancy Crow workshop called "Sets & Variables".  This had a specific 

set of parameters that I had to adhere to:  size and two blocks were high contrast value, 

the two others were to have colors that were of the same value.  It was

quite challenging!  The quilt was longarm quilted by the wonderful Gina Pina from Austin.

This quilt has a single wool batting and the quilting echoes the basic shapes of the 

composition in 1/2" lines.  

I need to get a full image shot of this quilt, another from the Improvisational exercises workshop,

an advanced workshop with Nancy Crow.  This may be one of my very favorite quilts ever made.

I love this quilt so much.  It is very special to me, and I am just teasing you with this "quilt pile"

on my sewing table.  I was frantically putting the facing on it before I went to tape the 

"Fresh Quilting" episodes.  You will see it hanging in that blog post....

Next up: a detail from  "Resist Tyranny", a curator-piece I constructed to be part of 

an exhibition called Threads of Resistance.  

and here I am in Lowell at the New England Quilt Museum, standing in front of the quilt.

At the reception held at the home of my friend Sue Bleiweiss, on the right.

L-R:  Judy Coates Perez, Michele Muska, myself, and Sue.

So.  That was a LOT of quilt finishing inside the month of June.  Plus, I went to Los Angeles for a concert at the Hollywood Bowl, flew to Cleveland for the taping of Fresh Quilting, and squeezed a quilt retreat into the mix.  Hey, it keeps me out of mischief.

Hop, Skip, & Jump! A bloghop to showcase Jamie Fingal's new fabric line called "Hopscotch"

Welcome to Hopscotch:  a playful tone-on-tone blender line!  This collection of 83 fabrics features hand-drawn imagery chosen from Jamie Fingal's sketchbooks.  Images such as dots, various geometrics, flowers, and whimsical loop-de-loops.  It's all here!  The large collection is a veritable rainbow of colors and will be the perfect blender to reach for in any of your projects. 

The line is launching at Spring Quilt Market in St. Louis, MO in May, and will be arriving into your favorite quilt shops in August of 2017.

Jamie, as many of you know, is a close friend and the other half of Dinner At Eight Artists.  We enjoy collaborating on a variety of things and when she asked if I was interested in creating a small quilt using her new line I was very excited to work with it.  I selected these:

and oops I guess I didn't get the bright orange in this shot but you will see it...

Lately, I have been doing mostly improvisational work that is "free-cut" with a rotary cutter (meaning no rulers) and I thought it might be interesting to see if I could generate an abstracted botanical piece.

Here's the basic idea:  First, I cut several pieces of fabric into large rectangles.  Next, using my rotary cutter and beginning at the TOP of the cut I made a curved arc into the cloth.  Now, people who use rotary cutters tend to cringe at the idea of pulling to rotary blade toward themselves but the truth is that, when free-cutting, one tends to have more control over the cut.  It feels more like drawing with a  pencil or painting with a brush.  That's how I like to think of it.  I'm being a nerd to admit this but it completely thrills me that I have a gestural "mark" as this cut seam.  Is that weird?  Probably.

The first cut

Next, I overlay the cut fabric onto the piece I intend to sew it onto.  The fabrics must overlap at the seam.  

Once cut, I turn the fabrics, top side is the concave edge, and stitch.

The seam is pressed to the convex arc.  It just "feels right"

Taking the piece back to the cutting mat I repeat the process.

This is basically the idea:  building shapes, taking care to always sew with a 1/4" seam allowance.

Here is an almost-finished "tulip".

Eh, why leave it alone?!  I want to add some more to it, plus I need to join it

to another large section of the construction.

Here is the back of part of the tulip.

I love looking at the back side of an improv (well, really, ANY sort of construction!) piece 

as sometimes it seems to tell more of the story about its making.

This just bugs me.  First, I'm not fond of the tulip on the right because of the two leaves.  

I ask myself what I was thinking!  It looks trite.  It is going to go under the knife again....

I wanted a couple of abstract "buds".  

So I lopped off one of my leaves on the red tulip and moved it to the right edge.

Here are two large pieces, overlaid before they are cut for a new seam.

And here it is after the seam is sewn.

I opted to quilt the surface with light gray, black, white, and two fluorescent thread colors

in order to "ghost" a couple more buds into the piece.

Here is the finished piece.  I opted to do a facing on the quilt.

The finished size is 18 inches square.

Please be sure to stop by all these artists' blogs to see what they created using Hopscotch.  Have fun, and thanks so much for stopping by!
hop, skip, jump blog hop
4-24 Jamie Fingal https://jamiefingaldesigns.blogspot.com/
4-25 Cindy Cooksey https://cookseyville.blogspot.com/
4-26 Sue Bleiweiss  https://suebleiweiss.blog/
4-27 Lyric Kinard  https://lyrickinard.blogspot.com/ 
4-28 Susan Brubaker Knapp  https://wwwbluemoonriver.blogspot.com/
5-1 You Are Here!! https://leslietuckerjenison.blogspot.com/
5-2 Deborah Boschert https://deborahsjournal.blogspot.com/
5-3 Libby Williamson https://libbywilliamsondesigns.blogspot.com/

It's My "Blog-iversary"

I began this blog on March 1, 2009.
Lately, I've been a bit lax in writing and I hope to return my focus to posting more frequently.  I love to write and yet I allow other things to get priority of my time.  At the beginning of the year I vowed to do a couple of new things to add to my studio practice:  a daily spot of time for meditation, writing in a journal "app" each day, and I began an online "strength training" course along with a close friend.   My friend isn't a practicing artist but this course is designate to have a broader scope than simply art-making.  It is really about establishing some daily and weekly habits to improve focus and a depth of meaning in daily life.  This course, called "Creative Strength Training", is facilitated by Jane Dunnewold and her daughter, Zenna Duke.  *Enrollment is still open until 4/1/17 FYI.  So far, so good.

I have had a busy start to the year and (gasp) the first quarter is about to wind down.  January was spent teaching at Craft Napa at the second annual event, work on my 2nd line of fabric for RJR, and finally a week-long independent study at Jane's studio.  This particular week has become such an important component of each year for me.  So much work I make is inspired by the independent study!  I celebrated year # 15 in January.
February I continued my work on fabric line #2, and took a break to travel to Savannah for the first time for QuiltCon.  I met a friend there and we rented an airbnb right downtown.   Wandering around this charming town was such fun and the show was great!

 Everyone loved "Bling", by Katherine Jones from Tasmania 

It was really fun to spot "Boulder Field", by Kathy York!

She created this beauty from Urban Artifacts fabric and RJR's lovely solids for 

Quilt Market 2016.

I loved walking around in Savannah.  What a beautiful city!  The best part of it was discovering all the small "squares" scattered throughout the city.  I loved stumbling onto them and was delighted to see how much people enjoyed using them.

Yikes!  They were steep, too!

Okay, I'll try...!

Old headstones.  I guess they move them to this wall after they topple on their site? 

I dunno.

The Spanish Moss!

I loved getting a feel for this beautiful city.  Afterward, I drove up the coastline to stay with a friend on Wrightsville Beach for a few days.  

In addition to walking in the sand every day we dyed a bunch of fabric!

...and witnessed several breath-taking sunsets!

March brought a tight focus on finishing up my samples for my second line of fabrics for RJR.

I thought a little visit to RJR might be good.  It also gave me the opportunity to visit friends and relatives in the Los Angeles area.

Lunch and shopping with Jamie

Here is the RJR warehouse.

Spotted:  bundles of Urban Artifacts fat quarters!!

I visited my wonderful aunt.

I got to feed Tank, the Desert Tortoise.

The first time I did this I was 10 years old.

the beautiful texture of a palm tree.

A train ride from Anaheim up to Sierra Madre through LA 

brought me to another friend's house.

I was lucky enough to be designated an honorary grandmother to 

several beautiful little girls.  I was doubly-honored to read this one her 

bedtime story.

I got a tour of her pre-school.

Since it was St. Patrick's day they had several leprechaun "traps" set!

We spent the afternoon exploring the American Gallery & the Chinese/Japanese gardens at the Huntington Library & Gardens.  What a beautiful place (my 2nd time there) and so close to my friends' house!

Protea in bloom

An enormous Calder that I had forgotten about...

One of my favorite painters, Mary Cassatt.

I have a "thing" for lotus pods..

Look at the beautiful paved patio.

A California Juniper bonsai.

I wonder if this is what the ghost trees near Point Lobos are?

I arrived home to this copy of Quilting Arts in which I am the 

author of the "Last Word".

If you have the opportunity to read it I would love to know what you think.

and now it is spring!  The time has changed.

What does springtime bring for you?