Betty Busby Blog

Looking back

2012-03-12T12:03:00.000-07:00

I just got a wonderful reminder of last summer when my friend Tanya Brown sent a link to the curator talk about Quilt National which is currently showing at the San Jose Museum. QNtalk

I was able to go to the opening weekend at the Dairy Barn, and met a lot of supportive, generous artists who have stayed in touch.

Tanya has one of the best blogs around- http://www.tanyabrown.org/blog/

Incisive opinions, brilliant insights and biting humor!

Pat Pauly has an outsize, sparkling personality which is reflected in her glorious work- http://www.piecesandresistance.blogspot.com/

Shoko Hatano journeyed from Japan with her daughter http://hatanoshoko.com/

Deidre Adams (originally from Albuquerque:)) is just north of us in the Denver area. Not only is she a truly original artist, she also did some great blog posts about our time at the Dairy Barn. http://www.deidreadams.com/

I do try to make an effort to attend shows - there is nothing more eye-opening than seeing your work displayed in a gallery setting, and meeting the other artists and show organizers is quite a treat.

I'll leave you with a pic of the beginning of Opposites Attract- yes it was hung on the clothesline to dry :)

Quilting Arts in Stitches- Volume 6

2012-02-27T15:04:00.003-08:00

I'm thrilled to have an article in the latest issue of Quilting Arts in Stitches.

It's a downloadable emagazine with great interactive features- photo zoom and video along with beautifully illustrated instructional material. It's available for your pc, mac and ipad here-interweave

AND in the app store, if that's easier for you.

It's spring here in New Mexico, which means we're subjected to howling icy winds. One of my favorite antidotes to bad weather is to surround myself with glowing, luscious color.

Here are some of the pieces I love to paint, I call them "bullseyes" and they are a great springboard for all kinds of projects. I used one of them as a base for a step by step project featured in the Stitches article. Here's a tutorial on you tube on how to make them- once you get started, you won't want to stop!

paint a bullseye

We're offering a workshop in Santa Fe featuring this technique and many others-http://www.artquiltsantafe.com/

want to see how to turn this-into this? it's in the magazine!

The great thing about the format is that you can explain it in print, then show it in a video that you can watch as many times as you like.

I'll be giving away a pair of GrabARoos Gloves for Quilting that were reviewed in the magazine. Drop me a note and let me know if you'd like them.

My fabulous fellow artists from this issue are also writing about it- here's the schedule.....WITH a giveaway on each

make sure to check them all out!

Monday 2/27 - Lindsey Murray http://quiltingdaily.com

Tues 2/28 - Betty Busby /http://bettybusbyblog.blogspot.com

Wed 2/29 - Barbara Schneider http://www.Barbaraschneider-artist.blogspot.com

Thu 3/1 - Nancy Cook .nancygcook.blogspot.comhttp://www

Fri 3/2 - Tracy Stilwell .tracystilwell.blogspot.comhttp://www

Mon 3/5 - Sandy Donabed http://www.sandeedee.blogspot.com

Tue 3/6 - Jane Davila http://www.janedavila.blogspot.com

Happy Quilting!!

but wait there's more

2012-02-05T18:15:00.000-08:00

Just now the question of using poly thread with the heat gun came up, so I thought I'd put up some pics

of the tests I did.

first this is the layout, stitched.....4 different meltables- poly and nylon- on top of 4 pieces of cotton.

this is a sheer home dec material, melted really nicely but there isn't enough contrast with the cotton below to see it well.

this is a disgusting nylon pillowcase.

this is the poly I ended up using, you can see where the thread has burned away in spots.

So while the heat gun was out, I attacked some felt with it.....

made some of it into trees, and put them in quilt. Although they were pretty stiff with the paint & all they were no problem to sew through.

Moonlight Sonata, 25x42

Artery

2012-01-30T10:28:00.000-08:00

Ok, what do a cholla skeleton and face cleaning pads have in common?

AND, how did they end up in a quilt called Artery?

so, I paint a

piece of fabric and start laying out the painted face pads on it.

Which is where the cholla skeleton comes in, it has the kind of repetitive organic pattern that I love.

I was annoyed with the kids for leaving wet gloppy cleaning pads in the shower until I looked at them closely- ooh, they have little scrubby dots on them! that pop out when they are painted, even better...

after all the little green scrubbies were attached with their purple felt centers, I quilted them to their background using a piece of felt for the backing.

after the quilting, I cut the whole thing out and turned the edges under.

here it is laid out onto a piece of polyester that will be used for the experimental background.

I trace around the edges so I know where to paint.

here's the painting using my fav dye-na-flow

so then I take the painted poly and layer it on top of red cotton batik

and then quilt the whole thing.

and now for the fun part- I melted part of the poly away with the heat gun to reveal the red batik underneath....use cotton thread for the quilting!

so now I can sew the central branch shape to the background. hooray for invisible thread!

voila!

Easy stretching

2012-01-27T11:51:00.000-08:00

I normally like to paint on a flat surface, but sometimes stretching the fabric is the best option.
It can be super easy & cheap to make a frame that's easily adjustable and can work for a lot of sizes and any material.

Get 2 pieces of wood (these are 1x2's)- length needs to be longer than your biggest fabric measurement- and lay them parallel to each other- as far apart as the shorter measurement of your fabric.

In the photo, these are the east to west pieces.

Lay 2 pieces of wood on the top to act as crossbars- these are actually plant stakes, you can use 1x1's or more 1x2's.......these are NOT going to be under the fabric, so make sure they are further apart than your widest fabric measurement.

screw them together in all 4 corners, 2 screws are good to have to prevent the thing from tweaking.

ok, now flip it over- we are going to attach the fabric to the 2 long sides.
It's good to rinse out your material and let it dry first, any organic material will absorb water and then shrink as it it dries- even PFD.

ok, now staple your material to one long side, then stretch it over to the other long side and staple it.
Notice how the crossbars underneath are outside of the fabric area.

I put the staples in loosely, it's a lot easier to remove them when done. There are special long metal silk painter push pins that they use that are worth getting if you do this a lot.

If you need additional stretching on the ends, it's easy to pin a piece of scrap material and then loosely staple it to the crossbars.

ready for painting!
BTW, elmer's blue glue gel works great as a resist. Just remember to let paint cure before rinsing out, a week is ok, 2 is better.
I usually do the painting outside with the stretcher on a couple of sawhorses. If you're using a table, remember to prop it up at the corners to prevent the middle from sagging and touching the table.
It will most likely drip in the middle, be prepared.
happy painting!

Torrey Pines

2012-01-18T14:07:00.000-08:00

Several years ago, I had the great pleasure to visit the San Diego area for the opening reception of the Visions show. We made a day trip to Torrey Pines State Park, and I made a piece based on some photos I took from the back door of the visitor's center. The place is unique, in my experience, because you drive up to the top of a mountain overlooking the sea, yet are still surrounded by trees. They are unique to the area, but since I can't see what makes them so different, I just made some regular old pine needles :)

This is one of my pictures that I used as reference- of course, I changed things around substantially.

First I ripped off a hunk of silk and painted a sky

Then I put up a piece of newsprint- off of a 48" wide roll I bought a couple of years ago- a must have!
Since I hate drawing straight lines, the horizon line is folded in. A couple of reference photos are printed out and pinned to the right.

Here's the sketch, freehanded of course. Yes, this is all the drawing I usually do.

here you see my fabulous light table- recycled glass shower doors, sawhorses, shop light.
I have the newsprint sketch between 2 of the glass pieces, and will lay silk over the top to paint it. The light shining upward will let me see the guidelines of the sketch with out having to actually make marks on the silk.

painting in progress, it's intentionally very loose and flowy- I'll add details with paintstick and stitching.

my favorite stencil- ripped up paper. You can do almost anything with it.

surf lines and estuary stream.

I seamed the sky and the sea/land portion along the horizon line, and pre quilted the entire thing.

here is is, having boulders and hills tried on for size. The ones on the left are from another picture I took there that I printed onto fabric, chopped up and rearranged. It's further to the right than the view of the actual picture, but was so cool I had to include it.

this will all go back on the machine and get quilted.

Finally, we get to the pines.....first, the branches are stitched with dark thread, which extends beyond the "bark" area to give me more detail and structure for the needles.

Finally, I come back with green for the needles- the better part of a cone of thread went into this.
et voila-

Torrey Pines, 45x50"

This piece is dedicated to my late, dear friend Trish. I know she's in a place even more beautiful.
Rest in peace.

Making Organelle

2011-11-15T10:23:00.000-08:00

I've had the honor of having "Organelle" selected for Art Quilt Elements in 2012.
It was my only entry to the show, since it was a voyage into the unknown for me- I've been wanting to go further into texture, and thought I would write a little bit about making it.

I started with a piece of raw silk that my friend Darlene brought back from China.
I acid dyed it----part of it was used for another project so it's an odd shape.

Then I began laying out various types of felting material on top- the white is a needle felting wool from my friend Martha, and the colors are silk and wool from a shop in Taos.The actual layout of the fibers took a day and a half.

I wet felted the layers together using good old muscle power with a little help from my palm sander :)

The fibers were able to bond due to the coarseness

of the raw silk, which is the reason I chose it as the base.

the silk & wool roving behaved very differently from the needle felting wool.

I laid this top on a piece of commercial felt- you can see other pieces of it in there, I used every scrap- then I quilted the heck out of it.

Some details- I tried to use the sewing to enhance the flow of the fibers, also I paid attention to the density of the stitching as I wanted the areas with less thread to pop out.

I then cut the piece of raw silk apart and appliqueed it to a batik background, layered with batting and backing.

here it is being re quilted with my little helper.

The double quilting really gave it a lot of texture- I named it after cell sub-structures....

nearly finished, it took a while to decide on the final orientation.

Here it is, see you at the opening reception, I hope!

how to make a fox

2011-10-11T20:40:00.000-07:00

We have been given an wonderful opportunity to have an exhibition at the Open Space Visitor center gallery in November of next year. I thought it would be a great idea to make long, narrow pieces to hang from the center of the gallery that we can walk through, and have it be like hiking in our mountains.

The gallery wanted a sample, so I decided to make a piece centered on a gray fox I saw running through our neighborhood one night,

First of all I worked on the fox, beginning with a sketch in markers on a buff piece of batik.

Then I put it on the
machine, simply layered on a piece of felt with no other backing.

I then stitched it very closely with grays and a little red and white.

After it was completed, I removed it from the machine, cut away the excess felt, and turned the fabric under to make a large applique piece.

Next came the various elements of the landscape- I painted a piece of silk for the sky, and marker-sketched a bit of hand dye with some distant mountains.
I knew I wanted rocks (we're the rock capital of the world), yuccas, and a grassy hill, so I cut those shapes out of appropriately colored material.

I gave each shape a color wash of dye na flow for
extra shading and depth- grey, burnt umber, and purple. I built the yuccas from the shaded purple-gray-green, stacking up the long narrow leaves on a piece of teflon.

The sky was quilted by itself first-the reason for this is two fold- I can sew freely without worrying about running into foreground elements, and also I can move those elements around for maximum impact.

After removing it from the machine, I began working my way downward- placing the mountains, hill and a couple of rocks- then I quilted them.

Then came boulders, grasses, the yuccas, and the fox was appliqueed in front of them.

I used a beautiful striped hand dye for the foreground, over which I put the foreground plants- chamisa and prickly pear- and dabbed on cream, yellow and yellow ochre for the flowers.

Since the piece is meant for free hanging, I backed it with a lightweight black interfacing to hide the stitching and help it to hang straight.
voila!-

First Colony

2011-10-02T14:47:00.000-07:00

I took a few process pics while making the latest, which is an assembly piece.
It began with a yard and a half of silk habotai and a similar sized chunk of reemay.
First step was to paint the reemay in the color pattern I wanted, beginning with the lightest color which outlined the shapes.

First white, then naples yellow, then began mixing some iron oxide in.

I segued all the way to deep purple at the centers.

Then I painted the silk in the same pattern but with the gradation going the opposite way- dark around the outside, light in the middle.

the silk, painting done.

fusible was then applied to the reemay, and I melted a pattern in it with a soldering iron.

here are 2 of reemay cutouts laid on top of the silk.

this is the silk and the reemay, all fused together and ready for the preliminary quilting.

I put it on the machine with just felt as a backing, and sewed it all, and then cut them apart.

After I turned all the edges under, I reassembled them in the original pattern. I auditioned a lot of different colors of silk dupioni for the background, and finally chose a honey-to purple iridescent that I had overdyed with rust. I traced the outline of the shapes on the silk with chalk, and quilted just the background.here you can just see the chalk outlines,

this is the quilting pattern

I then appliqued stitched the reemay and silk shapes over the quilted background.

this is a detail of the finished thing, am going to wait a bit before posting the completed piece.

Fun with Silk

2011-08-29T21:03:00.000-07:00

I've been having a ton of fun working with steam set french

silk dyes, using some of the techniques graciously taught

to me by my friend Judith.

My Maven buddy Cheryl gave me a bag full of silk she discovered

at the Goodwill, so I've had lots of stuff to experiment with.

where would we be without our friends?

I loved this green one, so I decided it would look great as a diatom.

here it after sewing the heck out of it.

Then I painted a piece of Reemay in a gentle gradation from white to grey lavender.
I cut most of it out & fused it to the pre quilted silk.

voila- the scientific name includes arachno&discus so I guess it's a spider wheel diatom :)

This was one of the first I made, and I made every mistake in the book on it. plowed ahead anyway! It bled severely in the steaming, so it ended up with quite a bit of paint on it. It's inspired by pictures of the endoplasmic reticulum, which is a cell structure that allows certain substances to be transmitted thru it. Besides it was kind of on a dare from Martha :D

here's a piece of it- the round piece is Reemay/silk the lines below it were quilted and then painted. Which took a while. Full view is on the website and facebook.

the gift keeps giving

2011-08-17T19:35:00.000-07:00

some of Sue's silk was made into 2 scarlet ibises. Originally intended to be put in the same piece, they ended up featured separately.
The first was Limpopo (after the great green greasy Limpopo River in Kipling)

It ended up on the cover of Machine Quilting Unlimited, and was purchased by a family that actually lives near an ibis sanctuary in Trinidad (!)
I began the next project with the other ibis, a big piece of silk dupioni over painted with iridescent ink and Dye-Na-Flow, and a paper cut out the same size as the leaves I wanted to use. I pinned them to the wall, and printed out a photo of it on plain paper. Then I made a rough sketch right on the photo of the rest of the design with colored pencils. I like this planning technique because the basic elements are there, to scale, and I can get an idea of how many new elements I need to make to complete the piece.

Welcome to the Jungle was the result. It's won several awards, including Best Wall Quilt at AQS Knoxville, and Best of United States at the International Quilt Expo in Manchester NH.

So far, Sue's silk has inspired 5 very different works-and-maybe more to come- but the best gift of all is her friendship!

The Gift

2011-08-16T09:27:00.000-07:00

My dear friend Sue gave me a stunning piece of handwoven silk brought back from Thailand by her brother years ago. I wanted to talk a bit about what an inspiration it has been, and the many ways one piece of fabric can be used.
the first project I did with it started with overpainting parts of it with iridescent inks-

then I drew a tree on it freehand with paintsticks-and stenciled leaves......

added a moon printed onto cloth and quilted it-

Blue Moon was the result, it's featured in 1001 Artisan Textiles and was sold to a collector in Rhode Island.

The next project was Push, which began with painting the silk with india ink and a bit of metallic gold.

It was overlain with non woven material and extensively thread painted.

Push was featured in Visions in Oceanside, CA and was sold from the show to a collector in Southern California.
Two more very different pieces tomorrow.

testing 1,2,3

2011-07-22T19:06:00.000-07:00

I make tests all the time, since I try something new on almost every piece.

I want to see how the process looks, and also check on the durability. The wall pieces aren't meant to be washed of course, but I need to be sure the images are permanent, non smearing, and can withstand some handling- the work gets shipped to shows, sometimes many times.

I feel it's very important for all of us to do this- collectors should feel confident that their investment will last.

I pulled this magnificent pile of silks, some Indian dupioni from Silk Baron and some chinese silk acid dyed by me. I'm looking for that red rock color that we saw last weekend in the Jemez, and might work with a photo from the Valley of Fire by my pal Hannah.

Quilted a few samples to see how they discharge- tried jacquard discharge paste and Decolourant plus in green. Brushed it on really thinly since I just want to highlight the quilting.

The green is really disgusting, see no use for it in this project. this is the paste applied, before steaming.

I was pretty shocked after I steamed these at how readily the color was removed- seems much faster than on cotton. the color with the green warp turned really green after steaming. hm- will need to think about this.

fuzzy logic

2011-07-16T10:18:00.000-07:00

A couple of months ago, I made a bunch of silk "bullseyes" as class samples, and because they are so darn fun to do.
I took one of them and added some felting. Since I can't get the wool to stick on habotai, I glued them together temporarily with Vilene.

here it is during quilting-
The Vilene makes everything stiff as a board, but luckily the machine doesn't seem to mind sewing through it all, and it washes out easily-

It turned out pretty cool, and I'm going to mount it onto another piece.
For the background, I picked out a gorgeous piece of silk brought back from China for me by my good friend Darlene. It became my first acid dyeing experiment, and I've been saving it for something special.

here it is with the silk wool roving laid on top-

under nylon after a couple of passes with the sander-
and rinsed out, still wet- will get quilted when dry.

progress...

2011-07-12T20:33:00.000-07:00

First, I'd like to thank the lovely folks at the Rio Rancho Artist Association for inviting me to give a presentation. We had a good time!

almost finished quilting Synapse.

this is it prior to quilting- silk and wool fibers were lightly felted to some handwoven Thai silk purchased
from Luana Rubin at equilter.

here it is on the machine- lots of sewing on this one!

The base fabric has an interesting story- several years ago, EQuilter posted several colors of the silk for sale. I immediately bought one yard of each color, and am glad I did, since it was sold out in a few days.
I immediately made Xylem from the brilliant yellow/orange-

It sold quickly from my Etsy store.
Next came Urchin, which went to several shows and now belongs to a lovely lady in California.

There's something to be said about hand woven material- it really speaks to me, and I enjoy using it every time.

new directions

2011-07-01T21:09:00.000-07:00

I've been working on combining elements of felting with quilting. I love the lines and and forms that the partly felted fibers assume, they mimic organic internal structures very effectively.
I had never felted anything before, and the instructions available on the internet were just a start, since I was after something different.

I have some gorgeous silk and wool roving from a fellow Etsy seller in Taos.

I laid it out quite sparsely, and sandwiched it in the usual way between sheets of bubble wrap and tulle.

Partial felting followed, rolled it many times between the bubble wrap with hot soapy water.
Since the roving is a combo of silk and wool, it does not seem to felt as readily as pure wool, although that's just an assumption on my part.

I decided to use a marvelous piece of silk burlap (!) from Santa Fe Fabrics as the background. It was laid out over the partially felted fibers, soaked with more soapy water, and rolled again as one piece.

the little dents visible on the surface are from the bubble wrap and disappear after rinsing and drying.
I backed it with brilliant orange silk dupioni to peek out from behind the dark gray burlap.
I wan't after full on nuno felting, with its attendant wrinkling, just wanted to bond the layers together enough to quilt them.

the quilting was fun, I tried to accentuate the forms with several colors of thread to coordinate with the colors of the roving.
It turned out pretty skinny, there is really a lot of shrinkage! and ended up 11x40".

voila! next up- work on composition and layout. stay tuned :)

progress...

2011-05-28T19:36:00.000-07:00

Blogger has been out for about a week, sorry for the lack of postage.
Have been hanging here in Ohio to attend the Quilt National opening.
It's been a great experience, saw lots of friends and met some new ones- and the artwork is great!
I have a couple more pics to put up after they come out of the camera....

before I left, i was able to get a bit of work done on the latest-
headed back early tomorrow to get back to it!

Finally, a sneak peek at another cell piece-
this is gonna be fun!

textures

2011-05-22T06:56:00.000-07:00

found on some old buildings in Colorado-
email me for larger files if you want to use them in your artwork-

but wait there's more

2011-05-16T16:40:00.000-07:00

Because I love painting so much, and to give myself a little more elbow room, I make a silk background to use for the fish instead of the batik I had originally chosen.
This is really typical, I often change big as well as small things as I go-

the silk is so transparent when wet that it's hard to see, but it is there- lying directly on the styrofoam.

It got pinned on the wall and I stuck on a bunch of the critters I've been making- this is going to be a well populated sea!

more components- a pile of seaweed from dryer sheets, and some cool rocks from heat treated interfacing.

more tests- 2 types of leave in stabilizer (fail) and some lutradur on the right- it's pretty but a little stiff and brittle for me. I expect my work to hold up to some handling and wear and tear, since it often gets sent to shows. And, I wouldn't want to sell something that I wasn't convinced would hold together.
I may experiment with it further, but it has to pass my torture test!

Here's several types of interfacing heat treated- the one on the left is pretty cool, and I'll make some rocks from it.

Finally, here's a couple of critters I made from Hollytex.

Heading up to the SAQA conference in Denver, then onward to Quilt National in Ohio, so I may not get much making done in the next couple of weeks.....

more 'speriments

2011-05-09T19:27:00.000-07:00

got out the heat gun today to torment some different materials-
which didn't faze any of them.
sooooo, I ended up putting 'em under the broiler. Luckily there are fierce winds today that blew the smells out of the house.
the Hollytex, below, is cool- looks a lot like Tyvek.

the Yupo melted into a hard useless lump, and the Reemay, although easily melted with an iron by accident (grr), just laid there under the broiler. So I attacked it with a propane torch. still nothin'-*fail*

I worked hard to get some Evolon, heard it melted interestingly- but, after the heat gun, broiler, and torch, it looked like something retrieved from a shark's stomach.
*epic fail*

I should have some Lutradur around here somewhere, next victim!

what next?

2011-05-08T20:58:00.000-07:00

working on new technology- this is going to take a while.
it involves working with new software, my un favorite, but it seems to be going smoothly so far.
this gorgeous piece of batik came in from equilter- perfect for the ocean-

here's some of the fish I'm working on- a few of my oddball favorites-

going to try to burn up some of my hard won evolon tomorrow- that will be fun!

Finishing the Meadow

2011-05-06T11:21:00.000-07:00

Here are the little deer starting to get stitched out.

they are finished here-

the trees have been stitched in, just starting to add the leaves.

They are all done- I wanted the contrast of the fresh new leaves against the dark hill.

all done!

more meadow

2011-05-05T08:46:00.001-07:00

working on the facing now, almost done.
wanted to talk some more about working from photos today.
It's all about what you put into your work - the quality of the photos is immaterial, as long as you can interpret them with feeling. In fact, I prefer pictures that have lots of room for improvement- if it's a perfect photograph it can be left as is.

here's the original sky pic, taken from my front door.

the truly awful deer pic got printed out on regular paper......I blocked out the basic lines with a sharpie, then inked over it all to create them from fabric.

it's hard to see, but this is a working sketch. The basic layout is sewn together and partly quilted.
I laid in more elements with colored pencil- the trees on the left, pines on the right, and rivulet in the center. When I had dinner at Florence's house in Grand Forks, she had a dried up streamlet across the road, and she and her husband made a hobby of feeding the deer vegetable scraps from the local grocery store. Well, we didn't see any deer that night, but I put them in from another place as well as a trickle of water from another time. Thanks for the wonderful supper Florence, this one's for you!

The meadow

2011-05-04T09:00:00.000-07:00

I decided to make a quilt honoring British Columbia, and began with a few (bad) pictures I took when heading back to Spokane. The original title was Leaving Grand Forks, but since I took so many liberties with the setting, it became the Meadow.

This is just out of GF, heading East.

ok, this is the best deer pic I got, the whole family was hanging out in the middle of the road, but by the time I could pull over & get out, they thought it prudent to hop back into the forest. there were only a few other vehicles out there, but they were biiig logging trucks, so I didn't dare stop on the actual road.

I took this sky, which is from my house at dawn, and worked on it a bit with paintstick.

Then I combined it with some color washed batiks and painted some silk for the mountains. The combo was messed around with to get the right proportion, photoed and printed out on plain paper so I could draw out some details.

The deer are stitched out, ready to be appliqueed- positioned in the right foreground. They'll be removed and sewn on later, after the background is completed.

happy May day ?!

2011-05-01T08:15:00.000-07:00

ok it's snowing.....
perfect day for working on this sky-

Common Threads

2011-04-30T07:59:00.000-07:00

Just shipped half a dozen pieces off to the Prescott College Art Gallery gallery for Common Threads.
Many thanks to Jen Chandler for the opportunity- it's a small group show and will look wonderful in the gallery space.

more on the beginning

2011-04-29T10:06:00.000-07:00

The image of the couple is a small painting, mostly in sepia ink, done from a photo of my son and his girlfriend who *graciously* posed for me (they didn't have a choice:))

nope not this one

or these 2

here we go!

Treasury for Today

2011-04-28T08:26:00.000-07:00

The Artisan's Gallery Team on Etsy is an active, growing group - here's an exquisite treasury featuring several members-

Allsorts

the beginning of the ending

2011-04-26T07:30:00.000-07:00

Intending to make a setting for an underwater scene, I dyed a piece of silk that was supposed to be light green to dark blue-

well, it came out beautifully, in gold to purple. So after letting it sit for a while and then flipping it upside down, it began to look like late sunset/early evening to me.

So, I pieced in a full moon and pinned the whole thing on the wall next to a piece of reemay, and laid out the outlines of a tree freehand.

came in with some sepia colored paint for additional texture-

cut it out and fused it to the already quilted background-

not enough contrast- so I dry brushed some lighter paint to bring it out more-

more later...

Endings and beginnings

2011-04-25T07:46:00.000-07:00

I'm happy to say that Ending/Beginning has been accepted to the Sacred Threads show for 2011.

I have participated in this exhibition for the past few years and it is a rewarding and meaningful event.
The initial inspiration for the piece came from the news that Sir Edward Downes and Lady Downes had chosen to end their lives together at the Dignitas Clinic in Switzerland- Downes
To me, the choice they made was a positive one, and I wanted to make a statement about cycles- for every ending there is a beginning. There is both a sunset and moonrise (although an astronomer friend says full moons & sunsets can't appear in the same quadrant- to which I replied, don't confuse me with the facts).
All seasons are represented in the tree, and the young couple beginning their lives together looks into the future.
The quilt began, like vulcanized rubber, with an accident- more on the making of it tomorrow.

GFCC

2011-04-24T16:05:00.000-07:00

There was a wealth of talent and skill at work at the Grand Forks Quilt Connection in BC, Canada.
People came from as far as 7 hours away for the workshop, and were enthusiastic, dedicated and fun to be around. I only took a few pictures, but wanted to share some of them- and report that sea turtles are no longer endangered in the Canadian Rockies :)

Bev took to silk painting right away, and made a gorgeous sunset sky.

Florence is the local fabric shop owner. She invited me into her home for a wonderful dinner cooked by her Mountie husband!

I brought several copies of my sea turtle pattern- this one's by Donna, who did a really neat job on her background as well.

TJ brought in a quilt she made featuring a home town Olympic hero. Note the ski pole holder!

Hello from the Kootenay

2011-04-23T07:36:00.000-07:00

British Columbia is spectacular, full of beautiful views and friendly people!