Post Crow Barn quilt

I am back from my trip to the Nancy Crow Barn in Columbus Ohio. What a great Shibori class with Jan Meyer Newbury. I have many more ways of mark making on fabric now. I was number 13 out of 21 and it was a good number for me.

This is a picture of the wall hanging that i came home with made from fabrics i had dyed using mostly clamp resist. Yesterday i spent quite a bit of time taking it all apart and redoing it.

You can see from the strips hanging down from behind it that i was thinking that strips between each section was the right way to go. I was unanimously voted down. Since i am so new at designing i thought i would take their advice and give it a try. I am adding one new strip of "windows" and lengthening each piece so the width and length are balanced.

Once i get it all sewn back together, I'll post a finished picture.

Delivery Announcement

I am delivering this wall hanging to a customer tomorrow.

Exciting!

Here are some pictures of the opening for the Cloakroom Gallery.

My neighbors and Tim in one shot and the three largest pieces in the other one.

Cloakroom Gallery opening

It was a great opening tonight at the Cloakroom Gallery. I had fun and enjoyed everyone who came. I met or reconnected with several artists and I have plans to get together with one. I even got taped by the local TV news along with out township commissioner! I also have a potential commission coming from the show. Delightful!

Now I am off to finish putting on a binding so I can deliver a wall hanging this weekend.

Thanks for reading.

I have an opening at

The Cloakroom Gallery

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

from 5:30 to 7 pm

at New Life Church

located on the corner of

Easton Road and Jenkintown Roads.

Light refreshments served

All welcome.

Opportunity

This week I have two appointments with people who can open doors for a display of my work. Two in one week! When it rains it pours.

One would be at the gallery at my church starting in early October and the other would be at a local university sometime in the next year.

These opportunities make the urgency to finish up those 1/2 done pieces heightened.

Here is one that I have shown before. I have added the leaf litter at the bottom. Next will be to add either more tree trunks for depth (paint sticks, net, organza) or perhaps it is just the branches with falling leaves it needs now...Every fabric here is dyed and screen printed by me. I really wanted a piece that was all my work - nothing store bought. I signals for me at least the beginning of a new season of art work.

I love taking a city and guilds class but sometimes i find i want to do my work not just try to fit my work into their prescribed program or do the courses activities. I am not saying i don't want to finish the course, but i am wondering if my chomping at the bit to move along signals that I have gotten from it what I needed. I really have learned so much in these past two years. Quite different than taking a one week class.

I just threw this together one evening because i was tired of the assigned activities. My only agenda was that it be exclusively from fabric that I had put the color and texture on myself. I am pleased with how the leaf litter works. It languishes a bit for the next step because of a commission I am finishing up and the curtain seen in the previous post.

These opportunities help push it up the line for work to be completed.

Sunday sept 20

Today i went to the Quilt Show in Oaks, PA. Since i am not sure if i am allowed to post pictures of other people's work I'll have to leave that off the blog. What i can say is that many many quilts are machine quilted these days. I did see some interesting settings for blocks and pictures that i may explore for some of my work. Since I have one interior assessment piece to complete and two quilts or wall hangings for my City and Guilds course, i am brainstorming ideas for layout and design for my subject matter.

I am making a curtain as my interior assessment piece for this window in our 2nd floor bathroom. It has had this piece of fabric covering it for at least two years and i thought this would be a good time to make a curtain!

Here is the fabric i have dyed.

So i cut out the circles into oval shapes and am placing them on the curtain so it looks like they are moving away the further up the curtain you go. Not only are the ovals darker at the bottom they also are larger that the ovals at the top. I am embellishing them with net, organza, & threads. The idea comes from the tiles themselves. The tiles have shapes that look like clouds with ice crystals in them. I found a picture in National Geographic of people crossing up North where the ice floes are starting melt and it looked like stepping stones across a pond. I combined both ideas as my source for the design making sure the ovals have ice crystal centers like on the actual tiles. Make sense?

Here are two samples of embellishing