Long Beach–Final Post

August 17, 2012 Elizabeth E.6 Comments

It’s the final post because it’s time to move on, maybe moan about the first week of school where my classroom was 83 degrees. Whose idea is it to begin school in the middle of August, anyway? Okay, enough moaning. Here is the final set of quilts.

I wrote some time ago about the Masters Books, and my lucky day arrived, for they had sample albums related to the published works. The quilts could jump off the page and I could touch and see and figure out how they did things.

Alice Beasley’s wonderful portrait.

On the left, are some pieces of fabric that Beasley used, and on the right, Beatrice Lanter’s sample.

There’s my thumb on her sample, just so you can appreciate the scale. Teensy-weensy little squares.

This sample on the right is from my favorites: Gayle Fraas and Duncan Slade. If this post weren’t so photo-heavy, I’d paste in some more of their work, but use the link above to the Masters Book to see more.

ConText, by Pat Kroth

I keep thinking that little white strip of text looks like the flag in a Hershey’s kiss candy. Maybe it was time to break for lunch, which I did. While eating a (lame) salad (the food at the convention center is in dire need of an overhaul!), I received a text that my son had gotten a job! So the title of this quilt, based on the idea of texting, had resonance for me.

Ladybug Garden, by Collen Harvey in the Hoffman Challenge series of quilts.

Detail of the quilting and fabric use.

This quilt is from where my mind was feeble and I completely forgot to get info about it. If anyone knows, leave a comment and I’ll update. It’s a shame not to acknowledge such an interesting quilt. Please forgive.

My Friends Made Me Do It, AKA Starlight Garden, by Betty Brister
She has great friends, if this is the result. Detail below.

In her artist’s statement, it comments on the supple stems and perfect circles. Here’s a detail version of those.

M. C. Bunte was driving across the Indiana countryside during an approaching storm. As she watched, a shaft of sun lit up a small church and the surrounding trees. In this quilt, Shelter in the Time of Storm, she felt it was a message that even when “situations appear threatening, hope — God’s protection for the spirit — exists.”

She had quilted what looks like text into the fields of crops, but I can’t decipher what it says.

Pamela Druhen created this exquisite small quilt that just pulled me in like some of the larger, showier quilts can not. She used the techniques of dye-painting, free-motion embroidery and free motion quilting to create Vas-Y, which according to her artist’s statement means “Let’s go!” in French (since it is a French bicycle).

Detail of Vas-Y.

This quilt, titled Totally Insane, is from the Nearly Insane book by Liz Lois. The maker, Loretta Duffy, wanted to recreate the 1879 Salinda Rupp quilt that, according to her artist’s statement, is composed of 98 blocks. Working with such small pieces, like block #18, which contained 229 tiny pieces, was quite a challenge, but nothing compared to the satisfaction of seeing the completed work.” I’d be totally insane, too, if I tried this.

I don’t know which one had 229 pieces, but all of them are heavily pieced blocks. It was an amazing quilt and always had a crowd around it.

Carol Bryer Fallert became famous for her impeccably pieced flying geese in loop and swoops and swirls over the face of her quilts. She continues her pristine piecing in Checks & Balances, which is machine pieces, machine quilted and painted.

Did I mention she was known for her machine quilting, too? Amazing. Those cloth shadows really make the figures feel dimensional.

First, notice the interesting binding — it’s turned to the back, leaving a clean edge on the front.

Since Connie Fahrion’s quilt has a lot going on (but it was wonderful to look at in person) I think her choice of the clean edge was masterful. She says the design source for A Fine Pastry came from “the desire to depict how it feels to be part of a communication gone wrong. . . . A poor choice of works, misunderstanding all around and, voila! you have created, as my Italian neighbor would say, ‘un proprio pasticcio’ — a fine pastry.”

I’m a sucker for text in art. Yessirree.

Since I’m the kind of person who always wants to know “how did you do that?” I tend to focus on technique. Sometimes this frustrates, like when I’d like to create a text quilt like the one above and I don’t feel I have the artistic chops to do something like that, but other times my interest in technique lets me appreciate a quilt like this one by Helen Godden, titled Good Onya Sonya Onya Bike! This hand painted, whole cloth quilt allows the free motion quilting to really shine.

Annette Guerrero in her quilt, Gridlock, used a two-line motif in the shape of a modified T to create her quilt. From the smallest to the largest piece, you can see the T-construction.

Cool quilting, too, carrying out the theme of the grid.

Mrs. Lindberg’s Neighborhood, by Martha Lindberg.
Apparently she designed this quilt, then started a house swap with some friends, inspired by a quilt she saw at the Dallas Texas Quilt Show. Her friends’ blocks, and her own houses, populate this neighborhood.

Nice quilts we weren’t supposed to photograph. Or maybe it was okay to photograph them, but I was too tired to get all the info about them. Even though you might feel like you’ve seen every quilt in the exhibit, trust me. . . there were a lot I didn’t put in these posts.

Danielle Reddick, from Picton, Ontario, Canada was inspired by the fields in rural Prince Edward County to make Sunflower Heart for Alice, in honor of her daughter’s 21st birthday.

I’m including two detail shots because it’s not until you look at for a while that you realize you are seeing cut-up cast-off shirts. Note the button-front, above, and the pockets, below.

Eat Your Vegies, by Judith Roderick, a long time vegetarian.

I love her quilt even though she misspelled “vegies.” It’s veggies, if you are going to abbreviate it, but I have to admit that’s one of my “fingernails-scraping-on-the-chalkboard” words. I hate it. But I love this quilt!

Springtime in the Garden, by Mary Schneider, uses raw edge machine appliqué along with hand appliqué to create this sublime field of flowers. She made some changes to a pattern, to put her own stamp of originality on this creation. (I wished she’d given us the source of her inspiration, though.)

Pretty sure there was an exhibit on text, as there does seem to be quite a few quilts using letters and words in the design. This one, The Word Gets Around, by Louisa Smith, uses commercial fabrics that she manipulated by painting, dyeing and overdoing to obtain the colors she wanted. Her idea for the quilt came from the fact that “our lives are surrounded by text. . . [in] newspapers, advertising and street signs.”

The backside of her quilt.

Gaudi Star, by Lisa Walton Influenced by the architecture of Anton Gaudi in Barcelona, Spain.

This is one of those quilts where the the parts are greater than the sum. The parts (above) are fascinating, both in the use of shape and color and the screen printing which she did. Really beautiful, up close.

Terry Waldron is a favorite quilter of mine, a local gal who has had some fame and success, but still found time to write me a congratulatory note when she saw my quilt hanging in a show. So I thought it good to end these few posts with not only a lovely quilt, but a lovely quilter. The title of her quilt is A Gentle Heart, based on George Herbert’s statement, “A gentle heart is tied with an easy thread.”

This quilt is hand appliqued, hand beaded and machine quilted.

What do you feel like after you leave a quilt show? A lot of times my wallet and my hands hurt from gathering up treasures from the vendor malls. But aside from that, are you inspired? Overwhelmed? On overload? Me, too. And then it’s time to climb back into our lives, into the reality that we don’t have enough time or energy to make all those quilts we dream about, so we just choose what we can and make what we can.

But it’s always great when a quilt show comes around.

Quilt Shows

Long Beach Quilt Show: Log Cabins

August 13, 2012 Elizabeth E.2 Comments

I’m just sneaking in a little slide show here before I finish up the Long Beach quilt posting. This collection of quilts belongs to Claire McKarns, who has been “collecting, buying and seeling antique quilts for 30 years.” Most of the makers are unknown, but they date from the late 1800s on up into this century. A special note to one of my favorites (shown below, but above the slide show).

I especially like that modern touch of high voltage cables and plugs decorating the bottom border of the quilt. Enjoy the slide show.

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Some information on the names and the patterns are found *here* and *here* (you can also search the web for more).

Quilt Shows

Long Beach, Part 3

August 13, 2012 Elizabeth E.5 Comments

Let’s see if I can roll these out for you. I’m watching the Closing Ceremonies of the Olympics and all this music has me typing quickly.

Karen Eckmeier’s quilt, Aegean Memories, was a masterpiece of tiny pieces, yet it really evoked the Greek Isles, fresh in her memory from a recent visit. She used collage, paint, machine quilting and couching to make this.

She used the applique-under-tulle netting approach that she did in her other quilt (Black, White, READ). I think this would be a really good way to control all all those tiny pieces.

Detail. Maybe this is where she used the paint? But no, all those little squares look like scraps of cloth.

Harumi Asada had her first granddaughter (her son’s daughter) and she made Happy Birthday to commemorate that first year. There are growth records, pictures of the baby throughout this first year and flowers flowers flowers! I was happy to get a nine-patch quilt made when my grandchildren were born. This was really a stunner.

Here you can see a couple of the baby’s photos at different stages of that first year.

All those circles! My Karen Buckley circle templates would have gotten a workout. I turned off the flash to show the hand quilting, but it does produce a slightly soft focus.

Here’s some of aforementioned flowers. All hand appliqued.

But this wasn’t the only Asada quilt.

In this quilt, Harmony in Nature, she wanted to express that all living things are linked. She made it for a conference on biodiversity in Nagoya, Japan.

I could have taken billions of photos, but mostly I just stood with my jaw dropped and sighing at her exquisite details. This is the central medallion of a large quilt — close to a queen size.

Since I spent a year in Washington, DC, I fell in love with this depiction of when cherry trees bloom. The title is Spring Blossoms by Terry Aske. If you look in the background, you can see a row of trees, as well as the soft carpet of pink blossoms under the tree–so very typical of what the blossoming trees are like. Aske, however, is from the West Coast of Canada. I guess cherry blossoms are a universal.

An excellent use of floral fabrics to suggest the individual blossoms.

Here’s another quilt from Terry Aske, titled Spring Beauties. It’s those stripes that pull me in, as well as the plaid leaves. Such inventive use of fabric to depict a “local patch of tulips.”

And look at this “border”– outlined, subtly, with the use of the striped fabric again, and the background flowing over into that border area.

Cricket on the Radio, by Elizabeth Bren.

Sometimes simple quilts can be very effective.

NASA Wind Tunnel, by Linda T. Cooper. Highly graphic use of shape and color.

Another Whimsical Garden, by Tina Curran

Fused flowers, but they are all different and wonderful.

Bodil Gardner must be a favorite of those who put on the show, because I’ve seen her quilts multiple times. Always interesting, though, with her free-form shapes and almost troll-like faces and bodies. This one’s titled Nine girls a dancing.

Spiral Fever, by Jane Lloyd

Spiral Fever, detail. She says she likes to work in a series, and the ideas for the next quilt come to her while working on her current project.

In the center of one of the areas, they had this display of a little village of houses, organized by Kathy York.

I’m convinced some of these quilt artists never sleep.

And now it’s time for the Ugly Quilt Award. Again, this is only my very subjective opinion (and certainly some of mine could qualify.) To protect the innocent, no names are revealed.

It’s not necessarily the head-on shot that reveals its place as the winner this time.

It’s the side view (and I realize it’s a pretty ugly photo, but again–the lights here are challenging), that shows the 3-D effect of purple pipe cleaners. I know nothing about the quilt artist and I do have to applaud her inventiveness, but maybe some things just shouldn’t be tried.

YoYo2: Trip Around the World, by Helen Remick

Native Market, by Phyllis Cullen and Annie’s Star Art quilt group members. This is one of those quilts where they take a photograph and cut it into pieces (in this case, twelve) and each member interprets the section s/he has. I like how they sliced this one into irregular pieces, rather than the usual strips.

Native Market, detail.

Watt & Shand # 6 is by Sue Reno, who was documenting the conversion of an old department store into a convention center and hotel in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. These images are from her own photographs of the reconstruction.

Reflections, Glass Walls, La Defense, Paris, France var. 3 by Barbara Schneider.

This quilt was in the quilt show booklet, as it is such an interesting quilt. It is dyed, overdyed, painted, collaged, fused and machine stitched in order to show “the contrast between the patterns in the glass and the structural gridwork” (artist’s statement). The quilt below is another variation in her series, but I couldn’t find the title in my notes.

This one’s for all the hexie fans out there. This is the popular rose block that is being constructed by many quilters, using hexagons (or parts of hexagons) in the English Paper Piecing method of construction. The title of this is Rose Garden and it is made by Ardie Skjod and quilted by Dorothy Burnett. She used a pattern from an Australian magazine, designed by Dale Ritson.

Here’s another one by the same quilter, Ardie Skjod, but this one is quilted by Debbie Blair. Star Garden is inspired by a photograph she saw in an old magazine, but designed it herself.

I had to zoom in on that one block, as the use of the stripe really skewed it visually for me, but I think it makes the quilt more interesting. Some blocks look like Tumbling Blocks and some have those diamond stars, but all of them are a large hexagon. It didn’t say if this was hand-pieced.

Springtime in the City, by Cynthia St. Charles. Her city of inspiration? New York City. This quilt is hand-painted, block printed and machine quilted. It’s really quite full of beautiful springtime colors.

Detail.

Portraits of Flora, by Timna Tarr originally started out to be done in taupes and neutrals, but then her “love of color took over.” The circles are hand appliqued onto a square, and these squares were pieced together to make the quilt.

I hope you don’t find these detail shots tedious. Used to be in the OLD days of blogging, you could click on a photo and it would enlarge, but now I find that lots of blogs limit the size, so a detail shot is needed in order to see what’s going on in the quilt.

Her tight quilting made the circles pop into a bas relief.

Baskets Made With Love, by Connie J. Watkins.

I haven’t figured out yet how these quilts come to be displayed — is there some entry form I don’t know about? Are these quilts from another show merely transported into the Long Beach festival? It might be interesting to know as we Southern Californians don’t see a lot of coloration like the browns palette in the quilt above, which speaks to the idea of “importation.”

One more post and then I’m done. School begins today so I really need to get going on that, but to close, here’s what I finished during the Olympics:

Quilt Bee · Quilt Shows

Long Beach, part 2

August 8, 2012 Elizabeth E.3 Comments

Leaving behind the Twelve by Twelve exhibit, IQA has a several other mini-shows within the big show. There was a general quilt section, some small created houses on a platform, SAQA, a series of quilts from the book Masters (and their accompanying sample books), and a series of antique Log Cabin quilts. A lot to take in. No photography allowed on some exhibits, which makes me less inclined to “interact” with it, as I’m definitely one who likes to take photos, but they were all interesting.

Day and Night, by Grace Errea, depicts a day at a Southern California beach. It was a lovely riot of applique and quilting, so interesting to look at.

Diane Goff drew on her memories of childhood to create Clovis Bounty, a tribute to her grandfather’s farm where they grew amazing Elberta peaches.

I love the pintucks on the dress bodice, and the quilted curls along the top of her face.

“Yeeee-ha” It’s the Texas State Fair, was created by Karen Harting. There are lots of nice details here, but as I mentioned before the lighting was a challenge and I hate to post blurry photos. I thought the use of fabric to be quite creative, esp. that blue in the background.

This one is titled Capital Hardware, even though the inspiration was the Texas State Capitol building. I couldn’t decide if it was a typo, or if Frances Holliday Alford was making a statement about the importance of the hardware–maybe both? Alford had her photographs printed up by Spoonflower into fabric that she used to create the quilt. I could relate–I have lots of photos of the nation’s government buildings with their decorative hardware.

Full view of the quilt.

These blue oblongs, sticking straight out from this quilt are the first thing you notice. Then you step back, look, and . . .

…Kathy York’s Central Park comes into focus, with those blue oblongs representing the tall buildings around the perimeter of the park. Since I’ve taken two trips to New York this past year, I was intrigued and delighted by York’s work.

Detail. Note the transparency of the bushes in the lower area.

A highly graphic design, Karen Eckmeier’s Black, White and READ Village has text taken from her morning journals. She created the fabric, then built the town.

Detail of the buildings. She’s layered tulle netting over the town and machine-stitched the applique pieces down.

Love the found phrase: “CHANGE your life Princess Today.” I’m a sucker for text. Always.

In An Orderly World, by Linda R. Syverson Guild was inspired by an Art Deco picture. At the bottom of her sign she writes “In An Orderly World, the borders aren’t the end” reflecting her breaking of the borders with her design.

After twelve years of living in a leafy Baltimore suburb, Cheryl Sleboda moved back to her hometown of Chicago, with its bright lights. I liked the composition of the quilt, Road to Home, with its bold hues in the foreground and the larger shapes in gray in the background.

Detail of the quilting. I liked how the green patches and their row quilting imitated farmland.

Answering Nature’s Call, by Kathy Augur Smith (quilted by Wilma Cogliantry) pays homage to an earlier time in America, when homes didn’t have indoor plumbing. A poem around the outside edges makes a rosy reference to going outside for Nature’s call. Frankly, I am happy to have indoor plumbing and a hot shower every morning.

Detail of the hollyhocks. They were created separately (I’m guessing) and appliqued.

Quilting detail. I love the texture of this “jaggedness” in between the smooth lines. She notes that there is photo transfers as one of the techniques, but I kept wondering if the outside writing was stenciled onto the quilt.

Aryana B. Londir created Compartments #1 of blocks and strips in just four colors. This graphic design was then channel-quilted in rows.

Detail of the quilting. According to her statement, this quilt is an allusion to the tight housing found in “big cities and poverty-stricken areas of the world.”

I’ve got some more to show, but I wanted to close (and watch the final of the Women’s Beach Volleyball) with these photos from a vendor of her quilts (yes, I obtained permission). One quilt is a bunch of dirndl dresses and the other is matryoshka dolls. Loved them both, with their individual details and charming subject matter

Detail. This would be a great Christmas quilt, made up in holiday colors. My friend Judy, who has a German heritage, would broaden the red and green to include blue, commonly seen in Christmas decorations in Germany.

This is the back of a quilt by Julie Herman, of Jaybird Quilts. I had purchased her book, Skip the Borders, the day before and in my quiet night at the hotel, read it from cover to cover. I was quite intrigued at how she constructed her backs, piecing in her label, then sandwiching the “label strip” into between two other large pieces of fabric, securing the label from being cut off if the quilt was ever stolen. So I went back the next day and took a photo. I just like how it looks.

And today’s happy news? My Far Flung Bee blocks arrived from Holly of TwoCheesePlease in Australia.

I love the look of all the postage and Holly’s washi tape decor.

Yes. I’m a mail dork. I love the back too.

And yes, I’m going to torture you with all the photos of the process of discovery. I like how she taped a little note to the package for me with more washi tape. The design for the Far Flung Bee logo is one I put together and I’m glad she liked it.