Quilts

Road to California 2013–part II

March 3, 2013March 4, 2013 Elizabeth E.8 Comments

The next two posts are photo-heavy, but I decided to put the quilts I wanted to show you up in two, rather than three posts. (BTW, these are in no particular order.)

Laurie Wozniak’s American Spirit, was one of several done for the American Spirit batting display, and for which they handed out calendars with photos of the quilts. I liked the postage stamp theme.

Lynette Hallmark’s Colorado Evening was the other one in this series that caught my eye.

Bubble-Licious was made and quilted by Karla Dahms of Minnesota, and was inspired by the Beatle’s song “Octopus’ Garden,” from A Yellow Submarine.

Artists Mark McDermott and Cat Larrea of Alaska, participated in a curated exhibit titled “Perspectives: Fantasy and Reality.” This piece, Chignik Bay Lagoon, is a digital image of an original watercolor, which was then enlarged, printed on fabric and quilted. Both artists have geoscience backgrounds.

Road to California always has a section of Faculty Quilts, and this very well-known quilt, Circular Reasoning, is by Emily Cier, and is quilted by Angela Walters.

City Edge 1 and 2 (this quilt and the next one) were made by Gerri Spilka and Delia Dungan and are from the Perspectives exhibit. Both are from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and were inspired by their cityscape.

This quilt by Hollis Chatelain, From Stone, was inspired by a trip to beach near Brisbane, Australia. (from the Perspectives Exhibit) Confession: I’m always in a love-hate relationship with her quilts.

MidTown A and B (this quilt and the next) were made by K. Velis Turan of New York. She used fabric, dyes, textile paints, and. . . shrink plastic (what we used to call Shrinky-Dinks) for the cars. Since so many of us have a love affair with big cities (but often are glad to retreat to the ‘burbs), I thought these quilts were terrific at showing the compressed space of buildings side-by-side, but sited on river-like boulevards.

Allison Aller, another member of Road faculty, made Crazy for Plaid, her version of the traditional Gothic Windows pattern. She used machine and hand embellishment (below, sorry for the blurry photo).

The main reason I was fascinated by Girl with a Pearl by the Sea, was because of that incredible mass of textured silk on the quilt. Detail below. Quilt made and quilted by Sandy Winfree. Can’t decide if I like it or not. It’s a novelty quilt, and I think sometimes Road goes overboard on those. Overall, I have to say I think this year’s Road offerings are better than last year’s. Fewer sparkles for sparkles’ sake, for starters.

Another sea-themed quilt (there were a lot of them this year) was this young boy swimming in a school of fishes. Sylvia Clary of Florida, titled this Gone Fishing, and is apparently inspired by her real-life young grandson Carson. It’s the details and whimsy of this quilt which drew me in.

Check out the use of selvages in this waves. The fish were made of her hand-dyed fabric, and this quilt included hand-painted, hand drawings duplicated for use, along with thread play, crystals (this is one quilt that I didn’t object to them being attached to, as they were used in the design, not to overwhelm the design) and lastly, photo collage. It was a real treat, but as usual, my favorites don’t always get the ribbons.

Ignore the words floating above this postcard, which was the back of the quilt. Fabulous.

Suzanne M. Riggio, maker and Terri Kirchner, quilter, both of Wauwatosa, Wisconsin (say that quickly) put together this “slice quilt” by the Milwaukee Art Quilters of an old home where they held their meetings. The Jennings Homestead has applique, fusing, painting, inking, embroidery and discharge techniques. Is anyone else wanting to do a “slice quilt”? They are fascinating to me.

Jumping Off the Cliff with Freddy Moran, made by Kathryn Bernstein and Pam Dransfeldt of Los Angeles, California. It’s fun to see Freddy influences in a quilt again.

Another faculty quilt. Lone Starburst was made by Kimberly Einmo and quilted by Birgit Schuller. Einmo wanted to create a quilt “one Jelly Roll Bundle plus one background fabric.” She succeeded.

Monet in Pasadena, was made and quilted by Melinda Bula of California. She used fusible applique and heavy thread play to create this quilt from her hand-dyed fabrics. The inspiration was the Huntington Museum and Gardens in Pasadena, CA. Details below.

Two sisters, Sue Nickels and Pat Holly, made this quilt together (Sue quilted it). It’s titled New York State of Mind, and is part of the faculty exhibit. Didn’t we used to call this orange color “cheddar”?

Old China was made and quilted by Nita Markos, and was inspired by a photo from her childhood.

I’m showing you the detail first on Cynthia England’s quilt, because it’s made of so many teeny tiny pieces.

One Fine Day (from the faculty exhibit) was inspired by a photograph she took of Lake Tahoe, spending a day there with friends and her family, a good “day to remember” she says.

The pieces in Organic Log Cabin #3, made and quilted by Jennifer Emry, were “scissor-cut. . . without measuring to get that ‘organic look.”

This one was fun to study. Until I went to the other ballroom to see the quilts, it was about the only “modern” quilt in the exhibit. Road trends toward the traditional, so I was happy to see a bit of a break-out here.

Another from the Perspectives exhibit was Out of the Box, by Sandra E. Lauterbach from Los Angeles California, and is based on a map of Shanghai, China.

Lorilynn King’s Pocket Full of Paisleys had a “private name” for the quilt while she was working on it (she called it her LOUD quilt). She decided to learn her embroidery software, and used turquoise thread when testing. She kept going and this was the result. (As you may have noticed, some of these quilts are hard to photograph, because they either have signs on stands in front of them, clear plastic tape strung across, or the lighting and/or angles are a struggle to work with.) I liked hearing that she had an “official name” for this quilt, and a “private name.” I do the same thing, feeling like giving a quilt a name is sort of like naming a child–you can’t really know what that name is until the quilt is finished.

Helen Remick had an alcove all to herself, showing off some of her quilts. The one that caught my eye was YoYo 11: Reflections on Changing Technology. She writes: “As one technology replaces another, some things are preserved, others lost. CDs in yo-yos hold manuscripts, family history, rituals and vacations. The collage on the back side is made from images and documents on these CDs.”

I also liked this one, but didn’t catch its name. It evolves into yoyos at the border.

Deborah Sorem’s My Secret Grandma’s Flower Garden has many allusions and references to her grandchildren in the quilt, and “represents three generations.” Detail below.

Lupine designed and made by Emily Cier, quilted by Cathy Kirk

I finished the exhibit in the main ballroom, and slipped over to the smaller ballroom, where I found this gem of a display by Robert Kaufman. Of course, I read a lot of blogs by modern quilters, and this past weekend was QuiltCon–a modern quilt convention (next one is in two years!), so have been surprised that the organizers of Road haven’t yet made a nod to the influences of these quilt. But here was a small exhibit of some amazing modern quilts. ~~One frustration was that none were labeled: not the maker, nor the title, which is a glaring oversight, I think. Enjoy the modernism of these quilts.~~ Update: Leanne of She Can Quilt emailed me all the correct titles. I’ve amended the blog to add in this new information.

Leanne writes: “The quilts are all from the book called We Love Color, compiled by Susanne Woods, published by Stash Books.” The one quilt not shown below (but shown above) is TV Color Bars Quilt, designed and made by Betz White. I hope I put these in all the right places!

Stepping Stones, designed and made by Lisa Call

Orbit, designed and made by Jennifer Sampou, quilted by Angela Walters

Stacked Blankets, designed and made by Valori Wells

Think Big, designed and made by Jacquie Gering, quilted by Angela Walters

Sanibel designed and made by Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr

Modern Cross, designed and made by Kathy Mack

Centered, designed and made by Cherri House, quilted by Angela Walters

Color Frames, designed and made by Amy Ellis, quilted by Natalia Bonner

Ladders, designed and made by Elizabeth Hartman

Keys, designed and made by Alissa Haight Carlton

One of the vendors also had a touch of the modern in her display. This was Ginger’s Quilt Shop in Ontario, California, which I found a week later was closing its doors. I was sad, because they’d been so helpful when I was making my Scrappy Stars quilt, in helping me figure out which color to use to back the stars. I did go up to one of the closing days, picked up a slew of solids (I’d purchased a stack from them at the show), and said my good-byes to a great quilt shop.

Next post: last of Road to California quilts.

Quilts

Lollypop Tree Blocks Completed

February 22, 2013 Elizabeth E.8 Comments

All stitched down. But I remembered in the middle of the night, that I wasn’t done stitching.

I still have the border blocks to finish. But first, I’m going to enjoy being at this point (for closeups of the last three blocks, head to “Lollypop Trees” in the header). I finished taking off the back of the pieces last night before I went to bed, then pressed it and put it up on the wall. I think sometimes in our rush to have a finish, we forget to stop and smell the flowers. So I’m stopping today to smell these flowers–even though there’s no fragrance, there’s a sweetness to the air in my studio–all these up on the wall. They’ll cheer me on while I grade the poetry papers that came in yesterday from my students. So, in honor of getting this far on this quilt, and this far in the semester, I leave you with a couple of haiku, bare whisps of poems appropriate to the season.

Tom Tico:

Into old pots and pans

thrown out in the backyard—

the musical rain

Harriet Axelrad:

snowflakes glued

to the kindergarten window—

no two alike

Enjoy the weekend!

Lollypop Trees Rise Again: Blocks 4, 5, 6

February 20, 2013June 15, 2019 Elizabeth E.16 Comments

One advantage to being in a group like Leanne’s Finish-A-Long (FAL), is that you have a reason to pull those unfinished projects to the front of the line, rather than letting good solid work be upstaged consistently by the New! and the Fabulous! and the Have You Seen This Fabric Line! sort of business. So the Lollies came out of hibernation.

Lollypop Tree Four.

Lollypop Tree block five.

Lollypop Tree block Six.

So I’ve appliqued six to their background fabric, using the freezer-paper, then invisible thread in top spool method.

I’ve discussed this in buckets of digitial bytes in other posts, but here’s a photo of me going at it. Yes, those are teensy applique pins and when you have about 60 of them on a block (these are huge blocks), it helps that they are small so you are not stabbed to death by pins. I also hang my sweater on the back of the chair, as they have affinity with knitted things–they get caught in the sleeves. I use a 1.0 width zig-zag with a 2.0 length of stitch, with Mono-Poly invisible thread in the top spool (put a netting on it and you will be happier) and Bottom Line thread in the bobbin. I also dial back the upper tension by half, down to 2.2 and use a very slender needle. Both threads are made by Superior Threads.

My student papers don’t come in until Thursday evening, so maybe I can squeak out three more blocks? It takes about an hour to stitch each block, and another 20 minutes to open up the back and take all the freezer paper pieces out. I know I won’t finish the quilt this first quarter of the FAL, but the very fact that I’m sewing on these trees is a benefit of signing up. I’ll be thrilled just to get the blocks done.

Now head back to Lee’s Freshly Pieced blog to see more Works in Progress!

Quilts

Hexies, Bee Blocks and Betty’s Tile Quilt

February 15, 2013 Elizabeth E.2 Comments

I finished sewing this together during the last Downton Abbey. I love it. But now what do I do with this? Moving on. . .

Cindy, of Live A Colorful Life, asked us to make this block from During Quiet Time’s tutorial for her turn in our MidCentury Modern Bee. Today, after taking a nap (really, I just couldn’t go any further and I have a life where I can take a nap if I want–that’s why I am in the Mid-Century Modern group, as all of us are over the mid-century mark on the old birthday calendar), I plowed into it. The tutorial is very clear and easy, and it was fun to draw from my stash.

Signature Block for February’s block. We are each including one of these smaller blocks along with our square. Tutorial is from PS I Quilt, but I won’t call it a “siggy” block, for the same reason I avoid the word “veggie” (instead vegetable).

This Churn Dash was made for Carla of Lollyquiltz, by following her tutorial. She uses the two squares-sew the edges method of the half-square triangle. I found it easy, but did think that the block was a little more fluid because of all the bias edges. She calls this block Juicy Fruit, and her quilt is something to behold (click on the link to go to her Flickr photo pool).

And this was her signature block–requested in colors from her quilt. I ironed freezer paper to the back of the white section to get it stable enough to write on. Okay, that’s where I’m at so far this month, but the really exciting thing was hearing from Betty just before I left last week. She’d made up my Harvesting the Wind in her own colors and had just gotten it back from the quilters. She gave me permission to put up photos on my blog. So. . . here they are!

She used all solids, but added that pop of tangerine to really set off the tile block. I was smiling and grinning from ear to ear, because I loved seeing what she’d done!

Betty, it’s wonderful. She’s one of the Four-in-Art members, so it’s fun to have another connection with her. I think we are Quilting Twins in some ways, and I keep trying to figure out a way to get to the East Coast to meet her.

Okay, not done yet. I mentioned I wanted to make the Sunshine and Shadow in another colorway, this time for my grandson. Here’s the initial mock-up for the quilt. It looks really different in such bold “boy” colors (he likes blue, red and black but I couldn’t resist lightening it up with those white patches), but I know it will go together quickly.