Sally Gould Wright - Art Quilts

The House Quilt Project

2012-01-02T21:39:00.001-08:00

I don't know about anyone else, but with all the cooking, wrapping, busyness and pressure of Christmas I've had some real trouble getting intotoy creative side the last few weeks. I needed a small non-intimidating project to get me back into the zone. My friend Linda Miller posted a small collaged quilt she made for Jamie Fingal's House Quilt Project on her blog and I was inspired!

So this last New Year's weekend I finally got back into my studio and turned out this little piece - all free cut and fused very quickly. These quilts are given away by a group of interior designers who refurbish homes for returning veterans. Such a great idea , a wonderful cause and a quick way to quick start my creative life after a bit of a dry spell. You can learn more about the House Quilt Project at http://www.thehousequiltproject.blogspot.com.

Sorry, wrong link

2011-12-21T12:29:00.001-08:00

The link to my blog should have been

Http://www.sallygouldwright.blogspot.com

"Rainbow Fish'"Auction

2011-12-21T10:49:00.000-08:00

Auction for "Rainbow Fish" to benefit Heal the Bay is now at $150.00!

"Rainbow Fish " Auction Update

2011-12-21T10:04:00.001-08:00

The current bid for the "Rainbow Fish" quilt auction to benefit Heal the Bay is at $65.00. Ends tonight at midnight.
Thanks bidders!

"Rainbow Fish" Auction Ends Tonight at Midnight

2011-12-21T08:00:00.000-08:00

I f you were planning on bidding on "Rainbow Fish" best do it now! The auction ends at midnight tonight. The current bid is $50.00. All proceeds will go to Heal the Bay. Free shipping! Scroll down to last weeks blog for more detailed photos. just email me at sally@sallywrightquilts.com with your bid!

Cookies, Cookies Everywhere!

2011-12-21T07:51:00.000-08:00

The weekend before Christmas has always meant cookies in my mind. Flurries of flour and powdered sugar, colorful decorating sugar crunching underneath your feet, the smell of vanilla and ginger....As a little girl some of my best memories are working in the kitchen with my mother making piles of Christmas Sugar Cookies which were delivered to friends, family, teachers and the mail man. Those shapes we made are ever familiar - I still use my mother's cutters - the pony, Santa Claus, bell, and Christmas tree from the 1950s in my cookies today.

The gingerbread people, snowman, snowflakes and mini holly leaves are my own addition to the family tradition. This year I replaced my time honored recipe with one published as one of the 50 Best cookies by the Los Angeles Times Food Section. Thanks Russ Parsons! This recipe with the fresh grated ginger is a keeper!

The almond crescents at upper right in the second photo are also a homage to my Mom, though I lost her recipe and had to find a replacement. I think the recipe I use now is Nancy Silverton's from one of her early books. The Bourbon Balls are another family recipe - yes, bourbon, never rum! They were eventually rolled in powdered sugar and are almost entirely gone already!

The Toffee Macadamia Nut cookies are my own addition to the yearly buffet. These were found about five years ago in a Martha Stewart Cookie Contest and are simply the best cookie ever! Everyone I've ever offered them to says so...... So here's the recipe as my present to you this year.

TOFFEE MACADAMIA COOKIES

Makes 36 big cookies

1 1/2 cups unsalted butter -- softened

1 cup granulated sugar

2/3 cup light brown sugar -- packed

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 cups cake flour (not self-rising)

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

3 cups toffee chips

2 1/2 cups macadamia nuts -- coarsely chopped

Preheat the oven to 350F. Line baking sheet with a silpat or parchment paper and set aside.(I like the parchment better for these - the bottoms get crunchier)

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the butter and sugars. beat on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add eggs and vanilla extract, and beat to combine. In a medium bowl whisk the flours, baling soda and salt until combined. Mix in toffee chips and macadamia nuts.

Scoop dough out onto prepared baking sheets using a 2 ounce ice-cream scoop, placing them 2 inches apart. Flatten the cookies slightly with the palm of your hand. Bake until golden and just set, rotating the sheets between the oven racks halfway through to ensure even browning, about 15 minutes. Transfer the sheets to a wire rack to cool, about 5 minutes. Transfer the cookies from the sheet to rack to cool completely. Store in an airtight container for up to 1 week.

Note: ( I make these with a smaller scoop than the recipe says - better for the waistline - and bake them 12 minutes)

We have a bid on "Rainbow Fish"!

2011-12-18T14:00:00.000-08:00

We have a $50.00 bid on my "Rainbow Fish" quilt auction from a great supporter of Heal the Bay and the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium! Here is the link to all the info about the auction which ends at Midnight on December 21st! http://sallygouldwright.blogspot.com/2011/12/one-of-my-quilts-is-up-for-auction.html . Join in to help fund this wonderful organization. I'll update here and on Facebook as the bids come in.....

My quilt "Silk Fantasy A La Diane" is highlighted on The Quilt Show!

2011-12-18T13:46:00.000-08:00

A friend emailed me this morning (Thanks to Aileen - I might have missed it!) the happy news that my quilt "Silk Fantasy A La Diane " is featured today on The Quilt Show's Daily Blog highlighting the quilts shown in the Merit Quilting category at Houston Quilt Festival. Thanks Alex and Ricky!
Here's the link - http://www.thequiltshow.com/os/blog.php/blog_id/4413. when you get there just click on the play arrow - mine is photo #12 in the Smilebox slideshow.

One of my quilts is up for auction!

2011-12-13T15:10:00.000-08:00

Inspired by Monika Kinner-Whalen of the My Sweet Prairie blog, I'm placing one of my small art quilts up for auction this week. The total auction price will benefit Heal the Bay - a Santa Monica Based charity which focuses on making southern California's coastal waters and watersheds, including Santa Monica Bay, safe, healthy and clean and supports the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium.

Here's the quilt....

"Rainbow Fish"

2011

15" X 13.5"

I chose this quilt as an appropriate subject for Heal the Bay - The title is inspired by Marcus Pfister's wonderful children's book which we read to our son countless times in the 1990s. The quilt was made using Sue Carlson's fabric collage technique in which small bits and snippets of fabrics are glued to a foundation . The colorful fabrics are all bits and pieces of hand dyes and exotic batiks carefully chosen to blend, delineate and give some sparkle to the simple fish design. When the collage was complete, I captured the fish beneath a layer of tulle free motion quilted it all using gold metallic and silk threads. The edge treatment is also a Sue Carlson technique adding a quirky pinked edge to the framed composition. Click on the fish above for a larger version and on the smaller details below.

Here is the information on the auction The highest bidder by midnight on December 21st will have the quilt mailed to them (shipping is on me as long as it is within the US). 100% of the final winning bid price will be used sent as a donation to Heal the Bay. I will post the "highest bid" in the comments section for this post as they come in.

If you are interested, all you need to do is email your bid to me at Sally@SallyWrightQuilts.com.

I will post the bids as they come in on my blog. Once the announcement is made as to how much the quilt has sold for, I will contact that person with info on how/where to send payment. The check can be made out to Heal the Bay if you want a tax deduction. The quilt will me mailed once the payment has been received. At that time I will forward on the donation in the winner's name to Heal the Bay. The winner can remain anonymous of they prefer.

Good luck everybody!

Sew.... Food?

2011-12-11T11:23:00.000-08:00

For some time I've wanted to integrate my love of cooking and food in general into my blogging attempts, so today, here is my first food related rambling. Inspired by a trip to one of our local SoCal farmers markets on Saturday morning, I shot some photos of my hoard. I was in Santa Monica - not at the world famous, huge and slightly intimidating Third Street market hyped far and wide as one of the world's best - but at the smaller, homier, more manageable market at Virginia Park on the western fringe of Santa Monica at Cloverfield and Pico Blvd. Parking is easier, it's closer to our home in Westwood and is in general much more user friendly than its huge and glamorous downtown counterpart.

My first find was this amazing display of Romanesco cauliflower all laid out on the grower's table. Does anyone else see little chartreuse horney toads or dinosaur skin? I am completely fascinating with their perfectly geometric spirals! The texture is amazing and I only wish Icould figure out some way to capture it in a quilt......

The same stand - the charming and smiling English guy who also sells seven different kinds of potatoes from the teeniest of fingerlings to huge gorgeous German things that looked like Yukon Golds to me - had several kinds of exotic radishes including the two pictured here on the right - a watermelon radish and a honeydew radish. They both are lovely and sweet with just a tiny bit of radish heat. The pink and green one was spectacular in last night's salad.

Finally, I was astonished that even in mid- December there were heirloom tomatoes available from some sellers from the central coast. I love these and the still life they provide in my Delft dish on our kitchen counter.oh, the many blessings of living in southern California!

Why was I a few miles away from our neighborhood? Our own beloved farmers' market housed for several years on the Veteran's Administration Campus off Sepulveda Blvd. just a quarter of a mile from our house has been discontinued, a victim of a recent VA policy to ban all commercial venues from the property. I understand that the car rental storage lots, and other commercial sites will disappear as their contracts expire, but it seems such a shame and unnecessary that something like the market which benefited the neighborhood as well as the hundreds of VA employees had to go, too.

2011-09-03T12:52:00.000-07:00

Recently I've been pretty occupied with planning a special event for My Quilt Guild Westside Quilters "An Evening with Kaffe Fassett" on here in Los Angeles on Monday September 26th. Yes, tickets are still available at www.Westsidequilterslosangeles.org! (Forgive the shameless plug...) so some of my projects have been put on the back burner. But a few could not wait – namely the baby quilt for a friend’s new grandson due next month and my son’s 21^st birthday quilt due three months ago! I’ve been trying to make time to sew and every time I do I’m so grateful that earlier this year I took a weekend to do some re-organization in my Studio,

I call it “The Studio” but it is actually a tiny 9ft. X 8 ft. lean-to shed on the back of our garage. In the 50s it was a kids playhouse dubbed “Ft. Apache” (remember Rin Tin Tin? Or are you all too young...) and when we moved in it became a place to put our son’s spinet piano. When the piano was replaced by an electric guitar I took it over as my sewing room and it has now been officially named “The Studio” because that’s what the beautifully lettered slate sign my husband made for me a few Christmases ago says.

Because of its size, organization is key. For a long time my fabric stash was in large plastic bins, but as the stash grew they got heavier and more unwieldy and I would go out to buy more fabric for a project rather than get into those stacked up bins to find what I had. That is a thing of the past with my new purchases this summer at The Container Store of a stackable set of 8 large plastic pull out drawers (see above). I spent two days sorting out the hand dyes and batiks by color, folding them and placing it all in these drawers now carefully marked with their colors with my P-Touch (my Martha Stewart moment). The drawers are clear so I can easily see what’s in them. The fabric is folded, and the edges are all visible. I’ve found some treasures I forgot I had.

Two other purchases have also made my quilting life so much easier - a clear plastic hanging shoe bag - the kind with many pouches for shoes that hangs on the back of a door (at left) and a clear plastic hanging purse organizer (below), both purchased in the closet department at Bed Bath and Beyond for very little. The shoe pouches are perfect for organizing small fabric scraps according to color and the handbag organizer hangs on the wall and allows me to slide in many rolls of embroidery stabilizer, interfacing, freezer paper and parchment freeing up a couple of drawers I desperately needed for other supplies.

Here’s a challenge – I’ve found some very ordinary things to make organize my sewing space and make my life easier, so let me challenge you to do the same. Anyone with space saving or organizational ideas that are working for them, send them and I'll post them on the blog. Let’s share more ideas.

Rainy Day San Francisco Revisited

2011-08-06T17:22:00.000-07:00

I've had a great deal of positive comment on "Rainy Day San Francisco, Monday, October 25, 2010" both from people who saw it in its debut at International Quilt Festival Long Beach last week in "Bridges" the special exhibit from Quilts on the Wall Artists and from those who've seen in the last day or so posted on my web site or on the gallery section of The Quilt Show. I am really humbled and grateful for this - it seems to have struck a cord with a lot of people and I have been asked about some of the techniques I used.

The scene was taken from a cell phone photo I took on a rainy morning in San Francisco just as we exited the bridge and were about to turn left on the Embarcadero. I was driving and my husband was yelling at me to put away my phone! Several months later I printed out the photo and traced it on to an acetate sheet, scanned that, blew the scan up to size on my computer, and posterized it to print out a full size paper pattern for the applique,

I find very often that the serendipity of finding just the right fabric for the right purpose makes a quilt. In this case the lowering, rainy, moody sky was all done for me with a gradient printed Mackenna Ryan fabric (I buy all of those I can find!) No fabric paint there ... sorry to dissappoint all of you who congratulated me on my painting skills. Most of the vehicles, buildings and bridge were done in fused raw edge applique' using wonder under with a fabulous gradated gray package of Cherrywood fabrics. I did use some Jacquard Lumiere fabric paint for the lines in the street and the reflections of the car and truck on the wet street.

I added some printed digital images found on Google for the street lights (strangely enough there are hundreds of images of San Francisco's Embarcadero street lights ...) and the license plate on the truck. BTW "I'm Sorry" has no special meaning as many have asked. It was just an interesting plate that I thought might promote some conversation. It did. For the green street sign I made a Photoshop file which I printed on to fabric and edged with paint. That's not hard - but as you can see I had a little trouble with the first try...

So I finish the top and I'm pretty pleased with it ...... until I realize that it is 4 inches too narrow to fit the size required by Quilts On The Wall - aarrghh! A frantic trip to a local quilt store resulted in that great bold red stripe at the edges. Actually I realize now that those red stripes have improved the visuals enormously...... so there you are. Serendipity!

Home from Long Beach

2011-07-31T18:46:00.000-07:00

Home late last night from International Quilt Festival Long Beach feeling pretty exhausted but inspired and happily remembering all the wonderful quilts and the friends I connected with while there.

"Bridges" a special exhibit at Festival put together by Quilts on the Wall Fiber Artists was very well received and included my quilt "Rainy Day San Francisco, October 2010". It's great to finally be able to include it on my blog. It was turned in early last spring for the jurying process and we were asked not to show any of the quilts in the show until after the debut this weekend in Long Beach.

Mine was based on a cell phone photograph I took at an intersection on the Embardcadero last October as we arrived in the city for the San Francisco Fall Antiques Show. it was interesting to interpret the weather conditions of that dreary wet morning in fabric, textile paint, couched yarns and a few digital images using a very limited grisaille pallette with just a minor splash of bright red.

Over the weekend i was often asked the question why "I'm Sorry" was the license plate. The only answer is that I searched the internet for a plate that would be make the viewer wonder and maybe make up a story to match it. It worked!

The next stop for Bridges is a quilt show in Pennsylvania and then we hope on to Road to California next January in Ontario. The show will travel for one to two years.

The vendor side of the long Beach Festival is always a huge magnet - and along with aisle after aisle of the the normal fabric, notions and embellishments there were some interesting new stands. Among them a company selling casual and dress shows made from the colorful mola applique's of central America, a software developer with a program to organize all your quilts and their information on your computer (had to have that one - www.QuiltAlbum.com) and some jewelry pieces made from rolled and stiffened filigree fabric. A whole stand selling Derwent Intense colored pencils - my new favorite surface design tool and a lady demonstrating everything you can do with them on fabric was another winner.

All that and three great full day classes in three days with Esterita Austin, Pam Holland and Judy Coates Perez! Again it was a great, but exhausting weekend. Can't wait for next year!

A Great News Day!

2011-07-19T14:02:00.000-07:00

I'm sick at home today, but feeling better since the email from IQA saying that "Silk Fantasie A La Diane" was accepted as a finalist in the World of Beauty at international Quilt Festival Houston in late October.

I had such a great experience at Empty Spools in Diane Gaudynski's free motion quilting class and I learned so much from her that I named the resulting quilt after her. It's a sampler done in silk dupioni fabric using a lot of Diane's patterns and techniques, all done in very fine silk thread...lots of silk thread. An expensive little quilt! It's only 32" X 32".

SAQA Benefit Auction Quilts - 309 Little Masterpieces

2011-07-12T13:21:00.000-07:00

The SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) Benefit Auction begins September 12th, and the 12"square quilts can be previewed at http://www.saqa.com/news.php?ID=1791. There will be 309 one foot square works of art available for your collection. Take a look at them all, but I've added here a few of my favorites.

Lynn Welsch's sun washed "Acoma Pueblo" takes me back to a visit to
this amazing native American living museum. She's gotten the light absolutely as I remember it.

Linda Miller's "Striations" has wonderful line and really amazing texture (I've seen it in person!) her technique for the gilded "pebbles" is pretty clever.....

Kathleen Murphy's "Rain in May" - what a superbly graphic composition! The whole thing is so atmospheric...

Nancy Turbitt's "Girasole"
What amazingly whimsical sunflowers. Love the buttons!

I am always enamored with Betty Busby's work and I especially love the armadillo and the use of fabric alone to delineate the cactus.

Pat Gould's "Rockhopper" utterly charms me. He (she?) has so much character. I love the contrast between the bird and the stone background.

Sherry Kleinman's "2011 Year of the Rabbit" is done with water soluble crayons and colored pencils on artist canvas. She's acheived some amazingly realistic fur on the rabbit and great saturated color....

And lastly, my own "Poppy Love" - watercolor pencils, crayons,
needle felting, beads and a three dimensional thread painted butterfly.

I'll post more of these soon..... Save your pennies for the auction in September!

Tree of Life

2011-06-21T18:04:00.000-07:00

While walking the aisles and aisles of hundreds of vendors at International Quilt Festival Houston last October just as I was about to plop exhausted in the nearest chair I was stopped in my tracks, my heart skipped a beat and my 18th century soul swooned. I was staring at the most perfect reproduction of an 18th century chintz medallion quilt built around a totally charming Indian palempore "Tree of Life" panel. On the table in front of me were piles of crisp glazed cotton chintz all reproductions of the 18th century fabrics brought back from India by the Dutch East India Company.

This fabulous fabric collection was in the Den Haan & Wagenmakers booth manned by two charming Dutch ladies who told me that for more than 25 years Den Haan & Wagenmakers have been reproducing the 17th and 18th-century indian chintzes which every student of European decorative arts knows revolutionized 18th century clothing and textile styles and European interiors. These fabrics are absolutely faithful copies of the originals, printed in the Netherlands on beautiful quality heavy 100% glazed cotton. They are sold online through their website at www.dutchquilts.net/ and from their store in Amsterdam. The store looks so charming It would be worth a special trip!

I made my purchases (in Houston, sadly, not in Amsterdam) which included the Tree of Life panel and a pile of fat quarters of small multicolored floral prints not knowing what I would do with it, but just as surely knowing I had to have it all.... Not an inexpensive purchase, mind you! I also skittered off to the Cherrywood Fabrics stand to buy another pile of their wonderful sueded color saturated hand dyed solids in those great "old" colors that I knew would mix so well with the chintz.

So I've just finished my small quilt with these luscious fabrics. I surrounded the center panel with 4" square in a square blocks which have those great florals as their centers. I free motion quilted the panel following the printed design and added scrolling feathers in the deep burgundy border. It was such a pleasure working with these gorgeous fabrics bringing textile history a little closer....

SAQA Benefit Auction Quilt - "Poppy Love"

2011-05-30T15:40:00.000-07:00

Here's my 12 inch square quilt for the SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) Benefit Auction 2011.
"Poppy Love" is a small whole cloth quilt on painters canvas using watercolor pencils, watercolor crayons and Tsukineko inks which were thread painted and free motion quilted. Embellishments include some needle felting, hand beading and a 3D free motion embroidered butterfly. The watercolor media techniques came from my friend Sherry Kleinman who gave a workshop for Westside Quilters in April.

This year's Auction will begin on Monday, September 12th at 2:00 pm Eastern and conclude on Sunday, October 2 at 2:00 pm Eastern. Price points will again be: $750, $550, $350, $250, $150 and $75. The one foot square quilts already received are now up on the SAQA site here. The funds raised through the Auction are critical to supporting SAQA's exhibitions, catalogs and outreach programs. Bid early and often!

Bridges from Quilts on the Wall Fiber Artists to Debut at International Quilt Festival Long Beach in July

2011-05-22T16:14:00.000-07:00

My quilt Rainy Day San Francisco, Monday October 10, 2010 will be part of Bridges an art quilt exhibit from Quilts on the Wall Fiber Artists debuting at International Quilt Festival Long Beach at the Long Beach Convention Center July 29-31, 2011.
I'm very honored to be in such exalted company as these other artists.Hope you'll be able to come to Long Beach!

My Quilt for Wounded Warriors

2011-05-15T18:23:00.000-07:00

It all started with a slightly odd email to our Westside Quilters email address (I'm guild president) from an Air Force Captain in Afghanistan - someone who I didn't know - asking if we were the group who had sent her unit quilts for their wounded and their medal ceremonies and if we could send more as soon as possible. We were not, but I was intrigued and hoped to help her find her way, so I started with Google and then called and emailed a few quilting contacts and finally came up with the name of a lady nearby in the Los Angeles area who I was told would know. Well, Arlene Zobrist did know and she is in fact in charge of a group in Southern California's South Bay that makes and collects quilts to be sent to wounded soldiers in Iraq an Afghanistan. She contacted the Air Force Captain and made sure that more quilts were on the way.

As I learned more about Arlene ( a member of Blue Star Mothers - her son is in the Air Force) and her group "Quilts for Wounded Warriors" I was hooked. The quilts are made in patriotic fabrics and colors of 100% cotton fabric and batting - they will be washed often and must be fire resistant. They are forwarded directly to hospitals in the battle zone and are given to the wounded as they are evacuated out of theater to Europe or the US. The transport planes and helicopters are cold and these provide needed warmth and comfort. Wounded Warriors is one of the few groups that sends quilts outside of the US. Most other groups provide quilts for the wounded when they arrive back in the states. The local chapter of Blue Star Mothers provides some of the funds for shipping. Arlene said that her group's quilts follow the soldier from the initial hospital overseas all the way back to the states where they become beloved heirlooms. she has sent me copies of wonderful thank you letters from the soldiers. I asked her about the required size which at 48" X 78" is long and narrow. They are stretcher size, she told me.
That's what finally got me.

I invited Arlene to visit one of our Guild meetings this last February where she gave us a moving presentation and a trunk show of some of the recently donated quilts before they were sent on our way. Several of our members have made their own Wounded Warriors quilt and they will be shown along with mine made from Sylvia Davis' handsome Kumasi Star pattern at our next meeting on May 21st and then will be delivered to Arlene for their trip to Afghanistan.I'll post more photos of the quilts on the Westside Quilters Website!

http://amyscreativeside.com/

Creating in Palos Verdes ....

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

I had a wonerdul day yesterday at Deborah Weir's Fiberfly Studio in Palos Verdes playing with my new needle felting machine. Wools, cottons, silk, yarns, angelina fibers,dyed cheesecloth, wool roving - we played with it all. Deborah took some photos of all our work so take a look below. I'll post a finished piece soon....

This free picture slideshow generated with Smilebox

Very Happy To Be in Sacred Threads Again!

2011-04-30T09:59:00.000-07:00

I'm so happy to say two of my quilts have been accepted into Sacred Threads 2011 to be held this time around in the Washington DC area June 22- July 4 at the Church of the Epiphany, 3301 Hidden Meadow Drive, Herndon, Virginia.

Balancing Act and Forrest's Flowers are shown below.

A description of the genesis of Sacred Threads from their website: "Founder Vikki Pignatelli and the other committee members wanted to create a dignified exhibit of artwork that would touch all those who viewed it on both spiritual and personal levels. We wanted to share the experiences of quilters whose stories would be a source of healing and strength for others by allowing the artist to submit a statement which would be exhibited with the artwork that described the meaning or inspiration for the piece. We also encourage attendees to complete artist comment forms if they are particularly moved by a quilt - these are returned to the artists with their quilt."

"The Sacred Threads quilts are divided into categories based on theme. These are Expressions of Joy, Spirituality, Inspiration, Grief, Healing and Peace/Brotherhood. The artwork themes provide thought-provoking insights, encouragement, inspiration and healing responses to grief and human hardships."

Beautiful Asilomar.....

2011-04-21T15:09:00.000-07:00

A few photos from my March idyll at Asilomar for an Empty Spools Seminar. Enjoy!

Quilting a' la Diane

2011-04-21T14:32:00.000-07:00

Every late winter I look forward to my annual session at Empty Spools Seminars at the stunning Asilomar Conference Grounds right on the beach at Pacific Grove. This year I was in great anticipation and more then a little trepidation because after three years of trying I had finally landed a spot in a class with the free motion machine quilting goddess Diane Gaudynski. I'm afraid I played hard ball this year and added a little note on my application noting how many years I had been disappointed and the veiled threat that if i didn't get in this time, I wasn't coming at all.

I consider myself more of an art quilter these days, but I still love and admire the graceful free motion quilting by machine I see on traditional quilts and have practiced and studied it with a number of teachers. I had read Diane's books (check these out on the right), mooned over her beautiful work in magazines and at quilt shows and visited her classroom at previous Asilomar sessions on Open House afternoon. I wondered if I would ever be able to do anything like her very fine intricate work. I also thought that anyone who did such exacting and perfect stitching must be very serious and a very tough task master. I worried that my slightly haphazard approach to machine workmanship would never measure up. Still, I new that I needed to go through this difficult boot camp to get to the next level and I was determined to try. I was scared.....

Well, I needn't have been. The first afternoon Diane put us completely at our ease. The 24 students were all at different levels from absolute beginners to more advanced with a lot of experience. My trusty Viking Designer SE behaved (she must have enjoyed her very expensive pre-class cleaning and tune-up at the spa at Sewing Arts Center)

To my great relief, Diane was relaxed, personable, patient and very funny if not downright silly occasionally. She instilled confidence. We all had the feeling from the beginning that if we followed her techniques and studied her demos, we all could do it. So throughout the week, we learned Diane's techniques and tricks. Among them - using 100 weight silk in the top and the bobbin on light as air wool batting, marking stencils and stems with blue washout marker and then riffing around them with free hand quilting and fill patterns. We learned how to get rid of the "dreaded lagoon of poof" by stitching on the bias and not with the grain of the fabric. Lastly, we learned from her patient demos some of her signature quilting patterns like Diane-shiko, Diane-shallot and "Bananas". We practiced on 18" quilt sandwiches which by the end of a few days were works of art in themselves. Then, some of us started on our real class project - a 32" pieced nine patch quilt prepared at home in advance or another small project to show off our new found skills.

My own 9 patch was bits of dupioni silk in mostly pastel colors that were left over from another project with a pieced square in a square in the center. The sheen of the silk allows the texture of the quilting to stand out beautifully. I tried to stitch a different stencil and background fill technique in each square and finished a number of them in class. The rest including the four borders stitched freehand save for the marked spines (each one different, but based on Diane's designs) were finished when I returned home to LA.

It is now trimmed, bound and labeled "Silk Fantasy A La Diane" and is a great memento of another wonderful week at Empty Spools/Asilomar.

I sent a photo to Diane earlier today and she has asked if she can use my quilt in her evening presentation at her next session at Asilomar in May.
I am truly honored. Sadly, Diane is retiring from teaching at the end of this year and I feel very privileged to have been one of her last students.
Check out her blog at
/http://dianegaudynski.blogspot.com/
and her website at
http://www.dianegaudynski.net/

It's been a long recovery!

2011-04-20T18:40:00.000-07:00

Well, it has been a long recovery from Houston, I guess. I can't believe that I've neglected posting since November. Can I really say that I've been that busy? Maybe just that lazy?

Business - yes, very busy. Right after the San Francisco Fall Antiques Show in late October we were immersed in doing a big estate sale in Pasadena that is still in play. No Los Angeles Antiques Show for us this year, but I was again co-chair of the vetting committee for the Antiques Dealers Association of California and busy with my job as ADAC Secretary.

Our new quilt guild - Westside Quilters - is keeping me on my toes as president. We've had some wonderful workshops in the last several months and a fascinating program with Margarete Heinisch in January.

I have taken some time to finish some art quilt projects including a small journal quilt begun in a workshop with the wonderful Pam Holland in Houston. My photographs and sketches of a trip to Mt. St Michel on the Brittany coast many years ago were the inspiration for this one which includes my own sketches which were digitally printed and transferred them to the background using TAP transfer paper - my new most favorite discovery! The wine glasses made from fused sheer fabrics are leftovers from another workshop with Esterita Austin a few years ago. They finally found a home. These little quilts are a great way to freeze very happy memories.

A few days spent at Road to California and a class with Terry Waldron in
January brought about a very quick free-cut applique' quilt of my fantasy of the kelp forests of the California Coast. "Beneath the Surface" features lots of couched yarns and hand beading and was so totally fun to do. I kept humming "Under the Sea" from Disney's "Little Mermaid" .

I've also returned recently from a blissful week at Empty Spools and a fabulous class with the amazingly talented free motion quilter Diane Gaudynski. More on that soon!

It's good to be back!

Recovering From Houston quilt Festival

2010-11-09T17:33:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm back from my first Quilt Festival in Houston. What an overwhelming experience. I flew in for four days with a friend from LA. I stayed in luxury at the Four Seasons, but walked my socks off to and from the Convention Center and around the floor. So many fabulous quilts - hundreds of vendors. It literally took me three days to cover the vendor floor - my box of purchases should be arriving in a day or so.

It was great visiting my quilts on display in the show including "Fossil Fueled" (above in the IQA Judged show) and my three in various traveling shows - "Night Flight" in In Full Bloom, "Stairway to Heaven" in Tactile Architecture and "Balancing Act" in West Coast Wonders.

I signed up for only two classes - I had been warned that I would need loads of time to cover the show - and neither was a disappointment. Susan Cleveland's class on miters was fabulous and my Saturday class with the wonderful Pam Holland doing travel journal quilts was so inspiring that I spent most of my time on the plane home with my sketchbook sorting out ideas. I can't wait to get going on it again.

My favorite quilts in the show? Well, my friend Sharon Schamber's quilt "Mystique" won a well deserved Best of Show. Pam Holland's Rhinosceros after a drawing by Albrecht Durer and her sample from her Bayeux Tapestry project keep appearing in my mind. But there were so many others, both traditional and avant garde that drew me.

Will I plan to get to Houston again? I sure hope so! It's an experience.

2010-10-03T09:14:00.000-07:00

Three of my quilts and some smaller pieces are part of "Quilting is Art" a show sponsored by Quilts on The Wall Fiber Artists opening running October 6 - 30 at The Framery and Fine Art Gallery in Whittier. Address: 13105 Whittier Blvd., Whittier, CA 90602. The opening reception is this Saturday, October 9 from 3-6. Would love to see you there!

SAQA's Art Meets Science in NYC at Pfizer International Headquarters

2010-09-27T09:52:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I received photos of the installation of Saqa's Art Meet Science Show now newly installed in Manhattan at the world Headquarters of Pfizer International. A big "thank you" to Jill Jensen the SAQA Coordinator for this traveling show.

The gorgeous modern building right across from the United Nations has very handsome gallery space and the show seems to display beautifully!

Unfortunately my piece "2009: A Space Odyssey" wasn't photographed, but there was quite a crowd in attendance for the opening including noted quilt collector Jack Walsh (Maybe he was there to buy? ) After Pfizer the next long term stop for the show is at the Visions Gallery in San Diego. Can't wait to see it there!.
Below are views of the Pfizer gallery and on the right is the show's Juror Dr. David Fraser who was viewing the quilts in person for the first time.

Noriko Endo Inspiration!

2010-09-04T14:46:00.000-07:00

The other night I took this recently finished piece to the monthly meeting of the Santa Monica Quilt Guild for the Show and Tell part of the program. I received some great feedback and lots of questions about the technique used in "Autumn Aspens" - so to answer all those questions, here goes....

When the catalogue of the recent International Quilt Festival Long Beach arrived last spring I was excited to see Noriko Endo's name among the teachers and quickly jumped at the chance to take her "Confetti Naturescapes" class. She is a charming and talented, though very self-effacing, quilter and teacher from Japan. A truly lovely lady with a delicate sensibility and a talent for translating the natural world into fabric and thread, her quilts have an ethereal quality I am drawn to.

I had first seen her technique on Simply Quilts and had followed her work since. She has recently published her book Confetti Naturescapes which is published by Dragon Threads Publishing and is available on the Dragon Threads site. My painfully inept attempt at her technique is woefully lacking in the "je ne sais quoi" so visible in hers, but take a look online at her magnificent quilts and I will attempt to describe the process.

First we started with a photo - I chose a photos of a grove of aspen turning to autumn color on the edge of a Sierra Nevada meadow. Looking now at that photo, I realize I should have added more detail in the trunks and branches, but ah...hindsight...

From the colors in the photo we chose fabrics to match (hand dyes and batiks work the best because they are two sided) and chopped strips up into small confetti like pieces. Literally 1/4 to 1/8 inch in size. Lots of slice and dice with the rotary cutter. Following our photos these confetti pieces were piled on to batting and backing the size of our intended quilt to suggest areas of color along with larger pieces of sky to suggest sky or water.

Next, we laid down a piece of fine black tulle over the whole piece and pinned with straight pins every inch or so to keep the whole thing together to get it under the sewing machine. Invisible polyester thread was used to squiggle around the whole surface to apply the tulle and hold the little bits in place. On the next layer free cut pieces of fabric were laid down to suggest trees, branches, and any large foreground details. At this point more confetti was laid on to give an illusion of depth and shading. Noriko went around the room adding very tiny pieces of black and purple confetti fabric which she calls the "magic" of her quilts. Adding these dark bits truly makes the scene look like an impressionist painting.

A final layer of black tulle is laid on and pinned again. More invisible thread is added to secure the layer as well as any free motion stitching in colored threads to add shading, highlights, etc. On my piece I added some gray and white textile paint and some light gray thread to suggest the sun slanting over the tree trunks from one side.

At home I finished my aspen piece by trimming it, and mounting it on a quilt sandwich with thin batting to add to the size and provide a frame which I free motion quilted with silk thread.

I have ordered Noriko's book and look forward to spending many hours appreciating her beautiful work.

Chaco I - A Journey

2010-08-27T07:52:00.000-07:00

I've spent a good part of this summer working on a challenge quilt for Quilts on the Wall - a group of fiber artists here in southern California. The theme of this show which will travel to various venues around the country for up to two years is "Discovery".

A photo taken years ago on a trip to the mysterious and impressive prehistoric religious and cultural center at Chaco Canyon in New Mexico's four Corners area seemed made for this challenge. I always tell myself I will document the progress of a quilt from inspiration to finished work, but I seldom remember to do it. This time I photographed all the stages and thought I'd lay them out for those who like me sometimes have a vision, but don't know where to start.

First, I cropped my photo and manipulated the size and to some extent the color of my original snap. After printing out the photo at 8 1/2 X 11 , I traced it on to an acrylic transparency sheet the same size. From there I photocopied the transparency film and blew it up (using Poster Pro) to the required size of 28" X 38". After gluing together all those pages i had my full size cartoon.

Then I began auditioning fabrics and colors, later fusing my choices on to a cloth foundation. I used some absolutely stunning hand dyed sateen from Judy Bianchi of Sebastopol, California for the masonry. When the large pieces were all fused I added more color, depth, shadows and highlights with various fabric paints including Jacquard and Tsukineko. I drew all the shadows between the stones with Fabrico markers using my cartoon as a guide.

Free motion quilting using several passes of silk thread gave texture to the ones and more depth as you look from door to door, to door. As you can see the piece needed trimming and when the quilting was finished i realized that the trimmed size was smaller than the required 28 X 38. I fused a narrow border in a purple stripe that is my new favorite print right now , did some decorative stitching on the join between the border and the image and then added a facing for a clean edge.

I'm happy with the the finished quilt above on the right , in fact my other photos of this wonderfully evocative place may inspire more - perhaps Chaco II?

SAQA - Art Meets Science

2010-08-25T18:09:00.000-07:00

I was so sorry not to be able to see my quilt in the SAQA Art Meets Science exhibit at the Festival of Quilts in the UK this weekend, but I've had many reports that it was a great show and very well received.

I received a message today from Jill Jensen who spearheaded the show that Alex Veronelli of AURIfil Threads posted a video of the exhibition at Festival of Quilts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU1NBKzvGDM

Jill said the exhibit was very well received and SAQA is getting very positive feedback. It is on its way back to Houston so that it can be checked in, then repackaged for shipping to Pfizer headquarters in New York for its next gig. ..

The catalog is now on sale online on the SAQA site and the quilts for sale are also pictured at http://www.sa qa.com/store.php?cat=22 Be sure to check it out!

The Golden Boy

2010-08-23T16:39:00.000-07:00

It is sad to say that this morning my beautiful, talented but aged palomino gelding Jesse passed away peacefully in Sylmar. He was foaled in 1976 in the Owens Valley purchased for a brilliant young rider (not me) and trained beautifully by Loretta Kemsley. I bought him as a 8 year old and enjoyed many years with him practicing dressage, Western Riding, equitation and a little scary barrel racing until he and I both retired from riding several years ago. I decided that I didn't bounce as well as I had once - and Jesse agreed.

He was lovingly cared for in his retirement by Loretta. At 34 he had known a long good life and he has left me with many wonderful memories of adventures and friendships.

I'll always remember how though often full of the devil and happy to find an opportunity to dump me whenever possible, he somehow new he was carrying a precious package as I was riding into to my 7th month of pregnancy. Every step he took was as if he was walking on eggs. He never put a foot wrong.
When I got back to riding after our son was born - all bets were off! I'll miss him, but I have all those golden memories.

A New Guld in Los Angeles - Westside Quilters

2010-08-16T17:20:00.000-07:00

Westside Quilters is a new guild for both traditional and art quilters now forming in Los Angeles. Our inaugural event is a a fundraiser at the Fowler Museum on th UCLA campus on Saturday, August 28 at 1:00pm to visit three batik exhibits with a gallery talk by a Fowler Museum educator. There will also be a presentation and trunk show by quilter, blogger, contemporary quilt collector and owner of the Thomas Contemporary Quilt Collection and SAQA member
Del Thomas. $20.00 tickets at the door are tax deductible

The first regular Westside Quilters meeting will be Saturday, October 9th at St. Alban's Episcopal Church in Westwood with award winning art quilter Carol Taylor as the featured speaker. For more information on both events and other upcoming programs and membership please visit- www.westsidequilterslosangeles.org
Email: WestsideQuilters@yahoo.com

Just One More Thing From Long Beach.....

2010-08-05T07:19:00.000-07:00

I just learned that there is now a video available of the West Coast Wonders 2010 exhibit which debuted at IQF Long Beach last week. It's on the Quilts Inc. website at http://quilts.com/lbqf10/enVivo/index.html

Just click on the videos link on the left and then on the West Coast Wonders button and it will run. My quilt "Balancing Act" is toward the end, but you can also check out the two wonderful quilts entered by my friend Sandy Lauterbach.

While your there, click on the "Beneath the Surface" button and see quilts from this exhibit from the Dinner at Eight Artist s curated by Jamie Fingal and Leslie Tucker Jenison. The exhibited included a wonderfully whimsical work "Gone Fishing" by my friend Sherry Kleinman. Her quilt is not featured in the video but can be seen on her website. It's worth a visit!

Home from IQF Long Beach

2010-07-27T08:57:00.000-07:00

I'm home and finally up for air after a totally inspiring several days at International Quilt Festival Long Beach. After four days of classes, lots of legwork around the show and vendors, lots of good conversation I'm exhausted but so totally inspired to finish some ongoing projects and get on to new ones.

The quilts on display were awe inspiring including the winners from 2009 World of Beauty as well as special exhibits "West Coast Wonders", "Tactile Architecture 2009", "In Full Bloom 2009", "Beneath the Surface", and Quilts on the Wall's "Journeys". I enjoyed my short stint working in the SAQA booth on Sunday talking about the two SAQA shows "A Sense of Humor" and "SAQA at 20", selling books and talking about the organization to show attendees.

My own quilt "Balancing Act" was part of "West Coast Wonders" and was strategically hung right at the bottom of the main escalator entrance to the Convention Center floor. It was just about the first quilt visitors saw as they entered. Quite a thrill! My friend Linda Miller took a photo.

My class choices were fantastic. I've come home with a fully marked , if small, traditional wholecloth quilt ready to trapunto and machine quilt thanks to my day with the wonderfully quirky Karen McTavish whose white work quilts I've admired for years. My day with Japanese art quilter Noriko Endo was inspirational and productive. I'll post a photo of my "Confetti Naturescape" when I've finished the last details.

Of course, I spent a lot of time trudging the vendor aisles, but tried to limit myself this year to what I really needed - backing fabric and quilting thread for my new quilt for Quilts on the Wall's "Discovery" and some much needed bobbins for my trusty Viking SE. Of course I found beads that may inspire me to add a beaded border to my Discovery quilt and some of Judy Bianchi's wonderful hand dyed sateens for some future project. My only criticism of the vendors at the show is that there is so little non-commercial hand dyed fabric to be found there.

The show crowd seemed huge at the opening on Friday and Saturday. Sunday seemed quieter as it was last year. Hopefully the southern California quilting contingent has forgotten the problems of the 2008 - parking difficulty, lack of available food, long ticket lines - which have all been solved and will embrace this fabulous show which brings the best of quilting from around the world to our own front door. The city of Long Beach certainly lays out the red carpet for the quilting community.

Just Some Random Notes.....

2010-07-14T08:08:00.001-07:00

Just some random notes on what's happening in my quilting world.... Great news this week! Fossil Fueled, my quilt based on fossils from my son's childhood collection, has been named a Finalist at International quilt Festival's "Quilts - A World of Beauty" which will open in October. I'm extremely humbled to have a quilt shown at Houston the second year in a row. Scroll down the posts for a photos of the quilt.

As I'm writing, my quilts Forrest's Flowers and Up At the Villa With Michael are being shown as part of "Becoming Art at the Seams" at the American Quilt Society's show in Knoxville, Tennessee. This wonderful show highlighting the work of Southern California art quilters was organized and curated by Ariane Karakalos at the Museum of Ventura County and is now traveling around the country.

Lastly, I've finally sent off 2009 - A Space Odyssey to the SAQA Show "Art Meets Science" which will debut at the Festival of Quilts, 2010 in Birmingham, UK next month. We've all recently learned that this is only the beginning of the travel for this show. After the UK it will travel to the national headquarters of Pfizer, Inc. in New York City from September, 2010 to March 2011 , the Visions Art Quilt Gallery, San Diego, CA from January 2012 - April 2012 and to the Global Health Odyssey Museum at the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, GA from June to September, 2012. The quilts won't be back to the artists for two years. I'm especially happy about Visions - I'll be able to see the show for myself!

Currently I'm in the first stages of designing a quilt based on a photograph I took at Chaco in New Mexico several years ago for a Quilts on the Wall show entitled "Discovery". It's due in September so I'd better get back to work. If I get somewhere on this one I'll post some photos next month. In the meantime I'm off to International Quilt Festival Long Beach next week. I'm taking classes from Karen McTavish and Noriko Endo. Can't wait.....

My Latest Work....

2010-05-25T15:55:00.000-07:00

My blissful week at Empty Spools Seminars at Asilomar in Pacific Grove in March has finally resulted in a finished quilt - "Fossil Fueled".

My son's childhood fossil collection became the inspiration for this fused applique' quilt. Begun in a workshop entitled "Quilt Like Leonardo Da Vinci" with the ever creative Barbara Olson ( shown talking about her own gorgeous quilts below) in which we were asked to make detailed still - life compositions from natural objects, the quilt evolved from photographs and pencil sketches of fossils of sea-life from the Permian and pre-Cambrian periods.

My final photographic composition is shown at left. Hand dyes, batiks and printed cottons were used along with metallic copper braid, glass beads and textile paints for the final illusion in my fiber composition.

We were encouraged to arrive at Asilomar having read Michael Gelb's book How to Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci and were challenged to use many of the thought processes and exercises in the book to jump start our own creativity. For me the incredible beauty of the Asilomar State Park environment is usually enough to inspire me (especially this year with beautiful sunshine and blue seas even in mid March - see the snapshots below) but exercising my left brain in new ways was a fascinating experience.

One of the reasons I adore the Asilomar Conference Grounds is the opportunity to walk on the State Beach each morning before breakfast and classes. A boardwalk stretches from the dining hall over the dunes to the beach beyond. Fabulous on a slightly misty morning and even better at sunset!

Who Me? A Quilt Teacher ??

2010-04-15T13:38:00.000-07:00

My husband would be the first to say that I would be a terrible teacher. His 16 years in Elementary and Middle School education probably gives him some insight in this particular matter, but his experience on this subject comes from some difficult hours spent trying to teach him to turn on the computer and use email. I did get him through his online traffic school experience, but he has stated on more than one occasion that "You [meaning me] can't teach anyone anything!"

So it was with more than a little trepidation that I agreed to give a workshop to my fellow members of the Santa Monica Quilt Guild. I have enjoyed using machine stitching and thread painting on a lot of art quilts over the last few years and have been fairly successful at local shows, so last summer I was asked to be part of a summer "Quilters College" that took the place of our normal speaker at a guild meeting. It was a 15 minute gig - just explain a few of your thread painting techniques. Of course I had to do it four times - once for each group that circled the room among four other teachers and of course in the middle of it my machine refused to participate and I could no longer do an actual demo, but basically all went well and members were very enthusiastic. So enthusiastic that I was asked to do a full day workshop sometime during the upcoming year.

Well, my time came last Saturday with a room full of 16 eager quilters. My initial panic subsided while I was setting up and knowing that I was prepared with handouts, samples, some easy designs for simple projects was a great help. I was pleased to be able to inspire some very talented students to go way beyond my class projects and take the initiative to move off on their own. I was also able to solve some machine problems for those who had done much free motion quilting, including one lady who had a brand new machine and had never lowered the feed dogs! It took a while, but with lots of time spent with the manual she was eventually up and running with the best. I was initially caught unawares by two visiting Japanese quilters who spoke almost no English, but they seemed to enjoy the day and actually gave me a lovely little gift at the end!

To sum up, I had dreaded failure and embarrassment, but by the end of the day I was not only tired and happy that it was all over, but pleased that I had exposed some very traditional quilters to some aspects of art quilting and thread painting techniques in particular that I think will be useful. I was also very pleased with the reception and the comments afterward. In fact some of my friends have suggested that I should be open to teach this workshop at other guilds.

I hasten to add that many of the techniques I demonstrated to the group were not necessarily my own. Some I had learned through workshops from nationally known professional teachers - especially Ann Fahl whose floral work I greatly admire. I was able to show these techniques using my own quilts as examples. I have a new respect for all those teachers who travel the country earning a living from teaching workshops week after week. Believe me, though satisfying, it's not easy!

I'm Published in Jean Biddick's New Book!

2010-03-24T11:11:00.001-07:00

Jean Biddick a talented quilter and teacher from the Tucson area has just had her second book published by AQS. Entitled Masterful Machine Pieced Quilts it publishes for the first time some of her award winning quilt patterns based on European inlaid stone mosaic floors and describes her drafting and freezer paper piecing techniques for these amazingly complex and luscious quilts. Last year she put out a call to her students asking those of us who had completed a quilt from her classes to submit photos of our quilts. I sent off photos of my "Roman Holiday" am so thrilled to see it finally published in her book. I ran into Jean at the Empty Spools Seminar at Asilomar last week and was thrilled that she had brought and advance copy.

This quilt was inspired by a trip with my husband and 15 year old son to England in 2005 where we spent a lot of time visiting the Roman ruins and excavations in the south and west of England. We spent a wonderful day in Bath at the Roman Baths and the nearby museum. The central motif in this quilt was adapted from the sculptured pediment of the excavated temple on the site and depicts Aqua Sulis the God of the sacred warm spring which fed the baths.

The surrounding motifs incorporated printed images of Roman mosaics as the centers of the paper pieced compass stars and appliqued images of Roman artifacts unearthed in southern England which were adapted from my original photos.

The quilt is actually the result of two workshops taken at Quilting in the Desert in January 2006, one from Jean who inspired the pieced mosaic circular frames for the images and the other from the wonderful Sharon Schamber who inspired me to attempt a combination of paint and Pieclique' technique to bring the image of the God of the Spring to life.

By the end of the week my River God was completed and the larger ring was 3/4 finished. The surrounding motifs were painted and/or appliqued, ringed with more piecing and applied to a quartered background which represented the river reeds of the prehistoric spring. The fabrics were all collected with an eye to emulating hard stone tesserae and were mostly hand dyed or marbled. The background was embellished with over 500 crystals to give the effect of sparkling water. The outer mosaic border was paper pieced.

One real disaster on this quilt occurred while I was quilting it on my domestic machine. My halogen elbow work lamp slowly lowered itself too close to one of the borders. Soon I was smelling burning fiber and realized that a portion of the border was actually smoldering. I dumped water on it to put out the fire, but was left with a gaping scorched hole through all three layers. Some surgical replacement of batting and applique saved me and today I can't find the area at all.

A long story, but this quilt was a long, wearying project with a lot of personal meaning to me. I'm so happy to see it published in Jean's book.

Wonderful Exhibit at The Museum of Ventura County

2010-03-22T15:28:00.000-07:00

"Becoming Art at the Seams" opened with a very well attended reception on Friday, March 12. My husband and I braved the traffic from West Los Angeles to attend. I had expected maybe a handful of guests, but there seemed to be hundreds - so many and such a crush that I never really saw all the quilts! I managed to get back for a much quieter look last Friday with a friend and thoroughly enjoyed the wide variety of art quilts including those by my friends Linda Miller and Sherry Kleinman and some new discoveries like Loris Bogue and Patty Latourel. Loved their work! The show is beautifully presented - congratulations to Curator Ariane Karakalos are in order. Well worth a visit!

Hey, I' m The Cover Girl!

2010-03-09T20:03:00.002-08:00

Yes, that's my quilt "Forrest's Flowers" being used as the promotional image for "Becoming Art at the Seams: a Juried Exhibition of Contemporary and Art Quilts" opening this Friday evening at the Museum of Ventura County. 28 quilters from Santa Barbara, Ventura and Los Angeles Counties are included in the show.

The opening reception is this coming Friday night and I am looking forward to meeting the other artists and seeing old and new quilting friends. The exhibit runs until June 20th. If you find yourself in the Ventura, California I think it will be worth a visit.

More information is available on the Museum of Ventura County website at www.venturamuseum.org

A Great Workshop - Do it Yourself

2010-02-18T15:13:00.000-08:00

I go to Guild meetings all the time and hear members complain about finding workshops that interest them. They are traditional quilters and bewail the fact that their Guild only offers art quilting teachers - or the other way around. They don't want to travel too far for a workshop and pay costly travel expenses. They would rather do workshops with a smaller number of people they know they have an affinity with. There is a specific teacher they want to study with, but their Guild can't afford to hire them.

My art quilting group has found an answer to all these dilemmas. Organize a workshop yourselves. We are the Fiber Fanatics a small group of art quilters who are also members of a local quilt guild in southern California. One of our group found that Indiana art quilter Bob Adams was spending the winter in our area and was available for workshops. We all looked at his website and admired his free motion techniques for art quilts. Our organizer, Sandy, contacted him, arranged his fee, set the dates and graciously volunteered the use of her home and her large dining room table! She checked with her electrician to make sure that her wiring would take all of our sewing machines. That's one thing I never would have thought of!

We chose a two day workshop with dates that fit everyone's schedule. The cost when divided between eight of us turned out to be fairly reasonable given all the individual instruction we would have with our small group. Not having to travel far proved another bonus. Rather than brown bag our lunches, I was asked to organize communal lunches with each of the participants bringing a pot luck dish for ten people one of the days.

Sandy's home is beautiful with a view out of large windows to a tropical garden below - a wonderful setting. The workshop was cozy and casual and we all had a wonderful time. I heard no grumbling or complaints - just the happy hum of sewing machines.

Bob Adams' workshop was highly interesting and informative. We played at drawing with free motion line on our sewing machines and tested out multiple colors of thread on various colored cloth samples to see how to lighten, darken, neutralize and change color on fabrics using only straight lines of thread. He demonstrated how quilting line can change the mood and emotion of the quilt. His very masculine quilts using imagery from infrastructure (manhole covers, overpasses, etc) are very interesting and very different from our usual - can I say it? - feminine sensibilities. We were fascinated by some of his methods for surface design.

Bob and his wife Natalie were charming, down to earth people who made the whole two day session easy and fun. We all had a wonderful time.

This is in fact the second "in house" workshop our group has planned. Our first was a few years ago with the wonderful artist Patt Blair. They have both gone so well that without doubt we will do more! I totally recommend it.

"Becoming Art at the Seams" - Museum of Ventura County

2010-02-17T13:44:00.000-08:00

I'm very pleased to have had two quilts - "Forrest's Flowers" and "Up at the Villa With Michael" accepted into the Museum of Ventura County's "Becoming Art at the Seams"! The show will run March 13 to June 20. The Opening night reception will be on Friday March 12, 6 to 8pm. See website for details: www.venturamuseum.org .

It's especially appropriate since my husband's Grandfather Forrest Smoot whose Epiphyllums inpired this quilt lived for many years in the Ventura area. For more on that quilt and its story see the blog post below.

Hello, My Name is Sally Wright and I am a Classaholic...

2009-12-14T16:36:00.000-08:00

Certainly, that's the way I feel sometimes. There are so many quilting techniques and teachers that interest me I wonder how to fit them all in. And once I've taken the class, I'm off to the next without the luxury of time to put what I've learned into practice. Suffice it to say that I'm never happier in my quilting life than when I am in a classroom with friends old and new and a great teacher learning a new way to express myself in fabric. Recently,
I've been able to participate in several new learning experiences.

Art Quilter Marcia Stein visited the Santa Monica Quilt Guild in November and presented her workshop "Picture This" in which she shared her methods for transforming photographs into pictorial quilts. I was especially interested in the way she simplified her subjects - her quilts are very direct and immediate, often picturing people in everyday situations on simple backgrounds, but they go right to the heart of the subjects.

I took a photo of a friend's garden in Mill Valley for my small quilt. Marcia helped me simplify the scene and select fabrics which would do
most of the work. The resulting quilt is entitled "October - Mill Valley" and became a gift to our friends who have shown us so much hospitality in their lovely 1880s home on a redwood studded hillside.

A few weeks ago I headed south to Westchester near LAX with a friend to Tanners Sew and Vac to take a class on making fabric bowls and totes using a technique of winding fabric strips around clothesline and coiling the line to form vessels very much like building up a coiled pot in ceramics. The afternoon went by in a flash with teacher Lisa full of good humor and great tips. By the time I left I had the beginnings of a coiled tote bag all done in shades of black, gray and white
(actually leftover strips from a log cabin quilt made for my son many years ago). I finished it at home and have been using it for a week or so to many compliments. I'm now addicted to these wound up creations and have finished another bag for a friend. Certainly a class like this is practical and money saving in the long run - or at least that's my excuse.

My recent totally indulgent Christmas gift to myself was a three days worth of classes with the wonderful Sharon Schamber at Sewing Arts Center in Santa Monica, California. I had long ago discovered Sharon and her work at another class at Sewing Arts years ago and at a series of classes at Quilting in the Desert in Phoenix using her Piecelique' technique. This time she gave a series of three classes on Stippling For the Longarm, Free Motion Unmarked Feathers , and painting with Dyes. I don't own a longarm but the stipple techniques are universal for both the longarm and the domestic machines most of us use. For the first time a drove a longarm using her techniques and it was fascinating, though I know I will never be able to afford either the funds or the room to own one! The Feathers class inspiring and full of tips and tricks for better free motion quilting in general. Best of all, Sharon gave us all copies of her DVDs for each class to take home and watch over and over again until her techniques are truly ingrained in your psyche. She is a fabulously talented quilter as her back to back Best of Shows in Paducah and Houston will attest, a truly great teacher and a very classy lady.

After Christmas there are more classes - Esterita Austin is coming to the Santa Monica Quilt Guild in early January and February may bring a workshop on free motion quilting for art quilts with Bob Adams. Then in March is my much anticipated week at Asilomar and a workshop with Barbara Olson. So many classes - so little time! Somewhere in between them I want to do some practice free motion feathered pieces on silk shantung - perfect for pillows - and there are more photo inspired quilts coming together in my head. Then there are those coiled bowls and bags which are totally addictive. I'm also going back to work almost full time in retail for a year, but have already figured out how to smuggle a sewing machine and supplies into the back room for the quiet hours. I'll get it all done, I'm sure!!!

Fabulous Fiber Art in San Francisco

2009-11-12T12:09:00.000-08:00

The last week of October - in my other life as a professional antiques dealer - my husband and I exhibited for the 26th year at the San Francisco Fall Antiques Show, a charity show benefiting Enterprise for high School Students. As always it was a glorious and glittering affair bringing together the best possible material in fine art and antiques from all over the world. You can view our small stand in the photo on the left.

One of the most enjoyable parts of the week is the very venue of the show which is in one of the old WWII pier buildings jutting right out into San Francisco Bay at Fort Mason Center in the Marina area not far from the Presidio. At break time it is possible to slip out the side door for spectacular views of the Golden Gate on one side and Alcatraz and Tiburon on the other. The sea lions swim past and beneath the pier hunting for food.

I spent some time during the quiet hours of the show wandering with my camera and found some fascinating examples of textiles and
fiber art among the furniture, ceramics, silver and other decorative arts offered for sale.

Directly across from our stand Eddie Keshishian, a tapestry and carpet dealer from London displayed a gorgeous small 16th century French tapestry. the underlying pattern of beautifully shaded baroque form overlapping leaves kept drawing my eye throughout the week. I sketched some of the leaves thinking they would make a wonderful art quilt someday. The borders are complete - a rarity in tapestries of this age and the colors are still bright and vibrant through hundreds of years.

My dear friend and colleague Kathleen Taylor of Kathleen Taylor -
the Lotus Collection in San Francisco's Jackson square is also a tapestry specialist, but I simply love the photo of her wide selection of European and Asian textile pieces. Purchased by collectors and interior designers to be enjoyed as wall hangings or fabricated into luxurious pillows or upholstery on rare furniture pieces, can you imagine better eye candy? Imagine your 18th century Louis XV chair with a beautiful brocade seat of the period or your dining room table with a runner of 18th century Japanese
silk?

On set up day earlier in the week I had been drawn to the stand of Joel Cooner from Dallas, Texas and his amazingly beautiful late 17th century Spanish processional figure of Queen Isabella of Aragon. Not only was her carved face exquisitely sculpted, but her elaborate gown was a fascinating combination of early European brocades and velvets with a beautiful early Chinese silk embroidered petticoat. For closer (and much better) views of this remarkable piece go to her page on Joel's site.

Sandra Whitman of San Francisco is a specialist in fine antique Chinese and Tibetan rugs and her stand is always filled with wonderful early examples. I was especially struck by this 18th century Ningxia runner with its geometric design and subtle colors. The carpet is wool on cotton foundation. Does anyone else see a Courthouse Steps design here? Nothing is really new.....

Finally, Jeff Bridgeman, an Americana and folk art dealer from Pennsylvania exhibited along with an amazing collection of antique and vintage American flags a pieced table cover made from 19h century cigar silks. In the Victorian era these narrow silk ribbons, printed with the name of the cigar brand were tied around bundles of cigars. Women kept them and made into a variety of decorative items. The center of the cover was pieced in a crazy quilt pattern typical of the 1880s. This piece has been framed as a vibrant wall piece.

I hope you've enjoyed this brief textile tour!

2009 - A Space Odyssey

2009-10-15T09:08:00.001-07:00

This week I finished this quilt in time to send it off as an entry to the SAQA show Art Meets Science which will debut at the Festival of Quilts in the UK in summer 2010. The deadline was yesterday and I made it by the skin of my teeth. Click on the image to the left for a larger photo posted on my website.

It is wholecloth - painted on sateen in a variety of paints including Tsukineko inks, Jacquard textile paints, watercolor pencils and crayons. It was free-motion quilted using silks, rayon and polyester threads. I added beaded stars and laid the quilt on another free motion quilted piece which was also beaded with Swarovsky crystal beads. I based it on a photograph from the Hubble Space Telescope website entitled "A perfect storm of turbulent gasses in the omega/swan nebula" . I was entranced by the swirling colors and juxtaposition of light and dark in the original image.

Realizing that there is no such thing as a unique idea - I was eagerly looking through the World of Beauty winners at the current International Quilt Festival in Houston (no my quilt "Stairway to Heaven" was not included in that list) I found another quilt based on the same photo which won an honorable mention in the Art-Painted Surface category and was made by Anne Munoz of Holladay, Utah. Congratulations, Anne, it is wonderful..... sigh.

I've been painting, texturing, absracting - all those arty things - for months. I think I'm ready to take a break and just piece something traditional... Possibly relaxing?

Forrest's Flowers

2009-10-02T16:09:00.000-07:00

Forrest Smoot was my husband's grandfather. Already well into his 80s when I first met him over 25 years ago, I was instantly drawn to this big burly man who reminded me a bit of my own beloved Grandfather who had been gone for over 10 years. Forrest had been long widowed and lived in a retirement community in Ventura County where as a former electrician and mechanic he was essential as a local handyman and Mr. Fix-it - especially for all the widow neighbors.

He had a small, but busy, patio garden and in pride of place among the birds of paradise (his late wife's favorites) were these rather unattractive prehistoric looking plants with big fleshy green leaves - some of them in terracotta, but others stuck in old paint cans which had been painted an odd green. My husband tells me that the green came from all the leftover paint in the garage thrown together.

After his sudden death these various tacky cans and pots arrived in our garden courtesy of my husband who has never been known to throw away a plant. I thought they were hideously ugly and wondered why we had to give them room, but Glen lovingly repotted them into new terracotta and put them in the back of our patio against the aged redwood fence.

The following spring these strange plants burst forth with the most spectacular vivid blooms I had ever seen. Red, Schiaparelli pink, white, yellow, cascaded rather wierdly from nodes on the big green leaves. I have since learned that these are Epiphyllums, a true cactus, often called "Cactus orchids", "Orchid Cactus" or "Epis" for short. they bloom spectacularly for a single day and some only for a single night. They have bloomed every year since and are a highly anticipated event in our garden - a reminder of Forrest.

A few years ago I started photographing them with the thought that they would eventually end up in an art quilt. I was inspired by my art quilt group the "Fiber Fanatics" to take some of these images, manipulate the color and images in PhotoShop Elements and then print them on ink jet canvas. I've used these images in combination with commercial printed cotton (an especially luscious gradated green from Carol Breyer Fallert), cotton batiks, machine applique', and glass beads in the small quilt at right which is now named "Forrest's Flowers". Click on the image for a link to a larger image of this quilt on my web site.

Pacific International Quilt Festival

2009-09-16T10:40:00.000-07:00

I'm happy to say that two of my quilts have been accepted for the Pacific International Quilt Festival in Santa Clara next month! Both A Golden Host of Daffodils seen here and "Alright, Mr. Demille, I'm ready for my Close-up" (seen in the left column at Long Beach) will be there, but unfortunately I won't. A business trip to San Francisco the following week makes for very poor timing!

I was able to go last year, take some classes and shop and enjoyed it all!

Thread - Who New?

2009-09-16T10:27:00.000-07:00

I suppose like a lot of quilters I take thread for granted. If it looks right on the fabric - fine! However, after a workshop with Cindy Needham entitled "Open Thread Bar" I don't think I'll look at thread the same way again.

At a recent Santa Monica Quilt Guild workshop Cindy brought dozens and dozens of different types of Superior threads - cotton, polyester, metallics - and let loose her students to play. She talked about each thread and what she uses it for, the ways different threads work in your machine, needles, fine tension adjustments to make a balanced stitch, common sense tips on taming a "difficult thread". Looking at her magnificent machine quilting work you can see that she has really mastered her materials. I truly recommend this workshop as part of every quilter's education.

SAQA Online Quilt Auction Begins September 10!

2009-09-01T17:46:00.000-07:00

Just a reminder that the SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) 2009 online Benefit Auction begins September 10th. There are over 200 quilts offered for sale by SAQA members (including me - see the quilt below right).

The auction will start Thursday, September 10th at 2:00 p.m. Eastern. It will again be a reverse auction with price points starting at $750 on the first day and dropping to $550, $350, $250, $150 and a final of $75.

Part 2 of the Auction will begin September 17th, and Part 3 will start on September 24th.

There are some absolutely amazing works donated to the auction so go to the SAQA website where they can all be previewed. http://www.saqa.com/newsebulletins/Squares09_1.aspx

On my Design Wall Right Now....

2009-08-27T12:51:00.000-07:00

I've been working on the quilt I began in David Taylor's class at the International Quilt Festival Long Beach last month. The subject is my son at the age of 10 (he's now 19 and away at college) at summer camp on a Lake in the High Sierras. I photoshopped his image from a party at a gym on to another photo of Shaver Lake and presto! I've had this quilt in my mind for a couple of years and finally, thanks to David, the design was finalized.

The fabric selection for the background was done in a couple of days at home - a wide range of hand dyes and batiks plus some hand marbled fabric for the dead log. The photo shows the end of that process with all the pieces pinned together on my design board. Another few days to turn the edges over the freezer paper, and then it was glued together. Obviously I decided not to use David's hand applique' technique - it's just not me - too impatient for that. I've used Elmers to glue the edges and have sewn it down with zigzag.

Another couple of days have been spent thread painting David's image and adding branches to the large trees. I'm at a quandary right now regarding how much thread painting to do now versus quilting after it is sandwiched. I will attempt David's close quilting to put in some shading and detail in the background.

I've also completed a little art quilt called "Autumn Haze" which I've added to my Etsy shop
and to my website which started as a sample of a short 20 minute demo for the Santa Monica Quilt Guild on "Thread Painting". After the demo I brought it home, added some rubber stamped images, beading and three different patterns of quilting. I love the hazy green/rust "fallish" colors. (I guess I'm ready for the end of summer...) The demo must have been a success since I've been asked to do a full day workshop for the Guild in April. Another adventure....

"Night Flight " will be at Houston After All!

2009-08-08T07:35:00.000-07:00

I'm very happy to say that the problem I mentioned with Quilts, Inc. and my quilt "Night Flight" which was part of Celebrate Spring at Chicago Festival has been resolved and it will, after all, be included when the exhibit travels to Houston Festival in October. I received this news and an apology for the office mistake this last week and I am extremely pleased that two of my quilts will be there. I only wish I could get there, too, since these lucky stars will probably never be aligned this way again! Sadly, It's not in the cards this year to make another quilting trip - I'm already set up for a weekend at Road to California and a week at Asilomar in the spring. I hope to find someone to take photos of my quilts hanging there.

Meanwhile I'm well into selecting the fabrics for my piece from the David Taylor class in Long Beach. It looks great on the wall so far... Maybe an in process photo soon.

International Quilt Festival Long Beach

2009-08-01T18:01:00.000-07:00

The long anticipated second annual International Quilt Festival / Long Beach is now past and I am still basking in the glow! I spent most of the week commuting between my home in Westwood and the Long Beach Convention Center since this year I decided not to spend any more than necessary on hotel expenses. Actually the trip down in the morning was quite easy each day if we left by 7:30 AM and since we stayed until after dinner the evening traffic was not that awful.

I started off on Wednesday with Bonnie McCaffrey's wonderful class on painted fabric portraits. Her techniques are amazing and yes, you can do it if you follow her blueprint. in fact in the last few days at home I have used her techniques to paint a portrait of my son for a long planned quilt and it actually worked!

Friday, my class on calligraphy on fabric with Lisa Engelbrecht was very interesting and Friday night I began the two day class with David Taylor -www.davidtaylorquilts.com - which continued on Saturday. I am enormously impressed with his work which is visually glorious. I took the photo and drawing of my son at summer camp which I began at last year's Long Beach Festival in another class and think this time I may actually finish it. I'm not sure that it will be hand applique' - but I am quite inspired. David is charming and personable, a talented artist and a great teacher.

Sunday morning I tried my hand at "Accidental Landscapes" with Karen Eckmeier. It was a casual very enjoyable class using free cut curved fabric pieces layered into seascapes. It was great fun and a great technique. I came home with the central scene and in my studio added borders, fused applique' and beading and voila! a little finished art quilt - maybe a gift for a beach loving friend at Christmas. See it above! I'd love to try her technique again for other small landscape quilts.

In between classes there wasn't that much time to explore the show which didn't open until Friday. I tackled the exhibition quilts on Friday at lunch time and the vendors on the next day. I ran into my friend and art quilt minigroup companion Nancy and we did the quilts together. it's so much more fun to browse with someone! Nancy kindly took a photo of me with my quilt "Alright, Mr. Demille, I'm ready for My Close-up" exhibited in Silver Screen II (shown to the right )

I found the vendors a little disappointing on Saturday - seemingly hundreds of booths with much the same merchandise and ,frankly, a lot of junk.... I only bought a few fat quarters of hand dyed and batik cotton for my David Taylor class.

The highlight of Sunday afternoon was my two hour shift working at the SAQA booth. I arrived to find that my little quilt "Currents" which I had donated to the September SAQA on-line auction was hanging along with others in the booth. What a nice surprise! I met several SAQA members - Jamie Fingal, Jeanette Kelly among them - and it was so great to be able to put names with faces and spread the word about SAQA and the work it does to promote Art Quilters and their work. We sold several books and gave out a lot of information. I helped pack up the booth at closing and watched the process of taking down all the quilts and the vendors packing up. Just like closing night of an antique show - my other life.....

My one disappointment with the show was arriving on Wednesday and finding that my quilt "Night Flight" had not been brought from Houston and was not on exhibit in "Celebrate Spring"and would not be going on to Houston in October. I was told it was a "Glitch in the office" at Quilts, Inc. I'm afraid the situation colored some of my enjoyment of the show (More about this in a future post) but on the whole Long Beach was a wonderful experience and I am already looking forward to next year....

June/ July in Southern California

2009-07-15T16:05:00.000-07:00

Well, June flew by in a flash. I was very busy working on the Santa Monica Quilt Guild Quilt Show the early and middle of the month and took the rest of the month to recuperate. The show was very successful keeping in mind the state of the economy and will allow the Guild to bring a wonderful group of nationally known professional teachers to meetings and workshops over the next two years. The show looked fabulous - it was beautifully hung in the light and airy gymnasium at Loyola Marymount University. \ The quality of quilts exhibited by Guild Members was top notch and our featured quilter Sherry Kleinman provided a stellar display of her art quilts. As Treasurer and Awards and Prizes chair I was kept very busy....

Speaking of awards I was thrilled and more than a little embarrassed to learn that my quilt "Stairway to Heaven" (see its photo in a post below0 won three awards - Best Machine Quilting, Best use of Color and 2nd place Viewers' Choice. Another quilt "Alright, Mr. Demille, I'm ready for my Close-up" won Best Use of Embellishment. I was humbled.....

The good news continued after the show - I was thrilled and surprised to receive a fat envelope from Houston this year - "Stairway to Heaven" will be going there very soon as a finalist in "Quilts: A World of Beauty". I only wish I could get to Houston in October to see it hanging in all that illustrious company, but alas, it is not in the cards this year. Perhaps someone will snap a few photos of it for me...

I'm looking ahead to next week's International Quilt Festival at Long Beach. I've signed up for several classes including one with David Taylor and will be with quilting friends. Two of my quilts will be shown there which will be very exciting. "Alright Mr. Demille..." is in Silver Screen II and "Night Flight" is travelling with "Celebrate Spring" which debuted at Chicago in April.

In my "real" world of business all is pretty depressing right now, but in my quilting world everything is blooming!

So Much Going On!

2009-05-19T10:59:00.000-07:00

So much going on in my quilting world that it's time to sit down and talk!

Good news last week I learned that my quilt "Alright, Mr. Demille, I'm Ready For My Close-up" has been accepted into "Silver Screen II" which will debut at the Long Beach Quilt Festival here in Southern California this July. That makes two quilts for the show since my "Night Flight" was in the Chicago Festival's "Celebrate Spring" and will be traveling to Long Beach as well. I'll be taking classes at the Festival most of the week.

Award Winning art quilter B.J. Adams spoke at our regular Santa Monica Quilt Guild meeting last week. Her Power Point presentation was inspiring and highlighted both her amazing thread painting techniques and her incredible imagination. I was immediately drawn to her hyper realistic almost surrealistic images. The South Bay Quilters Guild sponsored a workshop with her the next day which I was thrilled to attend and learn her techniques with washaway stabilizer, fabric and tulle. I came away with just a few samples, but I can't wait to try more.....

We're down to the wire with less than 30 days to go before the Santa Monica Quilt Guild's Quilt Show - "Explorations". It's June 13th and 14th at Loyola Marymount University. I've been feverishly making purses and totes for the "Bag Boutique", entering my quilts, and serving as Treasurer and Awards and Prizes Chair.

I'm also happy to be packing up a lot of quilts for shipping to various venues including Sacred Threads and the Long Beach Quilt Festival. I'm also sending a quilt to Jean Biddick in Tucson which will be photographed for her new book for CT publishing on mosaic quilts. Very exciting to be almost published!

Two Projects Finished

2009-04-12T18:52:00.000-07:00

The most fun this week was the monthly meeting of the my Art Quilt Group The Fiber Fanatics - always a happily anticipated meeting of seven of my friends - all talented and dedicated fiber artists with wicked senses of humor and all generous with constructive ideas and criticism. We meet once a month for a day of show and tell and lunch at a rotation of homes in West Los Angeles and I admit it is almost always the best day in the quilting month.

I had two finished projects to show. The first was from this year's trip to Empty Spools Seminars at Asilomar in Pacific Grove. In Esterita Austin's five day class I translated a photograph of the beautiful 12th century Chapter House Stairs at Wells Cathedral in Southwest England with the use of fabric, thread and paint. The class was based on abstraction but my chosen photograph was not entirely suitable to abstracting the image. I decided to abstract it in color instead and chose hand dyes and batiks in purple, red orange and green . Esterita taught an unusual raw edge applique' technique. As always, I loved the beautiful winter week on the California coast and look forward to next year already.

The other finished quilt is a small version of part of my painted wholecloth quilt Magnolia Soulangiana which you can see by clicking on the photo below. A friend and member of my Guild in Santa Monica loved the original quilt and told me she'd love to have a small bit of it. I decided to surprise her with a little one which will be donated to our quilt auction at the upcoming Santa Monica Quilt Show in June. She's better bid on it!!

A beautiful Easter Sunday

2009-04-12T18:30:00.000-07:00

It's been a beautiful week in Southern California topped by a gorgeous sunny, though cool Easter Sunday. The white Iceberg roses are going crazy in the front garden . some were cut this morning by my flower arranging husband for an Easter Brunch display.

Southern California SAQA Members Meet

2009-03-30T15:34:00.000-07:00

On a beautiful Sunday afternoon in the hills of West Los Angeles, over 25 SAQA members finally met over lemonade, pecan tarts and lemon cupcakes at the home of Sandra Lauterbach. The meeting gathered art quilters from the far flung areas of Southern California - from Santa Barbara to Apple Valley, from Whittier to Santa Monica.

After some organizational business we went around the room introducing ourselves, our techniques and showing examples of work we had brought. Such a wealth of talent and expertise in one living room. It was truly inspiring. One member brought the original silk paintings and the first samples of her new fabric line for RJR. Truly beautiful!

It was agreed that SAQA meetings of this sort will be held initially every three months and will move around Southern California in order to make it as easy as possible for members to attend.

This was a great beginning.....

Yesterday was a great day!

2009-03-29T08:13:00.000-07:00

I spent most of yesterday at the Glendale Quilt show, a local southern California guild show held at the Marriott hotel at Burbank Airport. I was thrilled and amazed to realize that I had won two first place awards for the three quilts I had entered - one for traditional wall quilt (The Silk road) and another for Other Techniques (Magnolia Soulangiana). Thank you, Patt Blair and Ann Fahl , for your wonderful classes on painting wholecloth quilts with Tsukineko inks and thread painting on floral quilts! Thank you Becky McClure at Sewing Art Center for reminding me that there is nothing wrong with carefully piecing a traditional quilt now and then to take you back to the real roots of quilting.

As a new member of the Glendale Guild, I was responsible for two volunteer hours at the show and so I ended up as a "White Glove Lady" in one of the quilt exhibit aisles - a first time experience. Two hours of standing on over-50 hip joints was a trial, but I was so elated over my wins that the time actually went quickly and I only felt the pain later that night when I finally got to bed.

I was asked a load of questions and showed a load of quilt backs, but spent a lot of time just eavesdropping on the conversations between the visitors. I was really struck by how many people, obviously quilters, who were astounded at the courage to actually enter a quilt in a competition. Over and over I heard "I could never enter one of my quilts in a show like this" or
"I thought about entering one of my quilts, but I don't have the nerve " or "It must be so much work to enter a quilt..." .

I simply don't get it. I thought about why I spend a fair amount of time, energy and money preparing quilt entries. I never expect to win anything and it is a great happy surprise when occasionally I do, but I personally find it a very positive validating experience, just to have my quilt hung for the public in company with the work of so many talented quilters. I find the comments of judges invaluable - I hope my workmanship has improved because of them! I also have found great personal satisfaction in sharing my ideas and art (and that is what we do...) with a wider audience outside of my husband, son and close friends. I find it important to get my work out there - I learn something about quilting and something about myself every time...