Quilt Festival Houston 2017!

So happy to be in Houston, TX again for International Quilt Festival. It’s a lovely feeling to be standing

in freont of your own quilt -here my East/West - on the floor amid this gathering  of the best quilts in the country!p

Traditional quilts, art quilts, contemporary, modern -they are all here in abundance in the 

World of Beauty IQA Judged Show. And then the Special Exhibits from all around the world bring 

more of the best of the best to Houston.

A highlight for me was seeing all of the Cherrywood Van Gogh Challenge jquilts displayed together for

the first time. Here I am with my “Starry” and below are shots of the exhibit all hung together on 

A back wall of the exhibit space. A symphony of art in shades of blues and provencale influenced yellows. 

The exhibit got a lot of attention and the newly published book sold out by the second day of the show!

Meeting up with friends is always a happy part of the Houston experience. 

Three happy travelers -Robin, Roberta and myself in a  serendipitous reunion of our January trip to Japan on a textile

 tour with Susan Ball Faeder’s Quilters Express to Japan. Alison was also in Houston, but didn’t make it into the selfie!

And fellow artist and Fiber Fanatic member Sherry Kleinman was at the show with her

Daughter from New York. Both Sherry’s pieces in the World Of Beauty competition were representations 

of her grandchildren.

           Maria Shell who visited and taught at my quilt guild Westside Quilters in LA just last week won a  third lace prize in the abstract category! We celebrated with her over dinner on Thursday night!

               

Viewing the all the quilts and the over 1100 vendors is quite a proposition. I made it to half the vendors, 

but saw all the quilts on display. I was hampered slightly by a small accident  stepping unexpectantly off a

curb and severely wrenching my knee on the evening of my third day which resulted in a lot of ice packs 

and  ibuprofen in our very lovely room at the Four Seasons. 

So I missed my Saturday class and some vendors, but I’d spent  more than enough money, anyway!

Home to LA tomorrow... can’t wait for next time!

Check out more blogs at Off The Wall Fridays 

Color is Everything

As I have been concentrating on an on-line art marketing class, I have focused on how to write a cogent artist statement. Lots of thinking - not much actual writing. The more I think about it I realize that my artwork and indeed my life revolves around color. Color in my art, my garden, the food I cook and consume, the colors In our home interior, the sky, the earth, the eyes of people I meet - it's all about color for me.

 

I have been told that my work shows a good natural eye for color , but to improve it I have been watching a class with Joen Wolfrom featured on Craftsy.com.  She started the class by asking students to paint their own 12 step color wheel. I, of course, decided to sew one instead and used a bundle of 12 hand dyed fabrics with a luscious sueded finish for just this purpose from my favorite Cherrywood in Minnesota. I adapted Anelie Belden's Dresden plate techniques and drafted my own twelve blade Dresden using these sumptuous fabrics which I also strip pieced into a rainbow like border - all of this on a black background.

 
Also last week I found myself watching a series of lessons online on The Quilt Show site with the talented quilter and teacher Libby Lehman demonstrating how she uses stitches already in her sewing machine to add color and interest to her quilts. So I got out my polyester embroidery threads and tried a few stitched borders using the decorative stitches on my Viking SE.

I added four different colored narrow flanges to finish the setting for this smallish quilt and then thought about the quilting. What I thought would be a quick and easy project, was quickly becoming quite an undertaking!

 

I  hauled out my box of #100 silk thread from YLI and Superior. I love the sheen , the beautiful saturated colors and the fine gauge of the thread for close quilting.

Diane Gaudynski has been a real mentor for my free motion quilting. I enjoy her technique for feathers - mark the spine only and then let go and see what happens.... I also use her technique of stitching an extra outline around the feather in another color - these were all done in a complimentary color and they really pop! Only one corner left to go!






I continue to think and pray for Libby Lehman as I worked on this quilt. I learned that the day after I watched her videos she suffered a brain aneurysm, has had two brain surgeries and has subsequently suffered a stroke. Quilters from all over the world are praying for her and her family.


 Check out Off the Wall Fridays at www.ninamariesayre.blogspot.com .

Tree of Life

                                          
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....