The SAQA Benefit Auction is coming in September....

So the donation deadline for the 2015 SAQA Benefit Auction is looming - June 1 - so I was motivated to get my little 12" quilt finished and in the mail. I had put it off and put it off waiting for this new cactus plant we were given to bloom. I had been told it would be spectacular and I had hoped to photograph it and use in the quilt, but when it finally burst open last week it was a very disappointing color and almost too prehistoric looking... So I opted for a yellow desert rose I found amongst a lot of old photos. 

I had the background... Actually the practice / warmup scrap of faux leather that I had quilted in copper metallic ( inspired by a great class with Jerry Granata) to prepare for my "I'll Be Seeing You" which is currently on show in North Carolina in the PAQA South  Reminisce exhibit. The tooled leather inspired floral pattern looked vaguely southwestern, hence the desert cactus idea. The nopales paddles are three dimensional, stuffed with a little batting and hand stitched with pearl cotton thorns. The flowers were printed on cotton and then machine and hand stitched. 

The desert lizard was drawn and coloured in with Tsukineko markers and then machine stitched .

Another lizard decorates the back label.

The auction begins online at SAQA.com on September 18. there are already many, many wonderful little works on the site. Hope you'll take a look. 

check out Off the Wall Friday's at http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com

A Little Time Out...

For the last ten days or so I've taken a little time off from my normal fiber work to make two small crib size charity quilts for the St. Joseph Center Pre School program in Venice, California. Every once in a while I find it amazingly therapeutic to abandon the art quilt aesthetic - the color choices, the complicated techniques required to get my ideas on to fabric, the choices of materials and embellishments, the paints, dyes, fusibles, etc. - in favor of some old fashioned piecing. It clears out the cobwebs, simplifies things and makes me feel like a real "quilter".


A buying spree of some packs of 5" charm squares and layer cakes of fun bright modern cottons at a local quilt show gave me the raw materials and I was off. A quick way to sew and slice 10" squares into half square triangles given to me by a friend resulted in a fairly "Modern" chevron quilt and a package of Moda charm squares with simple sashing became a sweet pastel cuddly thing for a little girl.

 

  
I found some great modern border and backing fabrics on the sale rack at Sew Modern in West LA for 40% off. I love their bright modern prints and I'm not always able to use them in my other work. My one problem was adapting my usual very tight compact decorative quilting with fine silk thread technique into large overall quilting with strong heavy thread that would stand up to pre-K abuse. The great part is that quilting that way finished the thread work on each piece in one day! I also used a great technique from the AQS magazine American Quilter for an attractive, but durable faux piped machine binding.

 

 
They are both done and ready for delivery, leaving me cleansed and ready for some art quilt projects that have been dancing in my head.

Beautiful Asilomar.....

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