Tug Comanche

A commission came from an old friend and US Coast Guard veteran to design and make a quilt of the US Coast Guard Tug Comanche to be presented to the non-profit foundation which is restoring the ship. He served
on the Comanche's sister ship USS Modoc and planned on presenting the quilt at that crew's reunion in Tacoma, Washington the beginning of September. The Comanche has a long history - built and commissioned as an ocean going tug during WWII she served in the Pacific towing damaged ships to safety. After the war she was transferred to the Coast Guard and stationed in the Pacific Northwest. She was later owned privately as a working tug.

My client requested that the Comanche be pictured as she was when she was still used by the Coast Guard and provided small resolution scanned photos from the 1970s. He also asked for her to be shown steaming in Puget Sound with Mt. Rainier in the distance. If possible there should also be signal flags fluttering, seagulls and orca. I gulped .... And then said "sure....".

The size of the small scanned photos he emailed me and of those I found on the Internet was definitely a problem. I had to interpret and in some cases imagine some of the details on the ship. For the basic layout and composition I put together a photo mock up in Photoshop and then drew a full sized cartoon from which I constructed the basic quilt top.


The fabric selection was fairly easy. An ombre printed blue Mckenna Ryan print provided all I needed for the sky and a Hoffman Bali batik stripe in aqua and purple was the answer for the ocean. cherrywood cotton solids were perfect for the ship itself. I digitally printed some of the details including the anchor, the both Coast Guard crests, the flag and the name of the ship on my inkjet printer and fused them in place.




At this point I brought out the paints and using a combination of Fabrico markers, Tsukineko inks and Jacquard fabric paints added shading and dimension, rigging, highlights to the ocean waves and the seagulls. The pod of orca were painted individually, cut out and fused in place. The bow spray and the wake of the ship were done with painted and heat shrunk cellophane cut in slivers and applied with glue before stitching down. The serendipitous discovery of signal flag printed fabric at a local quilt store certainly made that job easier... Just cut out and fuse them on. My US Navy vet husband says that the ship is "over flagged", but I was having so much fun putting them on, I couldn't stop.


For free motion quilting I used polyester invisible thread to outline the motifs and then YLI silk for the rest. The texture and realism of the ocean was greatly improved with undulating lines of quilting.

The finished quilt was presented as a surprise to the Foundation last weekend at the reunion to much acclaim, I'm told. I was certainly happy to bring this historical ship back to its old gloried appearance.

Finally Finished MY TAFA List Profile!

It was one of those jobs that I knew I had to get to, but it kept getting lost in my emails and my written and printed reminders buried on my desk.  Finally, goosed by a conversation with my friend Linda Miller of Linda Miller Designs last week and another gentle reminder email  from Rachel Biel the founder of TAFA - Textile and Fiber Art List a few days ago, I got down to my computer yesterday afternoon and today it's finished. A couple of hours of work, a couple of false starts and stops, a session in Photoshop and lots of help from Rachel and it's up and working.My biggest quandary was deciding on which quilt to use for my banner. I chose, Fossil Fueled, but what do you think?

Check out my profile on this great marketing resource for fiber artists at http://www.tafalist.com/members/sally-gould-wright-quilt-artist 
It's all there in one place, photos of my quilts, a link to Facebook and my Etsy shop and a place for news and upcoming events. Rachel has created a beautiful site and  I'm thrilled to be in the company of such a large group of talented artists.

The SAQA Benefit Auction starts online through the SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) site on September 10th - barely a month away!  Here is my quilt donation for this year.  It's titled "Fiorabella" and is a little 12" X 12" wholecloth botanical study painted with Tsukineko inks on a wonderfully subtle piece of hand dye from my stash. I free motion quilted it and the traditional feather border using 100 weight silk thread. Pretty traditional for the SAQA auction - I hope is finds some bidders......  You can see it an all the other marvelous works being auctioned online to benefit SAQA programs at http://www.saqa.com/saqa-u.php?ID=2038

Loving Long Beach!

Home from three wonderful days at International Quilt Festival Long Beach and putting away the "stuff" and the supplies. I actually bought very little except for a lot of Superior Masterpiece and YLI silk thread (I love that for quilting!).  One new gadget - a permanent self adhesive plastic edge guide for sewing straight seams will allow me to get rid of the blue masking tape on my machine bed.  Hope it works as well! My only big purchase was a Sew Easy portable sewing table that I can use upstairs in the winter when I don't want to be outside in my little studio and can go with me to classes. I was disappointed that there were no vendors selling hand dyed fabrics - only the usual run of commercial prints and batiks. Nothing unusual at all,  sadly.  I'll have to wait for Road to California.....

I did take some great classes including two with the wondrous Australian quilt artist Pam Holland  - one on dying cheese cloth and layering on fabric to get really interesting effects and texture. The little study of the Mexican door at left was the result a combination of layered cheesecloth and illustration techniques with thread and Tsukineko fabric markers.
The other class was doing free motion illustration in black thread on a light background - essentially sketching by machine over your design which is sketched or printed on to a piece of see through vellum.  A great technique. I'll post mine when it's finished.

Saturday was two classes - one with the lovely Jean Brown of Jean's Impressions learning her hand quilting technique.  Yes, I said hand quilting!  Though I'm a dedicated machine quilter, I've had a yen recently to try my hand at hand quilting on some more traditional pieces. I now know I need a lot of practice, but it was lovely spending a morning with this wonderful traditional hand quilter and listening to her stories -  slowing down and taking one stitch at a time. Using her Aunt Becky tool and her techniques it was was easier than I expected.


Later in the day on Saturday I joined the applique' class of quilt artist David Taylor from Steamboat Spring, Colorado who I've known for several years and taken classes from before, but never a class on his particular hand applique' technique. I learned a lot and it was great to see him again and enjoy his quirky sense of humor.

I ran from that class down to the show floor to do my  shift in the SAQA booth. I enjoyed talking to friends who stopped by and sold a few SAQA catalogs and memberships! Friend and fellow Fiber Fanatic Sandra Lauterbach's "Red" was featured in one of the SAQA shows.

The quilts on show were incredible all over the floor especially the Black and White with a Twist exhibit from Quilts on the Wall  which included a wonderful piece by my friend Linda Miller.  My piece for that show was not at Long Beach, but will be included when it goes to Houston Quilt Festival in the fall. The Rituals quilts from Dinner at Eight Fiber Artists including the marvelous Geisha by Sherry Kleinman.

Now it's back to earth and to my own studio to finish up some projects and a special commission.... 

Celebrating Independence Day!

To celebrate Independence Day, July 4, 2012 I'll share this patriotic wall hanging recently finished.












I bought the appliqué pattern with the reproduction fabrics (including the background which is printed to emulate old, yellowed and stained muslin) from Karen Witt of Reproduction Quilts several years ago - maybe at Quilt Festival Houston -and vowed to make it by the next Fourth of July. Of course, it sat and sat and sat and in cleaning out my studio unearthed it in mid June. Amazingly enough I finished the wall hanging last week!




The machine appliqué piece was combined with a band of paper pieced square in a square blocks and mini sawtooth stars inspired by a workshop with Sally Collins in May. The center stars in those are 1 1/2 inches square though surprisingly easy to make using Sally's technique. These were all done in luscious deeply dyed Cherrywood cottons that have that Americana folk art look. The top and bottom border fabric is from a line reproducing antique American jacquard woven coverlets. I carefully machine quilted a grid background and free motion quilted the rest. I look at it now and wish I had the expertise to have hand quilted this, so maybe that is the next adventure....
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Making Waterfalls

I've just received a commission for a quilt which needs to incorporate ocean water and a boat bow wave and wake and so I've been fretting abut how to achieve these effects in fabric. Happily last week's Westside quilters workshop with northern California quilt artist Linda Schmidt has provided me with inspiration and a number of fairly easy techniques with which to accomplish watery effects. Here is one of her stunning large quilts showcasing her techniques.




It seems that the key to this process is some unusual materials that may not be on every quilter's shelf. Linda walked us through the various processes using some of her favorite materials including Tyvek mailing envelopes, puff paint, heat processed cellophane, dimensional paint, heat guns, Mistyfuse, lutradur, regular fabric paints, bamboo roving, glitter glue and Angelina fiber.




Our trial piece was one of Linda's small designs of a mountain waterfall.
Here is mine finished on the left. We were all curious about how we would utilize all this stuff, but by the end of the afternoon we all had all the components to a watery scene.





I won't give away any of her techniques using these materials - you'll have to take one of her workshops for that- but I'm so pleased with the effect I achieved that I'm ready to test it out on a larger work. I've already put in my order to Dharma Trading for her supply list.

I'm Published in Machine Quilting Unlimited!

I'm so excited! Yesterday's mail brought me the July/August issue of Machine Quilting Unlimited Magazine with an article by Editor Kit Robinson "Quilts Inspired by the Sky" which features photos of my quilt Rainy Day San Francisco. It's a beautiful article with quilts by several other artists whose work Has always moved and inspired me - Betty Busby, Ann Brauer and Elizabeth Barton among others.




This quilt was initially made for a Quilts on the Wall exhibit "Bridges" at the 2011 International Quilt Festival Long Beach and then traveled to several venues during 2011-12.





For several months I fretted about how I would interpret the bridge theme and then one morning in October 2010 my husband and I were driving toward the Embarcadero having just traversed the Bay Bridge into San Francisco and there was this composition in front of me - thebridge in the rain disappearing in the mist, the shiny pavement and the streetcar. Glen was terrified as I pulled out my cell phone in the middle of traffic (yes, I was driving) and shot the photo through the windshield.
My thanks to Kit Robinson and her great magazine Machine Quilting Unlimited.....
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