The SAQA Benefit Auction is coming up next month!

I’m always happy to make a small 12 x 12 inch quilt for the SAQA Auction. This year I went through years of floral tographs and found 

a cactus orchid , an epiphyllym to those botanically inclined, that sat in a pot resting in the notch of the jacaranda tree off our Southern California patio. I had featured these in a larger quilt years ago. They are the remains of several similar  plants that we inherited from my husband’s grandfather over 30 years ago. Hence the title. 

I manipulated the photo in Photoshop for more saturated color and a watercolor effect and sent it off to Spoonflower to be printed on cotton fabric. 

I added some extra paint and shadow when it came back, thread painted and quilted it. I always respond first to color and I liked the very bright pink juxtaposed with the gray and blue of the tree bark. 

The last image is the original photo that I printed on the label, the image above is the final quilt. 

Hoping it will find a forever home during the auction which starts September 13th. 

Sacred Threads 2019 has ended in Herndon, VA, but enjoy ths gallery walk.

While Sacred Threads 2019 has closed at Floris United Methodist Church in Herndon, VA, the traveling exhibit will go on around the country. If you missed the show this year( as I did,) enjoy this video gallery walk through this astonishing and moving pieces. Somewhere around 18 minutes in you’ll find my “Still Life With Wenchang Wang”.  Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/ysGC8PxCnUY

Off the Wall Fridays www.ninamariesayre.blogspot.com

Upcoming Shows!

My quilts are traveling to exhibits around the country in June and July! 

Wish I could go with them...

My Far and Away has already arrived at the Mandell Jewish Community Center in West Hartford CT for their exhibit The Immigrants Journey Through the Eyes of Quilters.

And Still Life With Wenchang Wang is off to Herndon,Virginia near Washington, DC next week for Sacred Threads 2019. If you get the opportunity to visit Sacred Threads be sure to listen to the recording I made (through their very clever system) talking about Wenchang and the inspiration for this piece. 

It’s been a busy week!

It’s been a productive studio week! Two exhibit entries - A Better World and the Cherrywood Bob Ross Challenge - finished and entered! Now the wait to see if they get in! Sent off my quilt to the Mandell Center In Connecticut for their Immigrant themed show. Packed up my quilt for Sacred Threads to be sent to Virginia soon. Framed this great Hatch Show Print ( a gift from a friend) and hung it in the studio. Now on to other projects promised after those exhibit deadlines were passed. 

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Road to California and after..

Road to California at the Ontario, California  Convention center is already two weeks past....  all a huge whirl!

I enjoyed my classes with Esterita Austin and Cindy Grisdela - more about that below -  and loved viewing the amazing quilts and seeing lots of friends. I did a small amount of shopping  including some Cherrywood hand dyed fabric, a new foot for my trusty Viking machine and a little folding umbrella printed with Van Gogh's "Starry Night". It seemed appropriate since my little quilt depicting part of that wonderful work was part of the Cherrywood Van Gogh challenge on it's tour stop at Road.

In fact, my favorite part of my time at Road was participating in the artist book signing in the exhibit. Karla Overland, the owner of Cherrywood organized a group of us artists who were attending to sit in the exhibit on Saturday afternoon, sign the gorgeous catalogue she put together and talk to the public about our work and our inspiration for our entries in the challenge. It was great to meet the other artists, it felt  like a sisterhood!

Here are a couple of very short video views of the exhibit.

Cindy Grisdela's one day class on "Artful Improv" was a bit out of my wheelhouse, but stretching oneself is a great thing. I enjoyed making these improvised components and by the end of the day I had a good idea of how to put them together using some of the design principles Cindy talked about. In fact, I've been working on it the last week or so and the finished product is below. I'm thrilled that Cindy will be coming to teach at my guild Westside Quilters in 2019!

in Esterita Austin's class we painted with metallic paints on parchment and then with a hot iron magically transferred the painting to organza. Here is mine waiting for an idea how to include it in a quilt. Whether i do or not it is a very interesting technique to put away in virtual toolbox for a later time. 

Exhausted at night in my hotel room I still had just enough energy to work on an unfinished project from a workshop with Maria Shell that I took with me along with my Featherweight machine. I stitched all these colorful vertical rows together while I was away and am now comfortably at home putting in some hand stitching. I hope to debut it finished soon! 

The next stop for this traveling quilter is in late March  - Empty Spools Seminars at Asilomar in Pacific Grove. My ultimate favorite place! I'm looking forward to a workshop with Melissa Slobotka whose award winning quilt "Santorini Sunset" I admired at Road. Here it is below....

A few more quilts from Road I admired: Lenore Crawford's raw edge fused pine cones

And Linda Anderson's amazing painted and stitched Chinese actor. 

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Next Week - Road to California!

If it's January, it's time for Road to California! 

Road to California, the pre-eminent quilt Showcase in the Western us is next week! January 18-21st at the Ontario Convention Center in Ontario, California.

I'll be there from Wednesday through Saturday afternoon enjoying the quilts, being a student, doing some shopping and meeting friends.  I'll be taking two classes - one with longtime friend Esterita Austin and another from contemporary quilter Cindy Grisdela. Two of my quilts have been juried into the Showcase - Pieta Dura (above) and Swan Song (below). Click on the images for more information on these quilts.

Two other pieces "Stairway to Heaven" and "Heian Shrine Garden" are featured in the Southern California Council Of Quilt Guilds exhibit "Emerging Light" curated by Stephania Bommarito.

Before returning home on Saturday afternoon I'll be in the Cherrywood Van Gogh Exhibit on the show floor from 1-2 pm signing the exhibition catalogs, meeting some of the other artists and answering questions about the work. If you're at Road, come by to say hello!  The 2018 Challenge is spectacular! 

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!

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