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

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

"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!

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

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

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...

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

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!