GONE RUSTIC

Eco Dye Artist,

Rita Summers of Gone Rustic in Tasmania,

is producing some beautiful pieces for sale.

I found her on Pinterest and couldn't resist buying a few of her works.

I especially loved this paper bowl that she stitched together 

then embellished with a bit of crochet.

Scrumptious!

I also purchased this sweet notebook.

It looks large here on the blog but in person is only about 2" by 4".

Rita adhered the Eco paper to some type of interfacing

 then Free Motion Stitched her lovely design on both front and back.

It's so precious!

Here you can see how she zigzagged the edges together.

I looked up Tasmania on a world map.

It's an island off the Southeastern bottom edge of Australia,

right below Melbourne, Australia.

It was hard to pick a favorite,

that's why I bought 4 pieces.

But I adore this next one.

It's a journal made with several different kinds of Eco Dyed papers.

Notice how she used waxed linen to stitch it together with.

Here is one of the inside pages.

And the last piece is this note card.

The purples and blues she got are incredible here.

Below you can see how she bound it with a figure Eight Stitch.

I hope you enjoyed seeing Rita's work.

She also sells Eco Dyed clothing.

Kay's Retirement Quilt - My Work

Every year I stay one day ahead of my Intermediate 3-D students as I take them thru a Liberated Quilt unit ala Gwen Marston.  This year we did liberated stars, and strip pieced borders.

At the same time that I was building this for them, I knew that our beloved secretary Kay, who I've known and worked with for the past 33 years at Whitney was retiring, so I wanted to make this for her.

The above shot was the start of the piece with the main star and a couple of borders. 

But I knew I wanted to make the piece more personalized so I sent my T.A.'s around the school to get signatures from all our staff.

So Below is the finished quilt with the staff signatures in the larger white finally border.  The strip piecing that I taught the kids, I used in the binding edge to tie the whole together. 

Then I had my T.A.'s get personal sayings that Kay was known for like "Queen of Everything", "Banana fanna fo fanna", "Here today, gone tamale", "Bubble Head", "Lord willing and the creek don't dry up" are just a few of the fun quotes that I free motion quilted over top the whole piece.

At the same time I was getting staff signatures, I was also collecting senior and other student signatures for the back side fabric of the quilt.  I also hand appliqued a heart with a dedication to Kay from all of us. 

The quilt was presented to Kay on the day of her retirement party and she was overwhelmed and a bit speechless.  And if you know Kay, it takes a lot to make her speechless  LOL

Kay, we will miss you greatly.  You have been the most competent secretary, running the school with your extensive knowledge and keeping us all on track, especially me  :)  You have also been the most loyal friend and confidant.  Thank you for everything, and come back and take one of my classes!

Enjoy your retirement, you've more then earned it!

Love you Kay, miss you already.   

Stitch Paper Quilts - Student Work

This assignment is in it's 4th year and still going strong with my Advanced 3-D students, Nida, Kevin and Rita.  We are working from textile artist Kellie Nina Perkins book "Stitch Alchemy" where she shows us how to combine fiber and paper with watered down white glue.

The kids had a ball creating their colorways for their pieces.  They brought in stamping, acrylics, collage, machine stitching and so much more to each of their papers.  They drew a design to scale and used it as their template, then cut out all their pieces and machine stitched them down to their base piece.  then added embellishments and free motion quilting.  The end results were terrific!

This first one was made by senior Nida Fatima.  Love her whimsical design with it's sense of movement and rhythm.     

Here are a few close-ups of all the detail in her papers as well as her stitching.

The back of her piece with tabs for hanging device.

In this next one senior Kevin Tang has outdone himself with this lovely portrait.  

He has put countless hours into his free motion embellishment, and I love the papers he has chosen to use for his binding, recycled wrappers.

I am so proud of you Kevin, your artwork is growing by leaps and bounds this year.

His backside.

Lastly, senior Rita Labib changed up her design so many times I lost track.  But what she finally settled on was dramatic and powerful, a real show-stopper.

Rita carries around with her this huge bag of collage papers and fabrics she has collected that have special meanings to her.  It's big and disorganized but she patiently finds and pulls out just the perfect image or texture for each area of her design. 

Rita's signature style these days is a multi-layered effect in which she enjoys combining wire, hardware, paper, stitch and fabric.  Brilliant Work kiddo!

Notice her hanging device, twisted rebar from Home Depot.

Fed Ex - Shipping Isn't What it Used to Be

I'm constantly on the look-out for new artists and ideas for my students.  Two recent new finds are Art Propelled.  It features artist Robyn Gordon, a wood carver from KwaZulu Natal, South Africa.  And thru her blog I discovered Deeann Rieves.  Deeann was having a sale of several of her works, and I purchased the piece below. 

Now mind you, shipping and handing on a piece this large is astronomical.  Thank goodness Deeann packed it as well as she did because above is how Fed Ex delivered it to my door.  I think I should get my money back from them.  This is the second time in a month that something has arrived from Fed Ex in this condition.  Shameful!

Deeann's work is right up my alley.  She combines all the media I love; watercolor, vintage fabrics, and stitching.  Please take the time to visit her site.  My camera does not do her work justice.

"Deeann Rieves received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Memphis College of Art in December 2007 with an emphasis on painting.  She works full time in her studio and her mixed-media paintings have been featured in numerous solo exhibitions and juried group shows across the United States. Her paintings combine fabric, machine embroidery, and fiber techniques that disrupt and distort the surfaces, which become their own organic forms of sculptural painting."

My students were fascinated with her work and I could totally see trying something similar with my 3rd year 3-D kids. 

Thank you Deeann for your inspiring work.

Stitch Paper Quilts - Student Work

Stitch Paper Quilting is a technique brought to my attention by textile artist Kelli Nina Perkins in her book Stitch Alchemy.  This is the 3rd year that my Advanced 3-D students have used her cool techniques.  Kelli's technique involves a bit of time and hard work but the payoff is huge as you can see here.

Senior Nandi Best created this outstanding piece using a warm and cool color scheme.

Look closely at all her detail from stitching to stamping.  I taught the kids how to Free Motion quilt for this assignment so they could incorporate it into the design.  

Another spectacular piece was this one by senior Kelsea Lee.  When my daughter visited at Open House she feel in love with it, so I bought it for her and it hangs now in our home.  But I'm pretty sure it will be leaving next week for Cal Poly Pomona to hang in Danielle's dorm room.  :)  Enjoy sweetheart.

What I loved about Kelsea's piece was all the different kinds of paper she incorporated into her collage colorways, as well as the cheesecloth she laid in the foreground.  Terrific work ladies.  I will miss you and your artwork this year. 

Breeana Johng - Alumni Art

Wanted to share a sweet little quilt that alumni Breeana Johng (class of 2011) just finished.  She recently went to the island of Kauai and was inspired by the beautiful Hawaiian applique quilts she saw at a local quilt shop there.  When she got home this is what she created.

A close up of her applique work, and her free motion quilting stitches.

And her label on the back side.  Thanks for sending me the pix Breeana.  I so enjoy knowing that you are continuing to use the skills you learned in my classes.  xoxoxo

Ashley Morris - Fiber Artist Extraodinaire - Student Art

What a pleasure it has been to work with Ashley again this year. She is a junior here at Whitney and I've been working with her since the 7th grade where she has taken 4 levels of 3-D art. Last year was the 1st year she couldn't work me into her schedule, but she is back this year in 4th level 3-D and going strong. This is her most recent finished piece, a sensitively hand felted, free motion quilted and seed beaded work. The wool batt came from Joanna Gleason's farm in Lyons, Colorado where Joanna raises her flock, then hand dyes their wool and sells it. Ashley felted the batt, then stitched the heck out of it, and finished it off with a couple hundred beads. The piece was extremely tedious and time consuming but so worth the effort she put into it. You are an Amazing Woman Ashley!!! Below is a close-up. Look closely at the whole piece and see how she moved the thread colors from light to dark. Incredible, she's only 16!

More Finished Work

So excited to finally finish this little wall quilt that I started at least 12 years ago in a workshop for piecing curves. Got it done right before Xmas so I could give it as a gift to my best buddy. I'm calling it "Where Love Grows". I had originally planned to give it to my mother but she passed away before I got it finished.

Here are a few close ups of the free motion machine quilting. I'm really pleased with how it turned out. Plus it just feels so good to finish something that's been in the works for so long!

Self-Portraits - Student Art

I promised I'd post these second year drawing/painting student's self-portraits about a week ago, but as usual, my busy summer schedule is getting in the way of blogging. So anyways, here they are, and I think you will find they were worth the wait. This was their 4th quarter final, and it had to be a self-portrait done in any 2-d media they were most comfortable in. It also had to be done by either looking in a mirror, or from a recent photograph, and show an identifiable expressive quality. The one above and the close up below belong to senior Caroline Ma. This was a photo that was taken of her at senior retreat. She began with watercolor, then brought in some collage and finished up by free motion stitching over top. She may also have brought in some pen and ink work. It is a phenomenal piece, and one of Caroline's strongest works of the year. I went crazy over it when she brought it in for grading then went as fast as I could to the principal's office to show it off.


This next one belongs to senior Shabina Toorawa and was done from a photo of she and her boyfriend Brandon. She executed it in charcoal and I feel it was also one of Shabina's strongest works this year. Love the expressive quality that she was able to capture in her face. Really sensitive, gorgeous work Shabina!


Next we have senior Regina T. She is a very creative, outside the box thinker and I always look forward to seeing how she will interpret my assignments. Regina choose acrylics to work with but then I think I remember she switched to tempera. She worked from a really expressive photo that she manipulated on the computer so she could alter the colors. She mounted the piece on cardboard and brought in some loose paint and collage work on the left. And then she cut interesting shapes around the outside edges. Very unique Regina!


Really love this next one of senior Peraya Siriwong. Such a strong visual statement. She also worked from a recent photo and in charcoal. This piece was so captivating that as physics teacher Mr. Z strolled by my room, he took a peek inside and spotted it on my wall and had to come in for a closer look. He liked it so much that he bought it from Peraya that same day. It's so cool to see how art pulls people in and moves them.


This lovely piece was done by senior Mindy Cho and I'm pretty sure she looked in a mirror to work. She began with watercolor then brought in some text with pen and ink as well as some collage work in the hair. Fantastic expressive quality Mindy, and I'm especially impressed with your watercolor work.


This next one was done by junior Jullian Kuo who is one of my up and coming stars for next school year. She worked from a photo and painted herself n acrylics. A very competent piece!


Here is another work that Mr. Z really responded to done by senior Amanda Garcia. She worked in pen and ink and came up with a highly original design. A really bold, expressive piece.


And last we have my other rising superstar for next school year, junior Hannah Park. This piece is so sensitive, so very lovely, and was done from a recent photo in watercolor, and believe it or not, paper towel collage. Yes, paper towel that you wipe your hands on in the kitchen. Hannah is such a clever girl!