The Magic Feather Project

Professional Fiber Artist Jude Hill of Spirit Cloth fame is getting close to finishing her Magic Feather Cloth.

Her goal was to collect 1000 embroidered feathers from her blog viewers to make a quilt from.  

So 3 school years ago (2011-2012), I offered up Extra Credit to my 3-D students to see if anyone wanted to participate.  I believe we sent her at least 8-9 feathers including mine which if you look closely you might be able to find.  Click here to see the original feathers we sent and the student artists names.  

 

After 3 years it's really exciting to see this piece coming along as beautifully as it is with many of our feathers gathered together.

You inspire us Jude everyday here at Whitney High School's Textile Dept.

We love you! 

The Laarnie and Reis Show

INTERMEDIATE 3-D ART

LIBERATED QUILTMAKING

featuring juniors Laarnie Barcelon and Reis Misaka

In the Intermediate class the students learn how to use a sewing machine, then go onto making an Art Quilt.  We use Professional Quiltmaker Gwen Marston's book "Liberated Quiltmaking" to work from which basically means using no templates, just free form cutting our edges.  This year we also worked out of Professional Quiltmaker Ricky Tims book "Convergence Quiltmaking".  

As always the quilts turned out delightful, creative and so unique.

First I'd like to show off Reis' extraordinary piece with his design based on Japanese calendar cards that he brought in to reference. 

He handstitched one for each month of the year, and then appliqued them to his liberated foundation.  

Talk about focused and time consuming. 

Here is a close-up below so you can see his attention to detail.

Truly amazing!

Laarnie was really inspired by Ricky Tim's work which is also based on free form cutting, but also on optical illusions.   If you look closely you will see a lot of tricky woven strips running thru the center area. 

Both kids worked from donated fabrics that they had to color co-ordinate for visual flow.

They also learned to machine quilt thru all 3 layers, and to applique a signed and dated label to the backside.

The final step being learning how to make and put on a binding edge, just like the pros.

Fantastic job you two! 

What To Do?

With these lovely striped fabrics that were donated.  I've sewn them together in a pleasing arrangement, but they are so similar that I think I will make two separate quilts rather then combine them.  

I've got Ricky Tims' book on Convergence Quiltmaking where he keeps slicing and reassembling.

Perhaps.  A fun exercise I'm looking forward to.

Any other ideas??

Ragamuffin Scrap Animals - My Work

Currently I'm enrolled in at least half a dozen different online art classes.  This work is step one in Carla Sonheim's Ragamuffin Scrap Animal class and I'm really having fun with it.  This is a new way to use up lots of your smaller pieces of scrap fabric.  She had us lay them out in a pleasing way with lots of overlapping, then stitch them down onto a piece of muslin.    

 I used my one of my favorite sewing machines that has a lot of different stitches to choose from and went to town as you can see above and below.

Next I will use this piece to put together a whimsical creature  :)

A New Feature - ARTIST OF THE MONTH

As I continue to tweak my blog and update the look of it, I'm going to be slowly adding some new features.  I want to start with a teaching tool for my students called 'Featured Artist of the Month'.  As a teacher I'm always on the lookout for new inspiration whether it be from workshops I take, artists I meet, blogs I find, and I really enjoy sharing these new finds with my art students.  So I've decided to put in this new page for all to enjoy.

Currently I'm enrolled in the most wonderful online stitching class with Jude Hill that includes talented fiber artists from around the globe.  Many of the artists in the class have blogs, so I've been doing a lot of exploring within their sites.  As a result, I've found many artist's works that I want to share with my 3-D art classes.

I've taught my 3-D kids to work in most all the fiber arts; stitching, felting, dyeing, spinning, weaving, and quilting, and to really appreciate the time involved in their creation.  We just recently finished units in quiltmaking, both liberated and folk art, so I thought the perfect artist to start with is Kristin Shields from Oregon.

So click above on 'Featured Artist of the Month' and enjoy.

Fiber Artist Grace Forrest

I want to share the textile work of Grace Forrest, a woman who inspires me on a daily basis with her lifestyle in New Mexico;  her goats, her yard, the wind that blows thru, and her art.  

Grace calls this piece below "Luring Crows", and she graciously decided to part with it so that I could enjoy and display it in my home.  

From the moment I watched her begin this piece on her blog,  it was love at first site.  The colors of the natural dyes on the cloth, the textures, the stitching and finally the girl calling to the crows.  I used to call to the crows myself when I was a youngster, then later again as a young adult (they are such spiritual birds).    I asked Grace if her piece was for sale and she said she needed 6 bales of hay for it or the price of the bales  LOL  "Sold I said!"  

It lives at our home now, and hangs to my right as I write this post.  It is such a feel good piece to me.  I love glazing at it from afar as well as close-up.  Thank you again Grace for sending it my way.

I hope Grace, you don't mind, me sharing your intriguing story about how you packed the quilt and sent it to me, and what happened as you did.  Perhaps I should ask you first, I don't know, since you posted it on your blog,  I'm assuming it might be alright.  Well here goes...

"i wasn't going to say anything about this.

but then, as time goes on, it feels like i am dishonoring something.  This is the cloth and the stick that i sent to Debra in California....Luring Crows.  i packaged it in a very LARGE cardboard folder, much larger than the cloth, to accommodate the stick.  it was more than 2ft square.  all kinds of feelings and thoughts were present when i was taping the stick down, wrapping the cloth in tissue.  making it secure.  all kinds of thoughts and feelings about exchanging this THING for money.  a LOT.   and in it i enclosed a short note to her telling her about what that meant to me...luring crows.

how there are crows that go overhead and have recently swooped low, seeming to be interested in the arrival of the Goats, seeming to be, just more Willing to look down.  and how i call them.  how i hang laundry on the clothes line almost for them,  how i wave and yell to them  if they are high.  and what it is i want.....is just that they might come here, for just a  moment  to light on the dead branches of the big Russian Olive, or on the fence, fence post.  Just that.  that it would be enough.

so, i put this note in with the cloth and stick and there is a great Wind doing what it does out there and i go out, to go to the post office to send this and as i am unlatching the gate, i for whatever reason, look to my right and then

up

and there,  There on the top branch of the Russian Olive is

a crow.

a crow.

i stand there and see it.  i watch it seeing me.  seconds pass and then in a kind of slow motion, it's wings raise just barely and extend, just barely and Wind lifts it up and sails it off to the right, up and in the current....the crow making no effort at all and it is gone from my sight.

i stood there.  hanging on to the cardboard envelope.  not knowing what to do.  feeling like i should fall to the ground or something, i  should DO something.

but what i did is to continue through the gate and latch it closed and get into the car and head off for the Post Office.  staring straight ahead.  continuing.  and i mailed it.  and now it's a couple days later and i think as i did in that moment driving down the road,  that That's also probably like how it is even when we are dying.  When we somehow know we are about to exhale for the last time.  and we

exhale.

we Just Go.  

and i wasn't going to write this here.  it seems so improbable.  so surreal.   But it happened. 

it was no more, but no less."

A few close-ups of the delightful detail that Grace has stitched into her work.

The girl...

 the crows...

and a tiny personal favorite, this wonderful mark that she has stitched into the cloth.  I wonder?  Does she always stitch this mark into all her pieces, kind of like her signature mark?  I like to think it is just for the crows.  I'll have to ask.

Sneak Peek at My Work

Just one of the be-zillion projects I've got going right now, a Retirement Wall Quilt for our beloved Secretary Kay.  She has been at Whitney longer then me.  When I walked in the door 33 years ago she was the first person who greeted and welcomed me.  I had all the faculty and staff sign a white piece of cotton that I will be incorporating into the piece, but shush, don't tell  :)  

This has also been my demo quilt for my Intermediate 3-D kids.  The only thing is, they finished before me.  LOL  Those quilts will be posted soon.  

Jenclair at Bayou Quilts and Dolls

This exquisite piece is the one I was telling you about in yesterday's post by Jenclair at Bayou Quilts.

It's amazing how different lighting and times of the day can affect the 2 photos I took of it when it arrived.  I've never heard of or seen encrusted embroidery before I saw it on Jenclair's site.  They are so intricate and fascinating.  But what I love the most is it seems they are done in a free form manner.  Each one that Jenclair does is unique and it seems she works very intuitively with no pattern.  

Thank you again Jenclair for this lovely gift.   

When it arrived in the mail I was inspired to make a background to showcase it on.  I'm also currently enrolled in Jude Hill's online Cloth to Cloth Quilt Weaving class, so I thought I'd weave a small quilt with some of my favorite old linens.  The red stripped fabric is from my Aunt's dishtowels that she embroidered on as a young woman.  The cotton hankie was my mother's that my grandmother embroidered the dainty flowers on.  The loosely woven fabric were from linen place mats that belonged to my husband's mother, and the back piece that the whole piece is stitched onto is my husband's old shirt.  Jude refers to these kinds of fabrics as story cloths. 

Last night I came across a pressed leaf from this last fall that my daughter picked and gave to me and it seems the perfect piece to put behind the encrusted piece.  I think I might brush some polymer medium over it to help preserve and strengthen it so I can stitch thru it.

So Jenclair, I hope you like how I'm going to frame out your gift.  I'm thinking a shadow box in a natural wood trim to hang the whole work in.  :)

Twelve by Twelve: A Collaberative Art Quilt Project

I was blogging around the other day and checking out what was new on Kristin LaFlamme's site (see sidebar) and saw that she and her fiber friends had just completed a challenge they set up for themselves. On a 12" by 12" format, using only blue, black and white create an art quilt. These 3 were my favorites. The top one belongs to Kristin, check out all her embellishments! She calls it Broken Dishes.

Love the teacup arrangement as well as her patchwork technique. Artist Teri Stegmiller calls it Stacked Blueware and used misty fuse to hold down her patches.

And Helen Conway calls her piece Stolen. She has done some serious stitch embellishment. Love it! I want to thank all the ladies from the challenge for sending me feedback and comments and allowing me to post their quilts after the fact, I'm sorry, I should have asked permission first, my bad. I also was negligent in the posting of links to their site so you can see all their fabulous work. So here they are: http://www.twelveby12.blogspot.com/ , www.gericondesigns.com , http://www.terristegmiller.com/ , and http://www.threecreativestudios.com/ Enjoy!!!

Tommy Fitzsimmons - The Material Girl

Found another cool fiber artist, cook and very funny lady, Tommy Fitzsimmons (www.tommythematerialgirl.blogspot.com) I check her blog everyday because it's always full of delicious looking food (sometimes including tutorials and recipes), interesting things and places she's seen, her dogs, other artists work she admires and best of all her art quilts. Above is a sphere she saw somewhere that was collaged with all those gee-gaws you save but just don't know what to do with. And for the pix below her caption read "This is how you know when winter is starting to get to people" Pretty funny stuff!

These are 2 of Tommy's art quilts.

And a close up of some of her yummy looking eats. On her blog you will find the tutorial for this marshmallow wreath (below)

The work above belongs to an art quilter she admires, and below is one of her playful pooches.

Tommy is always on the go and visits a lot of fun places and captures great images for her blog like the sets of stairs above and the VW below. Her blog is a treat everyday. So hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Great News!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Our pup Bogey who inspired the quilt below. LOL

Guess what? Assistant Editor, Pippa Eccles, from Quilting Arts Magazine contacted me this morning and asked to possibly feature the art quilts that she saw on my blog yesterday. Can you believe it? I'm so thrilled I could hardly contain myself all day. I'm so excited for my students works to be featured in a national magazine. Especially the one that is most important to the Art Quilt Community. Doesn't get any better than that!!! :) So congrats go out to Period 4, Beginning 3-D art. I'm so very proud of you guys!! Also wanted to tell you how excited I was to get comments from two professional fiber artists, Susan M. Hinckley and Jamie Fingal, on my student's pieces from yesterday. Wow! (both their blogs are listed to the right under artists I follow). How COOL is that!

This is an example that I made last school year where I tried really hard to stay one day ahead of my students so that they could watch me demo. all aspects of the assignment. My subject was my very naughty pup Bogey Agrums, who when we first got him was so bad that we had to bring in a dog trainer to our home to try to teach us to work with him. Did it work? Not real well, he's still to this day a handful. One of the key words we were to use when disciplining him was Bah. So that's how the title came into being. My ex-husband found him on a golf course and brought him home to us about a year and a half ago. Now I know why he was turned loose on that course. His owners couldn't handle him either. But we try our best cuz he's so cute.

My beginners are currently working on building a paper mache collaged frame to float their quilt on. And on the back side they are to include a label and hanging device.

This piece I dedicated to my last years Beginning 3-D class. EXTRA CREDIT: on a piece of blue paper cut into the shape of a heart write down the name of the student whose appliquilt from yesterdays post that you liked the best and WHY. Put your name and period on the other side of the paper

Appliquilts - Student Art

Trying to find a day with enough time to be able to post all these incredible quilts that my Beginning 3-d class created. Also hoping that they are seen by Quilting Arts Editor Pokey Bolton, so that maybe they could be featured in her magazine. They were based on pieces done by Susan (Lucky) Shie (http://www.turtlemoon.com/) and Andrea Stern (http://www.embellishmentcafe.com/) from QA articles that I had seen that had inspired me to teach their style of quiltmaking to my students. See labels on right (click appliquilts) to see the piece I did after I saw the QA article as well as last years pieces that my students did. I had the kids start by tye-dyeing their own back and foreground fabrics, then after units on stitching and embroidery I felt they had the skills necessary to make an applied quilt or Appliquilt as Tonee White coined it in her quiltmaking books years ago. So I hope you love them as much as I do! Starting off with the owl is senior Kevin Ni, look at the close-up to see all his amazing stitch embellishment.

Here we have senior Jenny Dai and her close-up. I think I've probably featured close to everything Jenny has made this year, she is a terrific designer and an impeccable craftswoman.

And of course you have seen everything senior Ashlee Chang has made both this and last year. She is one of my top art students this year, hopefully headed off for a career in the arts.

Her close-ups are ridiculous!

And below Ashlee we have her boyfriend Daniel An's piece, also a senior. They sit next to each other and I do believe inspire and encourage each other to always do their best work.

An here is junior Brittaney Lee, one of my up and coming super stars for next year. Beautiful, sensitive workmanship.

Another up and coming star is junior Hilary Chan (above) who always comes up with outstanding work.

And then there is sophomore Kelsea Lee, who I adore. I'm hoping she will be back for another two years with me. Can you just image her work when she's a senior if she is doing this now?

And one of my all-time favorite students ever, senior Anne Guu, who actually wants to be an art teacher :) YES! Hoping she'll come back and take my place here when I leave in another 6 years. I'm grooming her now.