Category: quilting

Blogger’s Quilt Festival – Air/Nude

Update June 3: This is cool – it won the “Art Quilt” category!

Air/Nude is from 2011, and it remains my favorite piece of quilt artwork. So I’m reposting it for the Blogger’s Quilt Festival.

Air/Nude is 77″ x 23″ (yielding a life-size figure) unbleached cotton muslin, cotton batting, polyester thread.

She counts as “Air” in my 4 Eelements quilt series (my first large-ish quilts ever) because that’s what the model is wearing. Also, unless you look carefully you see nothing, just like air.

The photo above links to a super high res, 3,000-pixel-high version so you can zoom in on all the detail. These detail shots link to 960-pixel-high versions:
Evident everywhere is the influence of Leah Day’s Free Motion Quilting Project. In the section above you can see Free Motion Quilting basics like Basic Spiral, Pebbling,Feathers, Echo Rainbow, and Stippling, along with some of Leah’s signature designs like Brain Coral, Spaghetti and Meatballs, Flame Stitch, Ocean Current,Wormholes, Goldilocks, Chain of Pearls, Pebble Maze, Trailing Spirals, and Circuit Board. I started filling in the quilt on the right side, just over the foot where those very dense spirals are, and worked my way around counter-clockwise.

By the time I got to the head I had internalized many of those stitches, which became part of my vocabulary. It becomes difficult (and probably pointless) to say which patterns are “mine,” which are “Leah Day’s,” which are derived from vague memories of pen-and-ink shading patterns and old Zip-A-Tones, and which are simply failed imitations. (“Originality is failed imitation” – someone on Facebook. Bill Benzon, maybe?). Some of the spirally flame patterns I used in Fire return for a cameo here.

I had bountiful opportunities to try new stitches and patterns. As long as the negative spaces were densely quilted, it didn’t matter what was in them. I tried various hexagonal-based “snowlflake” patterns, like the one above. In the midst of my experiments, Leah posted this Icicle Lights pattern, which is much easier than hex-based ones. Below it is an homage to DNA molecules, and a “scaly micropebbling” experiment.

As you can see, the nude depicted is a real woman-person, not a professional model. Who was the model, you ask? Suffice to say I will not be sharing the “pattern” as open source code. You’re welcome to copy this quilt, but you’ll have to reverse-engineer it, or use another model.

Here’s what she looked like before stretching. Maybe vanity drove me to it – I may be a little saggy, but I’m not that saggy. The subtle white-on-white quilting technique relies entirely on shadow to reveal texture and outline, and only works if light hits the surface evenly from the side. The quilt was professionally stretched on canvas stretchers by 567 Framing. It took 2 and a half weeks, but was worth the wait.

Here’s “Air” leaning against the wall with her friends Earth, Water, and Fire, in my former apartment in New York City. I brought all these quilts with me when I moved to Urbana IL last Summer. Some of them will be in my upcoming art show at Sleepy Creek Vineyards – stay tuned!

 

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My Tile Obsession Will Taper Off Eventually

I can already feel it slowing down, which means I’ll have to find something useful to do soon. Meanwhile I wanted to see the morphing tiles as a 2-color map. Easier said than done: Flash crashes every time I try to convert the various symbols making up the outline into “shapes,” so I had to export a PNG and use the clunky old paint bucket in Photoshop. There’s an ugly thick outline I added to close gaps, in order to make said paint bucket work. But at least my 2-color curiosity is now satisfied.

It reminds me of the far-more-awesome M.C. Escher Metamorphosis poster I had in college. And although the thick outline and various other flaws make not-print-worthy, yesterday I made a color version that is:

I ordered a few yards of it from Spoonflower. I can’t wait – once I start quilting this stuff I might get re-obsessed for days!

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Il Gatto

cat quiltIl Gatto, approx. 36″ by 48″. (It’s actually well squared with nice right angles, the photo distorts it because I held my wide-angle-lens snapshot consumer camera out over a bed to take the picture.)

This is my first all-traditionally-pieced quilt, no trapplique or applique, just squares and triangles sewn together with 1/4″ seams. Since I don’t get excited about traditional quilt designs, but wanted to try traditional techniques, I designed this insane vicious cat. After Kaye England’s class last month I bought some of her fancy acrylic rulers, a straight stitch plate for my Janome, and some cotton thread. They paid off: although the top isn’t perfect, it came together pretty darn well and hardly required any trimming.

For the eyes I did curved seams, which was tricky and imperfect but sufficient for this project.

cat quilt backAnd here’s the back. I free motion quilted simple spirals all over because they’re relatively quick and contrast with the straight seams.

I’m getting a little tired of FMQ on my domestic machine. I tried a sit-down 16″ long arm quilting machine a few weeks ago and loved it: it was fast, and I could really see what I was doing. Now I really feel the constraints of my Janome, especially how hard it is to see past about an inch. I have yet to try an articulated long arm on a frame, but that’s next. Will it be even more like drawing? Can I get some longed-for spontaneity into quilting with one of those?

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Firsts

On Thursday I attended my first quilt guild meeting ever. In New York I learned to free motion quilt from the Internet, mostly Leah Day. But since I’m in Illinois now I can take advantage of the ginormous local quilting culture, and that means the Illini Country Stitchers. There were over 100 people there! And by “people” I mean “women,” as there was nary a man to be found.

The meeting’s main speaker was Kaye England, who was so funny and compelling I signed up for her class the next day. My first sewing class! Where I learned to piece traditionally, something I’ve never done before, yielding my first pieced block:

It’s not nearly as precise as everyone else’s, but it was incredibly satisfying just the same. I’ve long wondered what the appeal of patchwork piecing was. Now I think I know: it’s largely in the process, like doing a puzzle.

These quilters possess MAD SKILLZ that take a long time to learn. Kaye is on the left.

Later I free-motion quilted my block at home, my first free-motion quilting on patchwork. The quilting isn’t great, since I’m way out of practice.

I don’t plan to do much more traditional piecing; this is more my style. But it was great to learn something new, and learn to do it properly. The class was a lot of fun, and I may have learned even more about teaching than I did about sewing.

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Death and something new

Having sold one This Land Is Mine quilt and sent the other to my brother, it was time to make a new one. This is my first two-sided quilt. One side features the Angel of Death. The quilted outlines of the men killing each other give him texture.

This time I didn’t pre-wash the fabric, so the colors are very slightly brighter.

Another first for me: hanging tabs, so it can be hung from either side.

Death seemed like a fine piece to work on, since I’m grieving my beloved Bruno. That said, my Momz adopted a new cat from the shelter a few days ago. Her name is Lola, and she thinks my sewing machine is a toy.

I didn’t get pictures of her batting at the needle (it goes up and down! Toy!) last night because I shut off the machine and took her out of the room instead. These photos are from earlier today, as her interest was waning (which was why I was able to finish the quilt).

Lola is nothing like Bruno.  That’s one of the reasons we chose her. I’m not looking to replace Bruno, he is irreplaceable and I miss him terribly. Nonetheless Lola is an excellent cat. She is friendly, curious, and outgoing. She seems to completely lack any neuroses, which is unusual for her species. Also she is tiny and cute. She’d make a great therapy cat.

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