grey day antidote

Red Sky in Morning

about 45 inches x 45 inches

art quilt

This piece is hanging in the Milne Library Gallery in Geneseo, New York, as part of my Vicious Scissors show there. I thought of it this morning as I looked out the window at the bleak, grey sky that is so very emblematic of upstate New York winters. A red dawn is what I need today.

art quilts

I participate in a monthly art quilt challenge called Fast Friday Quilts (the link is below and always in the sidebar on this page). On the last Friday of the Monday, we are given a challenge and have a week to produce our pieces. The challenges are meant to expand our thinking about our work, and they do that well. We might be instructed to do the theme of movement, for example, and then use some embellishment technique that is new to us to help express that theme. The results are posted on a blog on which we explain what we have done and can receive comments on the results. It's a wonderful, stimulating monthly exercise.

I realized this morning, however, that I post my art quilts there and not here, and that I should re-post some of them here because I'm thinking that many folks who read this blog don't go to the Fast Friday Quilts link to see what there is there and so are missing out on my art quilts.

So. . .I will post some of my work from there here periodically. I encourage all, though, to go to Fast Fridays to see what other members of the challenge group are doing. It's quite a creative bunch, I tell you!
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Here is the challenge from October that involved movement and embellishments:

Solar Wind

When the challenge was first announced, I saw this image in my mind's eye. And it's taken me days and days to execute it. The movement part was fairly easy to put down. The embellishments were to be things that I hadn't done before. I explored different stitches on my machine and then used a couching/beading foot to put the strings of beads down. And I did that using invisible thread. Whew! That stuff is really, really invisible, both the clear and the smoke. I finished the piece with a satin stitch edge and a hanging sleeve on the back.

blue: in memory of marjorie

Back in 2002, I made this quilt in memory of a woman who loved the color blue and loved me, too. It now lives in North Carolina with her son, whom she loved very, very much and who shows her influence in everything he does. Marjorie died in 1992. And I didn't realize until just this moment, writing this, that it was a 10th anniversary of her death that this quilt marked. Sigh.

She had been a school librarian with an adventurous streak. The rail fence quilt block forms the way she hoped the world would see her, but the tumbling blocks at the bottom are how she really interacted with those she loved: passionate, active, and just a little bit wacky.

quilt for alzheimer's research

The Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative auctions off art quilts every month to help support research into the disease. This little piece, "I Want To Be An Elephant" will be available through this website sometime in the near future. My artist's statement, written with the help of a good writer, reads:

When I was a young child, I heard a joke that went, “Why do elephants paint their toenails red?” The punch line was, “So that they can hide in cherry trees.” The joke was then followed by the question, “Have you ever seen an elephant in a cherry tree?” Since I hadn't, I was assured that it was because of those red toenails. My whole life since then, every time I see a cherry tree I look carefully, trying to find an elephant.
Sometimes I paint my toenails red. And when I am alone, with just my toes and me, I wonder if my family and friends know where I am. I wonder if they are searching in the cherry trees.

suitable for valentine's day

"How NOT to Mend a Broken Heart" was given 2nd honors in the Breaking Traditions exhibit at the American Sewing Expo in Michigan at the end of September. It was an experiment on the theme of "Connections," and I felt good when I finished it.

17"W x 24"H
commercial fabrics and findings; machine quilted; hand embellished.

Statement: Chocolate is buttons, flowers are safety pins, jewelry is a zipper, a trip to new places tries to lace the pieces. More gifts provide snaps and clips, the connections mechanical and uncertain. What can truly restore the fabric of a heart pierced and broken by another heart, disconnected from what it loves?
$500

today's inchies

Today, I decided to play with fabric, so I created a bunch of these inchies. However, they are larger than one inch square, as you might have noticed. I will be making more that will be truly one inch square. And we'll see if they are too little.

a funky little piece

This is a detail of a little piece that I did called "When I Die and Go to Heaven, It Will Not Look Like This." I must have heard some news about Florida and someone I knew was thinking of retiring there, and this image came to mind.



Here is the whole thing:


And this is another detail:

another little quilt

I made this sometime last year as an exercise in machine-quilting (of course—I have to get better at that) and in using materials other than fabric and thread to tell a story. The title of this piece is "Fall into Winter, Spring into Summer." It's little, about 6 inches x 18 inches or something like that. I had to think about what colors reminded me of each season and then how each season related to the others—where to start, how to connect to the next, and how to make it circular without a circle.

a little art

Recently, I started creating little quiltworks using various techniques that I need to learn more about. This piece, called Fly Away, uses fusing and freeform machine quilting. It's an expression of how far I go both in my imagination and in my travels around the country.