Sara's Canyon

This was a somewhat difficult challenge for me. I am somewhat Canyon deprived having not really had a chance to view a canyon in person (until my trip this past weekend to Sedonaa, AZ). I knew I needed to get my quilt done before that trip.I looked up the definition of canyon - " a gorge or ravine, esp in North America, usually formed by the down-cutting of a river in a dry area where there is insufficient rainfall to erode the sides of the valley"  and thought of the action of a river cutting into its environment and reshaping it over time and getting deeper and wider over time. I  portray this time sequence. I started off with hand running stitches in white on a dark brown solid background going through the background and the batting. I then added more definition with rowns of couched yarns and cord . I added a backing and quilted it with straight  stitches using  heavy pink cotton. 

Sara's Daydreaming

I had trouble with this theme. I am frequently distracted and unfocused from what I am supposed to be paying attention to but I don't seem to have clear daydreams - more like a cloud spun through a maze or a hamster on a wheel. I thought of showing a closet of size 4 dresses but I am not into producing realistic images. I also want to use the 12 by 12 format to try out different techniques. The end result is I remembered a class I took at IQF last year by Laura Coates Perez entitled  "Tea Bags and Ephemera". It involved attaching ephemera to fabric with matte medium. The teabags were used to trace or print images. Rubber stamps and shiva paintsticks tied things together. In my house one of the issues is finding the rubber stamps and or ephemera you know you have but can't get to. That gave me some (probably well needed ) limitations.

I started by soaking muslin in a very dilute solution of water and Golden iron oxide paint. I was going for mottled and rusty which happened in few places but it did add a pleasant yellow/orange background. I ended up doing 2 pieces. The top piece has silk rose petals, English and Arabic text cut from discarded books that my husband found in a library trash area, magazine images, a teabag, Chinese Joss paper and some rubber stamps. I used Shiva paint sticks on top of the image. I was getting impatient waiting for the matte media to dry so I started another using flowers I found in an old copy of Oprah magazine. I rather like that one better.  Quilting is done using invisafil thread. Since the quilts were using non-traditional techniques, I decided to finish them the same way - I zig-zagged silk sari yarn to the border of the quilt and then pinked the edges to meet the yarn border. I used a continuous piece of yarn for the sides and tops and one piece across the bottom to tie bows in the corners. They do represent the swirling chaos in my mind!

Using Links--Another Way to Fine-tune Your Posts!

Okay, now I've fixed it so that we have a gadget list on the sidebar that shows all the labels, arranged in order of number of labels.

Another hint I'd like to share concerns LINKS.  Look at the toolbar on the new post posting page.  In addition to the little icon for inserting a picture, there is the word LINK.  If there is something in your post you'd like readers to know more about (for example, in my recent post I thought readers might like to see a print of Van Gogh's "Vincent's Chair"), you highlight those words (or a single word).  Then you will be automatically sent to a page where you can enter the URL for the page where you suggest readers go.  On the post itself, this link will appear in a different color.  Thus in my recent post, I gave readers an opportunity to go not only to see the original painting, but I liked them also to another one of my blogs that explained in more detail Marcia Stein's method of binding, whereby the binding blends in with the sides of the quilt.

The way I handle this task is to first find the place where I want readers to go.  Then I copy the URL.  When I highlight that place, I then can quickly past the URL in the little box.   For example, if I mention that I used machine couching in my quilt, I could highlight that and then send any interested reader to an explanation for how to couch by machine.

Links are fun, I think; anytime you mention a product or a process that you feel could use more explanation, use a Link!

Alice's Surprise Quilt--Surprise in the Midst of Drought

The day after our last “reveal,” I went for an early morning walk, despite a prediction of a high of 100+° that day.  Much to my astonishment, just a block from our house I spied some lavender and purple wild flowers growing in a patch of dead weeds in the corner vacant lot.  How could they be blooming in the middle of the worst drought we have suffered in Texas in many decades? They were a total surprise!  Then I had an ah-ha moment:  I’d take a photo and base my Surprise quilt on those brave little wild flowers.  I used an enlargement of one of these pictures as a guide for composition and fabric colors. 

In constructing my Surprise quilt, I used the following materials and techniques:  For the background, I used a piece of hand-painted fabric, left over from another quilt, for the brownish yellow background.  The techniques I used included:  fusing raw-edge appliqués (the weeds); fusing and zig-zag stitching appliqués (the flowers and leaves); couching two different yarns for more weeds, to give dimension to the quilt; and beading for still more dimension (flower stamens). I hand-quilted with a running embroidery stitch, randomly placed, choosing a brown and an olive green embroidery floss.  The quilt is bound and backed with a multi-colored batik in the same colors as the dead weeds and the flowers’ leaves.