REACHING FOR THE SUN - By Teresa Schlabach

This summer I was lucky to spend 2 weeks in Southern France.  While there I saw fields and fields of sunflowers.  They grow up to 5 feet tall and the flowers are bigger than my head!  The flowers reach for the sun until they start blooming and then turn their backs on the sun as they bloom.  I found myself reaching for the warmth and happiness of the sun everyday.  There is no substitute for sunshine.  I thread painted this sunflower based on a photograph I took.  The center is actually Alpaca wool and silk stitched in a circular motion giving some depth to the flower.  Sunflowers represent happiness and that makes my heart smile.

Alice's Quilt: Reaching Up and Holding the Moon

“Reach” was a challenging challenge word for me!  I considered “reaching a goal” and also that wonderful song by Diana Ross, “Reach Out and Touch.”  But somehow images inspired by those didn’t translate into a quilt for me.

During the recent eclipse of the sun by our moon,  I started to pay special attention to that amazing moon.  And the recent harvest moons have been breathtakingly beautiful!  Then I remembered something someone once told me.  If, when the moon is full, you go outside, close one eye, and position your hands just so, you can reach up and “hold the moon in your hands.”

That notion inspired my quilt.  I found an excellent free clip-art image of cupped hands. After printing it, I traced it onto flesh-colored fabric.  Then I cut my moon out of mottled gold batik.

I couldn’t find a dark blue, night-sky-looking fabric in my stash, so I decided to paint some PDF fabric for the background.  Once the fabric dried, I sandwiched it with batting and, for the backing, a wonderful commercial print of planets. The cupped hands and the moon are fused and appliquéd by machine onto the background.  I added some gently curving lines of quilting.  This 12”x12” quilt was bound conventionally with more of the background fabric.   The planet-fabric backing is pictured below.

Gail's--Reach into My Stash!

This was the easiest challenge for me. I immediately thought "reach into my stash" and that's exactly what I did. I like to use these challenges to "reach" new levels of technique. For the past year I've been mulling over a larger piece involving curved piecing.  Being a "reach" for me I've naturally avoided starting it! Now I feel competent to start it after "reaching" this 

smaller achievement. I have a large unique hand dyed piece from Helene Davis Art Studio in Paducah. I will again "reach" into my stash to incorporate just the right fabric. The background for this challenge was a piece of art fabric I impulsively "reached" for in Houston a few years ago. My hope is this little quilt will "reach" your soul in a symphony of color!

Reaching Out

Reaching Out

Jane’s Reach Quilt

When I was diagnosed with lymphoma in July, I knew that I was going to need help dealing with the treatments and just surviving this ordeal. It was amazing to feel the outpouring of support from friends and family. Although I still have two more chemo treatments, I have been declared in complete remission.

I haven’t been shy about reaching out for help during this time. Therefore my challenge quilt is about reaching out. If you will allow them, people are more than happy to help you through a rough patch.

I started with white silk charmeuse. I drew around my hands on the paper side of freezer paper to create a pattern. When I ironed the silk to the plastic side of the freezer paper, I stabilized the silk and was able to see the pattern through the fabric.

Using my Inktense Blocks, I colored the hands. Then I colored in the background with very thin and pale textile paint. Next I wrote Reach over and over separated by stars on the fingers. This actually turned out to be rather futile work because you really can’t see the words easily.

At this point, I started quilting. Using a different pattern for each hand and a color that I felt was compatible, I quilted rather densely. For the background I chose a rainbow colored thread and used relatively straight line quilting.

My next move was to add more paint with the Inktense Blocks. I used wet on wet to get the colors to blend as I added colors to my hands. The added bonus to this was the quilting patterns really show up now. I think some of the paint settled in the thread which I like. I ironed Timtex on the back side to keep it flat.

 It was fun creating this little quilt. I was able to work on it in bits and pieces as I felt well enough to be up in the studio. Since I had to let it rest while the paint dried in different areas, I was able to let myself rest. But I still had the satisfaction of making something which gave me a boost. Please continue to pray for me as I go through two more chemo treatments. 

Reach for the Sun

This is on rusted fabric, monoprinted and thread-sketched. A few beads were added to the vine on the right. I used Inktense blocks to paint in some of the colours. Sari silk ribbons are used for binding.

The Space Composite

Confession time, again;  I was pleasantly surprised. After all these years enjoying the creative work of the Material Mavens you will be quick to use our grandson’s favorite word and ask me why would I be surprised?  When the word for this round was published I expected a high percentage of the quilts to be extraterrestrial.  Then, reveal day and not one! Unless Candace meant to show us her window into space.

To the reasoning behind the layout on the Space composite, again a challenge:

[Pre-note:  If and when Teresa sends us her quilt, I’ll work it in.]

After time spent reading your thinking as you created your quilts I could not gather a common thread [at least to my satisfaction].  There is a common theme within Alice, Karen and Andrea’s work. They all did speak of negative space in their thinking, but I felt more comfortable using their quilts as the color layout seemed more eye catching.

Row one then becomes a queue of nice blues.

Row two follows the color scheme with reds.

Row three and now you know why I saved the black and whites to “hang” together, despite the blue boots.

Row four and five are people related. If you don’t believe me read Sara’s explanation. I was a biology major also and I think this use of space is really clever.  There is no doubt Gail touches the very heart of space.  

Row lower right corner: Admit it, how many of you are jealous of Tricia’s quilting studio? We all celebrate her wonderful Space. I especially like the weather vane.

Those are my thoughts for July reveal. Job well done everybody – AGAIN.

Jane's Update

i expect most of you know by now that I had a crazy turn in my life recently. I developed lymphoma in my thyroid which caused difficulty breathing and eating and talking and all that stuff that goes on in your neck.
I ultimately had surgery and have begun chemotherapy which should cure this condition. It was very scary and very difficult for a couple of weeks that felt like a lifetime.
I didn't get my space quilt completed. And it was my theme! I had decided to do something on outer space because when I started art quilting, I made several Nova or Supernova pieces. My vision of outer space is very colorful and explosive.
I dyed a piece of silk for the background then started painting on it using some techniques Gail had shared with me. That is as far as I got before this medical emergency hit.
I hope to be back in the studio again soon. Until then, I hope you will continue to pray for me. The prayers I have already felt have been a great comfort.
Thanks for embracing the theme with such diverse quilts.

Space window by Candace Berry

The circular window is sheer hand-painted organza with 3 small bird feathers sandwiched inside.Hope you can see the gold flecks over the piece. Machine quilted and machine embroidered. My husband made a wooden stand for this piece. It shows off the window.

Karen's Quilt: Filling Space

I have 2 machine quilting classes coming up and wanted to make a piece using just the walking foot to show my students. I thought it was a perfect way to use the word "space". 

Machine quilted with black 50 wt. 100% cotton on shot cotton fabric. 

October Challenge Word

Thank heavens Alice has the schedule of who has the new word for our group! Without her we would all be waiting for the next person to post it and we would be disappointed since I didn't remember it was ME!
The new word for our last Challenge in 2017 is "REACH". Have fun!

Interstitial Space - Sara's Space challenge

Space was a wonderful theme as there are so many ways to approach it. My first thought was outer space. I then thought about space as an element of art and thought I would create a composition based on negative space. As always, I spent way too much time only working on the project in my head. Just before I started to actually start working with fabric I remembered Interstital Space - the spaces between cells. My histology and fine structure books are filled with wonderful images for inspiration Unfortunately those books have found new addresses in my house after being organized and I have yet to remember where that is. I turned to the internet for more inspiration and discovered that the term interstitial space is used in both cell biology and architecture. I therefore had to make two quilts

This first quilt depicts a stylized view of cells near a capillary - the space between the cells is probably greater than reality. The quilt is put together using raw edge fusible interfacing. I couched copper colored yarn around the outside of my cells to set them apart and to emulate a simplified cell membrane. The purple fabric in both qults was a small piece of hand-dyed fabric that I screen printed on.

This second quilt is pieced and represents interstitial space in architecture - the spaces between floors in a building that allow room for conduits and pipes 

The Space Within III

Dee Stewart Merrell

The Space Within III

Too much space?  Never enough?  Or the obvious “ SPACE – The Final Frontier”.  I had to be true to my first feeling on this challenge, and it had to be the space that is mysterious and unknown.  I wanted to show all the colors and energy of a nebula, I wanted to bring the exploding darkness to life.  Then I knew that I could show space in my own way:  with a circle.  These were just a few of the rabbit holes that I went down and I feel like I also did a bit of time travel - because I  completely changed my entire piece this morning, the day of REVEAL.  

This past week I was at a Quilting Adventures retreat in Schulenburg, TX,  and my teacher was Jane Sassaman.  Many things that she told us, and I did take notes, made a definite impression on me and I absorbed some things to such a degree that when I got home on Thursday evening and viewed my “space piece” again, it no longer pleased me.  I tried to stitch new life into it, but that did not work.   So I started a brand new art piece on Friday… the design was really looking good, and then I stitched it -  the stitching turned it into a psychedelic sunflower!   I like it, and I will use it after some major tweaks, but not for this challenge. 

Back to my Sassaman notes:  Simplify and Exaggerate.  I knew that I did not have time to design a background, so I would need fabric that did the work for me.  I had tried hand dyes and batiks before because they have a lot of depth and movement.  A really nice green caught my eye and when I spread it out it was one of those fabrics that you cannot live without but you are never sure what to do with it.  It was a Robert Kaufman and designed by Sherrill Kahn, the fabric name was “The Fire Within II “ ..  thus the name of this work:. “The Space Within III”. (three tries to get it right.)

The Space Within I

The Space Within II

Tricia's My Space

Two years ago my husband and I decided to downsize after raising our children in Lincoln, Ma for 30+ years.  We weren't sure what we wanted to do.  After deciding to stay in our town, we found a 100 year old barn and house on beautiful conservation land.

   We were not able to save the house. We decided to build a new house on the site and renovate the barn. My husband and his friend renovated the barn for our garage and My Studio or My Space! Finally we moved into the house on May 18th. My studio still needs a few things for me to start working in My Space. Here are a few pictures of my space.

 Because the barn had a cupola my husband surprised me for Christmas with a specially designed weather vane. A Singer sewing machine for our weather vane. 

 When I heard the theme Space I was stubbed.  After thinking about the theme for a month I suddenly came upon the idea of My Space is my new studio. I feel so blessed to have this space to create in! I decided I needed to create the weather-vane to represent My Space.

Judy's: Space In My Heart

When the word “Space” was given to us I had no clue where I was going with it. Well, the month of June has been a thought provoking month. It has been one of thinking how much I love my family and friends. It started with my oldest son coming home so that he could have surgery on his ankle at the VA and recuperate at our house. Next my husband had a kidney stone get stuck and it was ER, surgery and in office surgery. During that session our first grandbaby was born! Oliver is precious! His parents are on cloud nine. Also my other daughter-in-law in Kentucky fell and had major surgery on her knee. So many highs and lows, but we are now all on the mend and the little Steward family is perking right along.

I’m someone who wants to protect my family and friends and take care of them as much as possible. There was a lot to do in the month of June. I enjoyed being able to feed my son good meals and give him a safe, comfortable home to recuperate in and keep his dog and cat here. I know that helped with his healing. I was happy that I could take my husband to the ER and be the one who kept track of everything that was going on there. I’m happy I can help when my daughter-in-law needs help going to the doctor with the little one and I love being able to do his laundry, especially folding those tiny little outfits. I wish I was closer so that I could have helped my son and his wife in Kentucky, but they know I would be there if I could.

In July I spoke at the Quilter’s Guild of Arlington and gave a workshop too. My heart is filled a little bit more with the wonderful comments and stories the ladies at the workshop shared with me and those who came up after the lecture to talk. My quilting is all about stories. There is a reason that I make a quilt and when others enjoy the stories it just makes my heart sing!

In April at our Material Mavens retreat I loved making connections with the Arkansas mavens. I know everyone a little bit more and you each have a space in my heart. Today, I met a man who is 97 years old and was married on Dec. 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor day. Yes, another special spot for him now. I think my heart is even more open then it ever has. Maybe it’s because I’m older, but I think it is because I just really enjoy people and want to know them better. 

My heart is full and the amazing part it can continue to be filled even more. I was going to make a heart and fill it with all kinds of things, but I felt like it just looked like a mess. This heart has other hearts in it to make it look like it is pulsing with great joy for all the love that is in it.  The rays coming off of it are what is continually being added. May the space in your heart be filled with love too.

Andrea's Space Quilt: Space, Or the Lack Thereof!

11" x 14" cotton, fused organza

This was the perfect theme for my return! It was at least six years ago that I decided I should downsize and thought I would like a Cape-style house.  I finally found "the one" in the spring of 2015 and was able to purchase it last summer.  After six months of renovations, I moved in just before Christmas; however it took an additional 4 months of purging/donating/recycling and packing to be completely out of my former home.   Going from a large house, in which I lived in for 40 years, with 12' ceilings and a two-floor, cat free dedicated studio, to a small house has been a challenge.  I thought I would be able to sew in the living room, but sharing that space with four very interested cats has proved impossible.   Plan B is to set up my sewing room in a second floor bedroom.  My design wall will remain in the living room on the first floor and my fabric dyeing can be done in the basement.  I love the new house and eventually it will become "creatively functional," but meanwhile I am feeling very confined by my lack of space which is what I am hoping this quilt conveys.

 My assistant...

clearly she didn't like the placement of the C!