Fun at the East Cobb Quilters’ Guild

I just returned from teaching two workshops and speaking to the East Cobb Quilters’ Guild in Marietta, Georgia, near Atlanta. What a wonderful, warm group of quilters! I was invited to teach there after Danielle Morgan wrote me; at the time, I think she was the guild president, and discovered my blog and website. That’s Danielle above with the wonderful dragonfly she created in the thread sketching class I taught on Saturday.

I can’t tell you how wonderfully they treated me; taking me for great meals, helping me schlep all my stuff in and out of several different workshop and meeting sites, helping me set up, helping me sell my patterns, book and DVD, but most of all, helping me out when I got sick. It is hard to be away from home and attempting to be professional when you are sick. Especially sick the way I was sick (I will spare you the details, but you can take my word for it that it wasn't pretty.) Luckily, it was only a 12-hour bug and I was back on my feet in time to speak to the guild on Friday morning.

What a great program chair this guild has in Pam Cornutt. She is a ball of energy, and was unfailingly helpful, organized and cheerful. 

After the guild meeting, Linda Christensen came up to me, excited to see my rust-dyed piece. She had been collecting rusty stuff, and after talking with me and finding me to be a fellow admirer of rust, went out to her car and brought back a big box filled with the most marvelous rusty bits. Look at this!

These are scraps from a metal stamping company. Wow, wow, wow! Thank you, Linda! I wish I had time to work with these right now, but they might have to wait until I get some big projects finished up. (After I took this photo, by daughter came in and said, “Those are interesting rusty things on the kitchen counter, Mama… you have had a tetanus shot lately, haven’t you?”)

Asking students to complete evaluation forms after I teach a class is something I started to do recently. I’m so glad I decided to do it, because I’m getting wonderful feedback from my students. Most of them gave my two classes and my teaching good marks, and that was reassuring. But the constructive criticism and suggestions were invaluable. It made me wonder why more teachers – and more guilds, for that matter – don’t make teacher/class evaluations a regular thing.

Not quite right

Here’s a new piece I just finished. I needed a new sample to take to the class I’m teaching later this week for the East Cobb Quilters’ Guild in Marietta, Georgia (near Atlanta). So I was hurrying, hurrying, hurrying along, but I had a vague feeling that something was not quite right. Nothing I could quite put my finger on. But I was in a rush, so I ignored that nagging sensation and moved along. The minute I finished quilting. I knew what it was. Do you? Yep. The dragonfly’s wings are on upside down. Aaaaaaaaaaaaargh!

Beyond the wing issue (I will never look at this piece without knowing it is WRONG!), there are some things I love about this piece, and somethings I'd do differently. I love the beautiful colors and texture in the wings. I love that hand-dyed background. I love the circle raindrops, where I did some thread sketching on the surface, and then some quilting to add dimension. But if I had to do it again, I'd do more dragonflies, probably three (the one looks kind of plunked there), or at least not center the one dragonfly so much on the piece. I could have added more movement to the piece if I had quilted it differently.

Regardless of the design flaws, and the wing malfunction, it is still a good sample to demonstrate the techniques I’ll be teaching. I’m going to teach my “Start With a Photo” workshop where we make my Round Red Barn design this Thursday, meet with some of the quilters that night, then do my presentation at the guild meeting on Friday, and teach a thread-sketching class (the dragonfly) on Saturday. I just love meeting and teaching other quilters! It is going to be fun.

What do you think I should name this piece?

Trials and tribulations

In the past month, I have been working on getting better shots of my quilts, and learning how to take better how-to shots that I can use on my blog. There have been days when I wanted to rip my hair out. I am an artistic photographer, not a technical one. Today, the members of Fiber Art Options came over for our monthly meeting, and to photograph all of our work from the "Orchids: Sensuality Stitched" exhibition that just closed at Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden. Our goal is to create a CD of our work to send out to potential future venues.

We worked inside today, with professional flash units and light stands, and pinned each piece to my design wall. We rigged nylon fabric over the flash units to soften and diffuse the light. We bounced the lights at a 45 degree angle off foamcore positioned at the sides of the pieces. We tried putting one flash to the side, to skim light over the surface (the result was hot spots, or bright areas, near that flash, even at lower settings). We experimented with setting the flashes at different power settings. I shot in manual mode, and I played some with my f-stop and my shutter speed and my ISO. You can see the result here:

The color is fairly close. The light is even, and I think the exposure is okay. But it is totally flat. When you zoom in, the detail is okay, and you can see the stitching, but it looks like a painting and not a quilt.

If you look at the photo at the top of this post, you can see a photo I took a few months ago of the same piece. The texture is great. I took it outside. I put it on the ground, got up on a ladder, and shot straight down. It was a sunny day, and either early morning (9-ish) or later in the afternoon (4-ish) to avoid the harsher lighting of mid-day. I shot in auto mode.

If you read my post earlier this month, you can see the little foam core “stage” I set up to shoot my smaller pieces and how-to shots. This quilt is too big to fit on that stage, so it had to be shot in a different way.

So… here’s my big question: Why is the first shot so much better? What am I doing wrong when I shoot inside? If you know and can help me, please leave a comment! I’d really like to have some of my hair at the end of the month. Thanks.

NOTE: Since writing this, I have had several e-mails from people suggesting Holly Knott's excellent information called “Shoot that Quilt!” on her website. I read it long ago, and built her stands and purchased the special bulbs. I’m still not getting the texture. I just e-mailed  her, and when I hear back, I will certainly share what I learn by posting here. The lights I’m using now are professional level flash units, so that changes all the variables. 


LATER NOTE: Here is Holly's response to my plea for help: 
"Hi Susan! I hear your frustration! Just checked out your blog post and you are certainly doing all the right things. It’s all in the lighting. You have to light one side brighter than the other, to create little shadows from the raised areas in-between your quilting lines. The only thing I can think of is that even though you’ve tried different lighting scenarios, that perhaps you’ve evenly lit *both* sides of the piece. You’ll want one side to be lit a little brighter than the other. I’m guessing that your quickie shot taken outdoors that shows the quilting fabulously worked because the sun was hitting it at an angle. Perhaps try moving one light stand close to the quilt and aiming it at a 25-degree angle across it, and move the other light stand to the other side of the quilt but farther away, 45-degree angle as you normally would, just to make sure that side of the quilt isn’t in total darkness. Possibly even try a brighter bulb in the light closest to the quilt. See this very quick graphic in case this doesn’t make sense:

"Also, you mentioned using flash units. Are they literally flashes, that only go off when the shutter clicks? I never use those myself (unless I’m taking a quickie auto shot) because I can’t see the light before it goes off (compared to the fixed lights on the stands that you can move around and judge brightness with because they’re always on). "


Thanks, Holly! I guess it is back to the drawing board! Stay tuned, everyone!

Very lucky

I have a knack for finding four-leaf clovers. I’m not sure exactly why, but I suspect that my figure-ground perception is especially acute. I found one on my daily walk Monday, and gave it to my friend Nancy G. Cook, for her 70th birthday. I hope it brings her another decade of good luck. Today I found another, the one pictured above!

According to information I found online, scientists estimate that there are about 10,000 three-leaf clovers for every four-leaf clover. The four-leaf clover has long been a symbol of good luck, its petals said to represent faith, hope, love and luck.

When I was a child, my mother used to sing me a song about four-leaf clovers that had a lovely melody. I found it online, attributed to Ella Higginson, born 1861, (published in An American Anthology, 1787-1900):

I know a place where the sun is like gold,
and the cherries bloom forth in the snow
and down underneath is the lovliest nook,
where the four-leaf clovers grow.

One leaf is for faith, and one is for hope.
And one is for love, you know,
And God put another one in for luck,
if you search you will find where they grow.

But you must have faith, you must have hope
You must love and be strong, and so…
If you work and you wait, you will find the place
where the four-leaf clovers grow.

Today I celebrate my Celtic ancestry; I have a good amount of Scot-Irish in my bloodlines. Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone. Three cheers for the lovely Emerald Isle!

I’m a cover girl!

Well, I never thought I’d be saying this, but I’m a cover girl! No, not a scantily clad model, or a spokeswoman for Covergirl makeup… My art is on the cover of the next issue of Quilting Arts magazine! I made this peacock feather piece called “Vanity” to demonstrate how you can use thread to highlight the element of line in your work.

It’s featured in the second installment of my thread-sketching series, which will run through 2010. 

You can pre-order the April/May 2010 issue of Quilting Arts right now by clicking here. It will be going out to subscribers in the next few weeks, and on newsstands (including Barnes & Noble) soon after that.

I am over the moon!

Dreams of ancient Persia

I have just finished listening to the audio version a wonderful book by Susan Fletcher called Alphabet of Dreams that has me dreaming of ancient Persia. It is set at the time of the birth of Jesus, and follows the story of a 14-year-old girl and her little brother, who are of royal blood, but hiding out in the City of the Dead in Rhagae after their father's failed attempt to overthrow the king.

The best of books transport you into a different place and time, and this one has me thinking of pomegranates, dates and chickpeas, of royal purple tunics and fine woven linen, of camels and donkeys and Magi, and prophesies… If you are looking for a good read, I recommend it.

When I have grown weary of this world and its problems as I am today, it helps me to create something. I did this little sketch after finishing the last chapter. Perhaps it will end up in an art quilt someday.

The Pandoras play with PhotoEZ sheets

At our monthly Pandoras meeting today, we played with PhotoEZ sheets. This product allows you to create your own silk screen stencils without chemicals or heavy equipment. To see a step-by-step tutorial on the PhotoEZ website showing how to create the stencil, click here.

We met at Grace Howes’ house, since she had done this before. It is best to apply the PhotoEZ in a semi-dark room, since it is photosensitive, so we had some funny moments crammed into her coat closet in the dark and then running outside to expose them in the sun. But the laughs stopped when none of our stencils came out! What was wrong? We tried and tried and nothing worked. Until Alisan arrived and read the directions. Duh! We had layered them incorrectly! As soon as we actually followed the directions (and made one call to the PhotoEZ headquarters help line), we were fine.

I started with this design I made from a paper cutout, scanned, repeated and resized in Photoshop:

Here’s how the stencil looks:

The green stuff is Duck Tape (a brand of heavy-duty tape similar to duct tape that is sold at craft stores and comes in funky colors) used to create a bigger surface for the paint to sit on before it is pulled down across the stencil.

When I got home, I played with screen printing onto fabric. I didn't have a squeegee, so I used an old gift card, which meant that I had to pull the ink down in several swoops. I need practice at this part, and get a real squeegee. And I need to try some different kinds of paints and inks to see what works best. Here are my very first results, using the old gift card and Jacquard Textile Color (a blue and green on the streaky one):

This is something I definitely want to try more! I think I need Grace to give me some lessons on the printing part.

Curious? You can read more about using PhotoEZ in Belinda Spiwak’s article in the current (March/April 2010) issue of Cloth Paper Scissors magazine. 

When I got home, I called in to be interviewed on Pat Sloan’s Creative Talk Radio Show. Once I got over my nerves, it was such fun. Pat is a sweetie! We talked for about a half hour, and then Pokey Bolton, editor of Quilting Arts magazine, joined us. If you want to hear the whole thing, just go to the website by clicking here, and then click on the 03-08-10 title under “Recent Shows” at the top of the sidebar on the right. Then go to Pat’s blog (click here), where you can leave a comment and get the chance to win a copy of Appliqué Petal Party, or my Piñata Purse pattern, or a set of my orchid series notecards.

PPP is going to Paducah!

Woo-hoo! I just found out that my appliqué quilt “Pink Petal Party” was juried into the American Quilter’s Society’s Paducah Quilt Show! The Paducah show will be held April 21-24, 2010 at the Paducah Expo Center, Julian Carroll Convention Center in Paducah, Kentucky.

The AQS Quilt Show & Contest at the Paducah show is considered to be one of the premier international quilting events. According to the AQS website, more than 37,000 people attend each year’s show, and more than $2.5 million in cash prizes have been awarded. Whether my quilt wins a prize or not, it is an honor just to be juried in, so I am really excited. This is the first time I have entered an AQS show.

For the list of all the semi-finalists for the 2010 show, click here. 

I’ll be on Pat Sloan’s Creative Talk Radio on Monday!

Guess what? Pat Sloan is interviewing me and Pokey Bolton, editor in chief of Quilting Arts magazine, on her internet talk radio show on Monday, March 8 at 4 p.m. EST! Pat will be talking to me first, about my traditional quilts, and how I got started in art quilting. Then Pokey is scheduled to join in, and we’ll talk about different fiber art/quilt art techniques and materials.

You can tune in then and listen live online by going to Pat Sloan’s Creative Talk Radio. If you miss the live show, you can simply download it and listen later. (Remember, you can’t listen to my interview until Monday… But there are other fun interviews to keep you busy until then.)

We are also giving away a copy of my book, Appliqué Petal Party; a copy of my Piñata Purse pattern; and a set of my orchid series notecards! To enter the drawings, simply go to Pat’s blog on Monday, and leave a comment after her post about the show. Leave your comment on Pat’s blog by Friday, March 12 at noon EST.  

If you missed my mini-interview with Pat on my blog back in January, click here.

Pat’s a live wire, so this is bound to be bunches of fun. Please join us!

Win a copy of Kay Mackenzie’s new book!

My friend Kay Mackenzie has a darling new book out called Dolls & Dresses to Appliqué. It contains full-size patterns for “a dozen darling dolls in their delightful dresses” (try saying that 10 times fast!) An overview of fusible machine appliqué technique is incuded. The soft cover, 24-page book costs $15.95. You can order a copy on Kay’s website here.

You can see projects made from the patterns here. Here’s one showcasing all 12 dolls:

The cuteness factor is way high on this book! Kay has written a bunch of wonderful quilting books, most recently, Easy Appliqué Blocks: 50 Designs in 5 Sizes and Teapots 2 to Applique. She also writes a wonderful blog, All About Appliqué.

To help Kay celebrate, I’m giving away an autographed copy of her new book. Leave me a comment after this post telling me why you should win. I'll pull a winner at random at noon (Eastern time) on March 9. Make sure to check back that afternoon!

Sign of spring

I went to Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden on Saturday with my friend DeLane. I needed to take a few more shots of the exhibition, because we are going to be making a CD of the show and all the pieces in it to send out to other potential venues.

I hadn’t spent much time with DeLane recently, and I also needed a break from some of the stresses in my life and from the miserable weather we have been having here in North Carolina this winter. The snow and cold don’t bother me at all; I rather like them! But I really hate the gray skies and the cold rain and the slogging through the mud. On Saturday, the skies were Carolina blue and the temperatures mild, and it was a great time for me to practice shooting outside with my new camera.

In manual mode. Shiver.

I shared with you in a previous post about my lack of experience shooting in anything but auto mode. But I’m determined to master manual mode, and to try to improve my photos technically. I want to understand how I can adjust my camera to deal with different lighting conditions, and how to change my depth of field so that I get some things in focus and others out of focus. So, after reading about these things online and in my camera’s manual (sigh), I headed out.

The shot above of pussy willow tree branches is an experiment with trying to get a shallower depth of field by using a smaller f-stop (or aperture, how much light the camera letting in) and a faster shutter speed. I guess I am learning something!

I have always loved pussy willows. Such lovely texture and fluffiness, and a sure sign that spring will return, even if the skies are still gray. Did you know that the fluffy buds are called “catkins”? They reminded me of a sweet song we used to sing when I was little. I don’t know if my mother taught it to me, or if we learned it in kindergarten. It has a simple melody, one or two notes for each line, that gets higher and higher until the end, when you slide down on the meows and joyfully shout the last line. I never fail to hear it in my mind when I see a pussy willow.

I know a little pussy
Her coat is silver gray
She lives down in the meadow
Not very far away
She’ll always be a pussy
She’ll never be a cat
For she’s a pussy willow
Now what do you think about that?
Meow, meow, meow, meow,
meow, meow, meow, meow…
Scat!

Tomorrow’s the big day!

It’s almost time for the last ToteTuesday online auction to benefit the American Cancer Society! You can see everything that is going up for auction on Virginia Spiegel’s blog today. Bidding opens Tuesday, Feb. 23 at 11 a.m. CST, and closes at 2:00 p.m. You can find out the opening bids at 10:50 a.m. CST.

ToteTuesday 1, 2 and 3 raised $9,004; Virginia’s goal is to raise $13,000 total. She’s already raised $190,000 for ACS in the past few years through Fiberart for a Cause, an accomplishment that ranks her among the top individual fundraisers in the U.S.

My little Pink Rose quilt, made to honor my mother, a breast cancer survivor, is part of this auction.

NOTE: I’m pleased as punch that this little quilt sold, four minutes after the auction started, for $350, more than the “Go for the Gold” bid of $300. The bidding was started at $99. And even more pleased that it went to a fellow artist, and art collector, Tomme Fent. Virginia Spiegel has now raised more than $205,000 to ACS since 2005. And wow… all of that money came from donations of fiber art! 

Mutual admiration society

Jewelry designer Beth Hemmila of Hint Jewelry has a post up today on her blog about my work! I posted about her on January 10 after I discovered her marvelous jewelry, which she sells though Etsy and talks about on her blog. Beth makes the point in her post that the internet and social media sites are connecting artists and art admirers in wonderful ways we could not have imagined even a few years ago:

“Having Hint Jewelry Design out on the Internet invites serendipity into my life every day. Like a kid at a gigantic show and tell, I do something, post it on Flickr, Facebook, or Blogger, and if I'm lucky, magically someone sees a part of their heart in it. They reach out to connect, and I get to join in the fun of looking at art together.”

So true. That coming together is probably the best part of blogging for me. I love connecting with people all over the world to discuss art, quilts, and the ideas and emotions behind them. I am so happy to have you all as part of my community, even if I’ll never meet most of you face to face. 

I bought some of Beth’s lovely charms for my daughters’ Valentine’s Day gifts – they are lovely little creations, and my daughters loved them. Today I splurged and bought the little beauty above for myself.

ToteTuesday 4: the Big Finale!

February 23 is the last ToteTuesday fundraiser of Fiberart for a Cause's 2010 fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. Virginia Spiegel and contributors to this event have already raised more than $9,000. The goal is $12,000. My Pink Rose art quilt is part of next Tuesday’s finale.

I made this quilt to honor my mother, Eleanor Carter Brubaker, who is a breast cancer survivor. You can read more about my piece, and some of the amazing goodies up for auction on Virginia’s blog. There will be a lot more fiber-art totes and individual artworks in this auction; they will all be revealed next Monday, Feb. 22.

Virginia’s efforts in the past few years have raised more than $190,000 for the American Cancer Society. Amazing!

Please consider taking a look and bidding on something; it is a great cause!

In search of better photos

I am attempting to set up a primitive photo studio in my house. I need to be able to shoot projects in progress, and finished work. Until now, I have been shooting my finished pieces outside, and my how-to shots inside under regular lights. Sometimes the results were okay, sometimes not. My goal is to shoot consistently good quality photos.

I decided to use a section of my interior hall near my studio. It is dark (no windows, since all the rooms in the house branch off from it), so I can have better control over the kind of light I project onto my subjects. And I simply don't have space for the setup in my studio.

For advice on setting up to shoot my quilts, I took a close look at Holly Knott’s website. Holly is married to a photographer (Andy Baird), and together, they have dedicated a section of her website to helping aspiring quilt photographers learn how to take better photos of their quilts. It is called “Shoot that Quilt!” and it offers some terrific advice and links. 

I started by setting up a folding table against the wall. I built light stands using 2x4 pieces of lumber and metal shelf brackets screwed into the bottom to make four sturdy feet, following Holly’s instructions. I bought a cheap tripod for about $20. My biggest investment was the 30W "Trumpet Top" bulbs by Tabletop Studio ($30 for two). They got screwed into cheap clamp-on reflector lamps, and then were clamped onto the light stands. They are moving around a little bit, which worries me. So tomorrow, I'm going to add some nails to the light stands in a few spots, so the clamps won’t slide around.

For my finished pieces, I plan to move the stands into my studio and hang my work on my design wall. For the how-to shots, I made a little three-sided ”stage” using white foam core, so the light would bounce and be more diffused on the subjects.

Within minutes of placing the stage on the table, my cat Max decided that he was my first subject. He hopped right up and got himself ready for his first photoshoot. (If you are a regular reader of this blog, you may already know about my photogenic cat who loves to pose for the camera doing funny stuff. If not, you can see lots of shots of him here.) And a funny video of him here.

While he snoozed under the warm lights, I got some nice photos of him, probably the best lit and detailed I have ever taken:

On to quilts. Here are two photos of the same piece. The first is a shot taken more than a year ago. The quilt is the start of a second version of my Round Red Barn (with more detail; all the stones are cut out separately). It’s not bad. The second shot I took today. The colors are much more accurate, especially the red of the barn siding and the grays in the stone foundation. They look much yellower in the old shot. Notice how much the bottom green fabric is unevenly lit in the earlier shot? It is much darker on the right side than on the left.

I have a confession to make. I have always used the Auto setting on my digital camera. People often comment on what nice photos I take, and are amazed to find out how little I know about the technical side of photography.

I aim my lens, compose my shot by zooming in or out, and click the button. About the only feature I do know about is my macro button, since I use it a lot in my attempt to get closer, closer, closer to my subjects. But I don't know diddly-darn about depth of field or F-stops, shutter speed or ISO (except to know that I should know something about them if I want to control how my photos look). I almost never consult my camera manual.

There, I have confessed my sins. Now it is time to learn. Knowing something about composition, color, texture, line and shape helps me take nice shots. But I think learning the technical stuff will make my photos even stronger.

Hannah Teter’s Quilt

My husband, who works for  Street & Smith’s SportsBusiness Journal, just alerted me to a story where his world (sports) and mine (quilting) intersect!

Hannah Teter, U.S. snowboarder and 2006 gold medalist, is sleeping every night at the Olympic Village under a quilt created by Amp Energy Juice (part of PepsiCo) that features Teter and images from the village of Kirindon, Kenya. Teter, who helped design the quilt, started a charity dedicated to the village, and raises money through a maple syrup business (Hannah’s Gold Vermont maple syrup) to help the village with water filtration, a sanitation system, and housing.

USA Today’s website has a photo of the full quilt. From these photos, it looks more like a hand-painted comforter cover than a quilt; I can’t see any quilting!

Hannah plans to auction it after the Winter Games to raise more money for the village.

These photos are courtesy of Amp Energy Juice.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

It’s almost Valentine’s Day, so I thought it the perfect time to share a little pinkness with you. These are some of my favorite blocks from my very pink quilt, Pink Petal Party (the subject of my first book/pattern pack, released by C&T Publishing in October of last year). Consider it my little valentine to you!

I hope you have a wonderful weekend with the ones you love!

Red Coleus ready for SAQA Benefit Auction

I just finished my small piece, Red Coleus, for the Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA) Benefit Auction.

This year’s auction will begin on Monday, September 20 at 2 p.m. Eastern time. Each piece will start at $750, and go down in price each day, to $550, $350, $250, $150 and $75. Last year, 235 members donated quilts that raised $47,325 for SAQA.

Red Coleus is about 12" square, and is a quilted wholecloth painted piece. Here’s a detail shot:



Here’s a link to the page where my piece is displayed with the others that have been submitted so far: http://www.saqa.com/newsebulletins/Squares_10_1.aspx

Laura Wasilowski presses on

Last fall, I met Laura Wasilowski at International Quilt Market and Festival. (She’s shown above reading a copy of Lyric Kinard’s book, Art + Quilt.) Last week, she came to speak and teach at the Charlotte Quilters Guild. I have not laughed that hard in a long time! What a joy she is.

Laura sings (“a selection of tunes from the Chicago School of Fusing Bond Fire Songbook”) and makes jokes through her slideshow, and her sweet nature and sense of humor add so much to her presentation. And her work is equally uplifting. Many are visual puns, or tell stories that reveal the humor Laura finds in every-day events.

Laura’s coming to teach at North Carolina Quilt Symposium in Charlotte June 3-6, and it will be great seeing her again. (Just a reminder: You don’t have to live in North Carolina to attend this great event. There are lots of fabulous, internationally known instructors teaching at symposium, and out-of-towners and out-of-staters are more than welcome!)

Today, Laura posted on her blog about the little embroidery pieces I’ve been working on. When she was here, I bought some of her hand-dyed threads to use. I could have bought one in every colorway; they are luscious! You can see her post here: http://artfabrik.blogspot.com/

Make sure you click on the photo of beautiful threads and follow the link to the hand-dyed fabrics, threads, patterns and art quilts on her website: http://www.artfabrik.com/

Red Coleus in progress

Here’s my new piece, which I am calling Red Coleus, in progress. I still have to do some shading on the brighter pink area, but it is getting close. This is the piece I started this weekend while doing demonstrations of painting on fabric at Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden during the opening of Fiber Art Optons’ exhibition. (See previous posts for details.).

This piece is 12" square, and will be donated to Studio Art Quilt Associates for their annual auction to raise money for the group.

Win a pack of my orchid notecards!

My publisher, C&T Publishing, invited me to post about the Fiber Art Options exhibition, “Orchids: Sensuality Stitched,” on their blog. Leave a comment there, and your name will go in the drawing to win a pack of my orchid series notecards. Here’s the link to their blog: http://www.ctpubblog.com

Sunday at Daniel Stowe/Debbie Langsam

This is the main entrance to Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden. This photo was taken last Thursday, when they still had a bit of snow on the ground. By today, it had finally stopped snowing and raining, and the sun actually peaked out a bit. We’ve been having some very uncharacteristic weather for North Carolina this past week!

With the slightly better weather, we had more visitors at Fiber Art Options’ exhibition today. Nancy, Debbie and I were on hand to do demos and walk-throughs for “Orchids: Sensuality Stitched.” Here is Debbie explaining her process to two garden visitors:



Debbie (Deborah M. Langsam) creates her fiber art pieces using several different techniques, but is perhaps best known for her photo mosaics.



This is one of her pieces in the show using this technique. It is called Orchids Squared: Purple Passion.



Here is Debbie’s description of this piece:

From a distance, this photomosaic gives an insect’s eye-view of the “landing platform” and surrounding structures attracting pollinators to orchid flowers. The mosaic’s “tiles” are half-inch square orchid and orchid-related images collected and printed by the artist on fabric. (A key to the photos is on the back.)

Debbie collects copyright-free images (or gets permission from the photographers) and then uses computer software to build her mosaics. Images are carefully chosen to correspond with different values, from solid black (or very dark purple, in the piece above) to very light. All her photos for this piece are orchids!



Here is the same orchid done in black and white. It is called Orchids Squared: Black and White Symphony.



After creating her mosaics, Debbie prints them out in sections on fabric sheets she runs through her printer, then carefully stitches them together. Precision is important so that the tiny images line up perfectly. Then adds batting and backing fabric and quilts the piece along the edges of the tiny photos.

Debbie’s third large piece for the show is called Aerial Roots (below). Here is her description:

A silk background highlights the sensual beauty of these sinuous structures. But beauty is only part of the story; aerial roots attach epiphytic orchids to their substrates, maintain water balance, and produce sugars for the plants through photosynthesis.

Can you tell from Debbie’s descriptions that she is a scientist? Her academic specialty is mycology (the study of fungi) and she taught for many years in the biology department at the University of North Carolina – Charlotte.

These days, Debbie and her husband Joal run Barking Dog Chocolatiers. They take no salaries, and donate all profits to local charities, including SupportWorks, a nonprofit organization in Charlotte that helps people find and form support groups and research medical information. Having taste-tested their wares, I can highly recommend their chocolates. Try the Hearts-a-Poppin’ dark chocolates for Valentine’s Day – they have Pop Rocks inside!