My piece in C&T’s new Postcard Collection

I opened up the summer/fall 2010 C&T Publishing catalog today, and look what I found! This is my Purple Phalaenopsis on the cover of “The Art of Quilts Postcard Collection – Nature.” I had given my permission to use this piece in the collection, but I didn’t know they had selected it to adorn the outside of the box! What a thrill. 

This orchid piece is from the series I completed in late 2009 and early 2010; it was part of Fiber Art Options exhibition “Orchids: Sensuality Stitched.”

In this catalog, C&T officially launches its Stash Books, a new line of books to “celebrate handmade fabric arts and encourage the craft sewer to create beautiful authenticity in a time of mass production,” according to Publisher Amy Marson. I have already put several of these on my must have list – including the one on making lunch bags and wraps, and one with darling “feltie” characters to stitch.

Another postcard collection features animals. That’s David Taylor’s  Sir Francis on its box. The Animal series will be available in September, and the Nature series in December. 

North Carolina Quilt Symposium 2011

I hope you are all marking your calendars now for North Carolina Quilt Symposium 2011. It will be sponsored by Raleigh’s Capital Quilters Guild, and held at Peace College on June 2-5, 2011. It’s three days of classes, lectures, and fun, with everything from traditional piecing and appliqué, to beading, surface design and art quilting. I’m very excited that they’ve asked me to teach!

Here’s a list of the teachers they have lined up so far (a few more may be added):

Esterita Austin, art quilts: http://esteritaaustin.com/

Joyce Becker, landscapes: http://home.comcast.net/~jbecker300/

Karen Kay Buckley, appliqué: http://www.karenkaybuckley.com/index.php

Susan Cleveland, piecing: http://www.piecesbewithyou.com/

Sally Collins, piecing: http://www.sallycollins.org/gallery.html

Pepper Cory, piecing: http://www.peppercory.com/classes.html

Nancy Eha, beading: http://www.beadcreative.com/

Rayna Gillman, surface design: http://www.studio78.net/

Susan Brubaker Knapp: art quilts/appliqué: http://www.bluemoonriver.com

Mary Ellen Kranz, digital photography/computer aided design: http://www.quiltingimages.com/About_Us.html

Jan Krentz, piecing: http://www.jankrentz.com/index.php

Suzanne Marshall, appliqué: http://www.suzannequilts.com

Margaret Miller, piecing: http://www.millerquilts.com/home.html

Jan Myers-Newbury, surface design/dyeing: http://www.nancycrow.com/HTML/barnnewbury.html

Leslie Riley, fabric collage/mixed media: http://www.lesleyriley.com/

Sharon Schamber, machine quilting: http://www.sharonschamber.com/

Eileen Sullivan, piecing: http://www.thedesignersworkshop.com

Patsy Thompson, machine quilting: http://www.patsythompsondesigns.com/

Mary Lou Weidman, appliqué/piecing: http://www.marylouquiltdesigns.com/

And no, you don’t have to live in North Carolina to come to Symposium. If you live far away, you can fly in. Raleigh-Durham Airport is just a hop, skip, jump (or taxi ride) away from Peace College. Registration packets will be available in print and online in early January 2011. To receive a printed registration packet then, send  your mailing address and a check for $4 (payable to CQG Symposium  2011) to:

NCQS11

200 Transylvania Avenue
Raleigh, NC 27609

I hope to see you there!

Learn about Lyme

This is Nani Lauriano Luculescu, a.k.a. The Victorious Vixen (don’t you love that!). She’s a crafter I met online who is on a crusade to educate people about Lyme Disease, and to help fund a cure. Her dad has Lyme Disease, so this is personal. 

It’s personal for me, too, because my 12-year-old niece, Grace, has Lyme Disease. She was diagnosed last fall. She had a rash, but it wasn’t the typical Lyme bulls-eye rash, and her nurse practitioner brushed off my brother and sister-in-law’s request for a test and poo-pooed their legitimate questions. She said we didn’t have Lyme in North Carolina. She was wrong.

A few months later Grace was in the hospital for more than four days with infected knees. The doctors there thought she had a staph infection, because her white blood cell count was off the charts. They did emergency surgery to drain the fluid. But after four days, the cultures grew still grew nothing, and my brother and sister-in-law demanded a Lyme test. Grace’s doctor still said it was unnecessary. The test came back positive for stage 3 Lyme, with 8 positive bands. Grace’s case caused Wake County, N.C., to declare epidemic levels for Lyme. This should make Raleigh area doctors more aware of the situation, and more likely to test for Lyme if there is any suspicion of it at all.

If the nurse had tested her, or put her on antibiotics when they first went in about the rash and requested a Lyme test, it might have made a big difference. It took months for her to recover from the symptoms and the knee infection, but Grace is doing well right now. But Lyme is a serious disease that can affect people for a lifetime. And most people know so little about how to protect themselves.

That’s why a group called Lymenaide has produced these public service announcements:

Volunteers like Nani have been sending Lymenaide press kits to TV stations across North America, so I hope you’ll be seeing this PSA soon on your local stations.

To draw attention to this campaign, Nani is giving away one of her fabulous handmade wallets. This is the last in her Red, Black & White Optical Delusion wallet series:

 

Isn’t it fabulous? On Nani’s blog, you can see other PSAs, learn more about Lyme Disease, and leave a comment for a chance to win. You need to do it by 11:59 p.m. on Friday, June 18. Just follow the instructions in Nani’s post. 

Please … do it for Grace. 

Hibiscus stitched

Hibiscus is stitched! This is the last of three samples completed for my Wholecloth Painting workshop. Whew! I painted and stitched all three of these small quilts (about 8" x 12" each) in the past five days.

Another one quilted

I am on a roll … Here is “Painted Sunflower” quilted and done! One more to go and I’ll have all three little samples for my Wholecloth Painting class finished.

Croton stitched

Here is the Croton piece quilted. I decided against thread sketching, since there is already so much detail in this piece from the paint. I like the lines added by the thread. I only used three colors: black (on the top leaf), dark green (on the bottom leaf) and orange (on the vein of the bottom leaf).

Painted Croton

I just finished painting the third piece I made this week for my Wholecloth Painting workshop. All of the samples are shown above. (None have been stitched yet!)

This latest piece features leaves of what I think is a tropical houseplant called Croton. Weird name. It has thick, leathery leaves with the most fantastic color patterns. I believe I took the photo on which this piece is based in the walkway that connects the Houston Hilton to the convention center. They always have large, lush potted plant arrangements. 

Here is the photo:

I’ve been rather obsessed with leaves in the past few years. I think it is the patterns, lines and colors on the leaves, and the way that they become almost abstract when shot up close. I’d really like to do a series of larger pieces all based on my closeup photos of leaves. Soon!

Another painted sample

This is the second piece I’ve painted this week as a sample for my Wholecloth Painting class. It is based on this photo:

I used the same photo as inspiration for this piece, which I made to demonstrate techniques in my Quilting Arts DVD, “Master Machine Quilting: Free-Motion Stitching and Thread Sketching.” It is made of fused fabric and thread sketched, then quilted:

I have one more sample for my workshop I need to paint, and then I can start stitching!

Treasure at the antique store

I have a great antiques store right around the corner from me in historic downtown Mooresville, and today, I had a few minutes to spare and popped in. And look at what I found! These were marked as “antique wallpaper stamps” but I think they were used for printing or batiking fabric. They look African to me, or maybe Asian. 

They each weigh about 3/4 lb., and are about 6" x 3" and made of wood that is stained almost black (it comes off on your fingers when you rub it). They have an interesting smell that I think might be wax. I paid $18 for each. 

Anyone out there know where they came from, and if I am right or not? And did I get a bargain, or ripped off?

I am eager to test these out, but it will have to wait a bit. 

NOTE: After I posted this, I e-mailed the photos to my friend Janet Lasher; I just knew that she’d have more information. She said I got a bargain! Here is more information from her:

“They are MOST likely Indian – from India…  given that the have black stain (I have some similar ones) they were likely used to do block (relief) printing with print ink (very thin watery ink) on to wall paper or textiles.  This is usually done OVER other colored/patterned work.

These would not have been used for Batik – since wood is a horrible conductor of heat – they would not hold the wax hot enough for printing – however, you could use them for some other resist application.

The ink is likely to come off when you get them wet… (but has also likely penetrated the wood – don’t expect the ink to STOP oozing out of the wood….  Maybe ever!  So beware if you are planning some tightly designed printing with light colors on to white as you may get some halo-ing effects that will not be controllable (although the “stain” as you say looks WAY minimal compared to other stamps I have seen).

These usually come in pairs – although the pairs are rarely found together in the “west”.

As I say, I have some – they are fun to use – but they are heavy – and sometimes hard to handle – because of the shape of the handle – you may drop them on the print table – or the piece as you are printing.  So you can print with textile paint/thickened dye etc – be careful that the details don’t get gunked up when you are printing unless you can live with that much “hand printing” distress/inaccurate outcomes.

The stamps look great… even if you only mount them on your studio wall the are great objects that have a clear historical and cultural reference to the work that we try to accomplish with fiber.”

I tried wetting the stamps, and sure enough, the black comes off. Thanks, Janet!

Another friend sent me a link to this video, which shows a very skilled man demonstrating block printing in the Anohki Museum in Amber, India using blocks very similar to those I purchased. Check out how he creates mitered corners! 

The painted hibiscus

Today I worked on a new piece for a workshop I am developing on wholecloth painting.  In September, I’ll be teaching it for the first time to the Cotton Patch Quilters of Athens, Georgia. I have a few other photos that might be good for this workshop, and hope to get to them later this week.

The painted piece above is based on this photo I took of a hibiscus:

It is 7" x 10-1/4"… very small. It is hard to get a lot of detail when painting on fabric when you work this small. But I needed something that my students could complete in a six-hour workshop. 

I can’t wait to start stitching this piece.

North Carolina Quilt Symposium 2010

North Carolina Quilt Symposium 2010 in Charlotte was fabulous! Here are some highlights of symposium, and I'll start with last night’s “Iron Quilter” event. Celebrity quilters Laura Wasilowski, David Taylor and Elin Waterston were the judges of this event, which was roughly based on “Iron Chef” reality TV show, only with fabric substituted for food, and quilting substituted for cooking.

We all got chef’s hats when we arrived in the auditorium. 

My good friend Grace Howes looked very fetching in hers. Grace was one of the co-chairs for the event, and in charge of procuring all the fabulous teachers. What a huge job, and she performed it with her usual charm, positive attitude and good humor.

 

The competition pitted Karen Stone, a.k.a. Chef Daisy Blade, against Robbi Joy Eklow, a.k.a. Chef Goddess of the Last Minute.

A video presentation, which played on a screen above the set, set the scene and introduced the teams.

Robbi Joy holds up a humungous pair of women’s underpants (each of the judges was given a pair) while her sous chef, Leah Day, looks on. Leah is a very talented quilter from Shelby, North Carolina, and she won four ribbons at the Symposium Quilt Show, including Best of Show and Best Machine Quilting.

The underpants were an inside joke from the opening ceremonies. One of the teachers shared with us that her 3-year-old granddaughter had gone into the bathroom with her at a store and made a comment about how HUGE her underwear were. So underwear got to be the unofficial theme of the event. The ones Robbi Joy is holding in the photo above got snipped and made into a faux tossed salad during the competition.

Elin made the undies into a fashionable vest, and modeled it for the audience.

Robbi Joy and her assistant got right to business preparing an entree, appetizer and dessert from two “secret ingredient” fabrics and other fabrics and embellishments brought from home. Robbie turned some fish fabrics into sushi, pan-fried trout, and fish ice cream (this last one was not so popular with the judges).

Karen Stone and Leah pose as the show starts. Karen managed to piece and stitch several beautiful blocks in her signature style.

Robbi Joy’s team presents their finished dishes to the judges. This is the last photo I took at this event, because I was ducking for cover when the whipped cream pies started flying. Almost no one involved got out of there without whipped cream down her shirt front or in her hair. I was sitting in the front row, and managed to escape the flying debris.

Johnson and Wales University is a fairly new facility in the heart of uptown Charlotte. The dorms were clean and functional, and everything was within easy walking distance.

The classrooms were large, well lit, and well air conditioned (which was good, because man, was it hot this weekend!). This is the class I took, and you can see that we brought a lot of stuff with us and quickly made ourselves right at home. 

Students of Laura Wasilowski’s Chicago School of Fusing had pressing matters to attend to…

and could purchase Laura’s hand-dyed fabrics, threads and patterns.

The hall outside Velda Newman’s classroom was littered with trout bodies and flower petals painted in her “Quick and Easy Painting Techniques” class.

Elin Waterston strikes a pose before her class got started. Can you tell that Elin’s been dancing and acting since she was a wee lass? I had the pleasure of being Elin’s “teacher buddy” for the weekend and enjoyed getting to know her better. We are both natives of Pittsburgh, Pa., but went to different high schools and didn’t know each other then. Later we found out that we have friends in common, including a guy who was Rolf to my Liesel in our high school production of The Sound of Music (how’s that for six degrees of separation?).

 I showed Elin’s photo to Terry White, and she decided to one-up Elin by getting cozy with her quilts. What a sweetheart Terry is. I have admired her amazing thread painting for years.

Of course, Pat Sloan had to take a break and talk to her thousands of Facebook friends!

 Paula Scaffidi talks with her students about needle felting. 

 Cynthia Corbin critiques DebbyHarwell’s fabric choices in the class I took called “Structure and Variation.” We started with what Cynthia calls a “black fabric sketch,” which is a black rectangle cut into simple pieces (you can see Debbie’s at the top left), then played with different values of fabric, and experimented with arrangements and design variations. Cynthia was a wonderful teacher, and very patient. 


I took this class because I thought it would be a challenge for me to work in a different style and technique than I usually do. It was. I’ll share more on this in a later post. 

These are the funky creation of my fellow student, Lise. Aren’t they fun? 

Symposium was a wonderful way to spend time with my quilting friends, make new ones and learn new things. And guess what? Next year, I get to do it again, only then, I’ll be teaching! I’ve been asked by North Carolina Quilt Symposium 2011, which will be hosted by the Capital Quilters Guild in Raleigh. I don’t know yet what I’ll be teaching, but I’ll have more details soon.

Stitchin’ Heaven offering PPP as BOM program

Stitchin’ Heaven, one of the best quilt shops in Texas, is offering my Pink Petal Party quilt as a block-of-the-month program. Stitchin’ Heaven has one of the biggest block-of-the-month programs in the United States, and I’m tickled that they chose my design to offer.

It is set up as a 12-month program starting in October 2010. There’s a $25 start fee, and then you pay $24.95 plus shipping and handling each month.

You can see all the details on their website, www.stitchinheaven.com.

June/July Quilting Arts hitting mailboxes now!

The June/July 2010 issue of Quilting Arts magazine is hitting mailboxes now! This issue contains the most recent installment in my series on thread sketching, with my portrait of our world famous cat, Max.

If you don't subscribe, look for it at your local newsstand or bookstores. Or order at the Interweave online store. The price is $7.99.

Max gets more press

 Maximum Cat Nap (22" x 18.5")

If you have pets, you know how much hair they produce, and how it gets everywhere. So when I was considering subjects for an article on adding texture to your work with thread for the June/July issue of Quilting Arts, my furry friends came immediately to mind. Our cat Max, whom we often call Maximum Pusscat because he has a BIG personality, decided that he should be the star of the show. He even jumped up into the little stage I’d built to take photos of my smaller pieces, and allowed me to photograph him:

Here’s a closeup of his portrait. I painted him with acrylic paint on white fabric, and then heavily thread sketched on top. 

The piece below, “Wool Yarn,” is also featured in Quilting Arts, and a free pattern (a line drawing and simple directions) is available on the Quilting Arts website in the Online Extras section. This piece was created with colored fabric on a black background. I added some shading with Caran D’Ache water-soluable crayons, and then created lots of texture with thread.

Wool Yarn (12" x 12")

Two things

I have two things to share with you today. The first is this funny pincushion I made from a felted ball and a teacup. I think the teacup was a give-away from Baileys Irish Cream liqueur, and I found it in an antique store. I love how the ball makes her look like she has a giant brain, and how it reminds me of the disembodied doll head with erector set legs in the movie Toy Story. That thing really freaked me out, and I think it is fascinating how something so creepy looking turned out to be so gentle and shy. Kind of like Edward Scissorhands. A good lesson that you can’t judge a book by its cover. 

Anyway, I digress…

The second thing I wanted to tell you about is my discovery that Goo Gone is fabulous for removing sticky fusible adhesive (like Steam-a-Seam or Heat-n-Bond or Wonder Under) from your scissors. I’ve been working on a bunch of projects that use fusible adhesive, and it had really built up on my scissors. A little Goo Gone on a paper towel took it off very quickly.

If you don’t know about Goo Gone, you should. It’s the only thing I’ve found that takes off sticky price tags, and other yucky stuff. Here’s how the company that makes it describes it:

“Goo Gone® is a quick and fast working solution to remove adhesive, chewing gum, grease, tar, stickers, tree sap, labels, tape residue, oil, blood, lipstick, mascara, shoe polish, crayon, wax and even bumper stickers! It leaves no residue behind and contains no harsh odors. Safe to use on carpets, upholstery, clothing, wood, vinyl, plastic, glass, stone, laminate, ceramic, painted surfaces and even cement.”

If you are wondering what the green tape is doing on my scissors, it is there to remind me that these are my scissors for cutting paper, not fabric. My kids know what it means, too!

Candy Corn selected for 2011 QA Calendar

My “Candy Corn” art quilt has been selected for the 2011 Quilting Arts Calendar! Hmmm... I wonder what month they will use it?

It is painted on white fabric (Pimatex by Robert Kaufman, my favorite fabric for painting because it is very fine and tightly woven). The photo below shows the heavy thread sketching I did on this piece before I quilted around the individual candy corn candies. 

This is the third year that my work has been selected for the calendar, and I am no less thrilled this time than the other two years. Yippee!!! Just wait until you see some of the other pieces Quilting Arts has selected. (If you are a member of the Quilting Arts community, you can see some of them in the photo gallery section.) They are really spectacular, and I am honored to be in their company.

Quilting “Nothing”

Look at what a beautiful job Judy Whitehead of Goneaway Quilting did quilting my Nothing Could Be Finer wall hanging! I really love it. 

This is the first time I had someone else quilt one of my quilts (you can read more about this in my previous post), but was I anxious? Not one iota. Judy is a friend and a fantastic longarm quilter. You can read more about how Judy worked on my quilt on her blog.

I particularly like the echo quilting around the morning glories, which really makes them sing! (And if they were singing, it would be “where the morning glories twine around each door, whispering pretty stories I long to hear once more... Oh, nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in the morning!”

The larger size of Nothing Could Be Finer (82 x 84") is the donation quilt for the 2010 North Carolina Quilt Symposium, to be held in Charlotte at Johnson & Wales University June 3-6. For more details, check out the 2010 Symposium Blog. There’s still time to make plans and join us!

This big quilt, beautifully quilted by Kay Giese, will be raffled off in early June, at the end of Symposium. The pattern, which will include directions for both sizes, will be available there, and all proceeds will go to the Charolotte Guild to cover Symposium expenses. 

A reader writes!

I’ve just wrapped up my fourth article in the series I’m writing for Quilting Arts magazine. It will appear in the August/September issue. One of the reasons I love writing for Quilting Arts is that I get to teach the things I love doing, and share my techniques with others. It’s even more fun when the readers write back!

I was pleased to get this photo and e-mail from a woman in Ontario, Canada, yesterday:

Hi Susan,
I enjoyed your articles in Quilting Arts on thread sketching. I had done some before, both with stabilizer and with batting, but was never really satisfied with either. Your method, with a double layer of firm stabilizer, was much easier. I used a variety of rayon threads to get the colours I wanted. I plan on donating Let’s Colour to the mini raffle at my guild's quilt show in 2011. The label includes a credit to you and QA.

I'm going to use this method for a piece I’ve been wanting to make from a photo I took of sumac. And maybe one of my favourite tree, or flowers in the garden, or my cats ....

Looking forward to the next installment in QA.

Cathy Willoughby
Brampton ON

I love Cathy’s version, and I’m so glad my technique helped her achieve what she wanted. It’s funny… when I took one of those tests in junior high where they identify careers or fields in which you’d excel, teaching was one of them. I brushed it off, because I didn’t think I’d like it, be good at it, or have enough patience for it. And I’m still pretty sure I wouldn’t be much good at teaching groups of children. 

But I don’t think I realized then that there are many ways to teach.