Asheville Quilt Show 2010

Here are a few of the wonderful quilts at the Asheville Quilt Show, “Stars Over the Mountains,” held this weekend at the North Carolina Arboretum in Asheville, NC:

Quilt (untitled, detail) by Margory Eberle of Weaverville, NC. Quilted by Joyce Fong.

Hummingbirds 2 by Penelope Wortman of Candler, NC, with Ellen Perkins.

Neighbor Ladies by Margaret Hunt of Clarks Hill, SC.

Go With the Flow: Water, Wind and Music by Patty Ashworth of Oak Ridge, TN.

Round Midnight by Caroline Manheimer of Asheville, NC. Quilted by Rachel Reese.

View of the mountains from the North Carolina Arboretum. 

Summer Beauties by Judy Heyward of Mt. Pleasant, SC. This quilt won a ribbon for Outstanding Machine Workmanship.

Vintage Button Bouquet by Linda Roy of Knoxville, TN, won a ribbon for Outstanding Hand Workmanship.

 

Ring Around the Posey by Elizabeth Miller of Charlotte, NC.

Under the Watchful Eye of Queen Charlotte II by Deborah Langsam of Charlotte, NC.

Arabian Mystery by Judy Heyward of Mt. Pleasant, SC.

Birder’s Fantasy by Mary Field of Asheville, NC.

Seasons III by Beverly Hertler of Red Bank, NJ.

Mini Madness (miniature quilt) by Kristin Kipper of Greer, SC.

Celebrating 75 Years of the Blue Ridge Parkway by members of the Asheville Quilt Guild: Julie Bagamary, Georgia Bonesteel, Ann Bordeau, Robin Brooks, Connie Brown, Laura Casey, Donna Faber, Norene Goard, Amy Harry, Yolanda Hall, Judy Heyward, Ira Inman, Maureen Kampen, Lynda Kepler, Ellen Levine, Janice Maddox, Nancy Matthewson, Linda Nichols, Diana Ramsay, Sharon Smaldone and Rita Williams. Quilted by Norene Goard.

Quilting the Garden by Renate Jaeger of Jonesborough, TN. (The design is from the book of the same name by Alma Allen and Barb Adams.) 

Capriccio by Norene Goard of Hendersonville, NC.

I was charmed to see this kind gentleman patiently escorting a woman in a wheelchair (perhaps his wife?) who was dressed entirely in pink. I snapped this photo of them in front of my quilt, Pink Petal Party.

Friendly Gathering by Gail Sexton of Sunset, SC.

Flip-Flop Paper Piecing by Mary Kay Mouton of Milledgeville, GA. This tiny miniature quilt won Best of Show. Mouton is the author of a book (also called Flip-Flop Paper Piecing) about this technique.

Faces from the Past by Judy Simmons of Fletcher, NC.

Melinda Schwakhofer

My friend Melinda Schwakhofer has created this beautiful piece to raffle for a special cause: The Sheldon Centre. According to Melinda, it provides “a restful environment, gentle hospitality and therapeutic resources to people in ministry from all denominations, who come to Sheldon for help and support in times of stress, crisis, burnout or breakdown.” Through The Society of Mary and Martha, The Sheldon Centre is raising money to rebuild their most out-of-date accommodation, the Long Barn.

Melinda made the gorgeous accordion book (shown above) from silk and handmade paper. Here is her description:

I call this little book a prayer book. It is quite small and the pictures and words invite contemplation.  It  measures 3 1/2" x 5 1/2" when closed and extends to 18". My prayer book is made from images of Lacock Abbey, Wilstshire, UK and a Chartres-style labyrinth at Meyers Park Baptist Church, Charlotte, NC.

I printed them onto silk dupioni, fused them to buckram and stitched around the arcs and shadows with gold metallic thread. The other side of the book is designed with a detail from Chartres labyrinth and a quote from Thomas Merton. I printed these onto handmade paper which has been washed with gold paint.

“The darkness becomes an atmosphere of breathless clarity
in which we find peace
and the deep night becomes the brightness of the noonday sun
in which we find the one our heart desires”.
– Thomas Merton

To make a donation (and enter the raffle), click here. Donations can be made from any country and in any denomination. On Sunday, September 19, Melinda will draw a winner at random from all of the people who have made a donation. “This prayer book may help you to find your way in a dark time,” says Melinda. “Your donation will certainly help to provide a place for others to find their way.”

To learn more about Melinda, please check out her website and her blog. Melinda is an American living in Moretonhampstead, Britain, and her blog is a place I visit often. It is a marvelous little slice of England, filled with her spectacular photos, beautiful and insightful writing, mouth-watering recipes, and of course, her art.

Goodbye, Max

Our beloved cat Max was hit and killed by a car on Monday, while we were away visiting my parents. Since then, I’ve been breaking down into sobs every few hours. Max was an amazing creature, a very special cat, and his death came far too soon.

If you’ve followed my blog for a while, you already knew Max. He was always doing funny and silly things, begging to be photographed; you can see some of these photos in this post, and a video of him taking pins out of my pincushion here. Most recently, I featured him in this piece I made for Quilting Arts magazine.

My husband, Rob, is a gifted, eloquent writer, and yesterday, he penned this tribute to Max for our local paper, The Mooresville Tribune: 

He barreled into our lives eight years ago as an impossibly blue-eyed kitten, brought to our front door by a solemn-faced neighbor girl whose pitch was more a threat than an offer. “If you don’t want him,” she said mournfully, “I'm going to have to take him to the shelter.”

And so we wanted him. Our oldest daughter was going into kindergarten, and we decided she was ready for a pet. She named him Max.

His fur was a mix of black, gray and white — stripes and solids — that gave his face a distinctive, serious look, but he had touches of golden brown that added warmth. He grew into a strikingly handsome cat, and we called him our Beautiful Boy.

Max never doubted it, either. His confidence in himself seemed unshakable. He did not hide beneath furniture, run from strangers or shy away from direct eye contact. He never walked into a room that he didn’t immediately own. We liked to joke that “Max” was short for “maximum” because he had the maximum amount of personality that you could cram into a cat.

When Max lay on our daughter’s bed at night, his purrs reverberated through the back of the house. But he could be a different beast with the rest of us. He was aggressive, running around at full speed, stopping only when he would sprint up to one of us and sink his teeth into an ankle. He would hiss and dart for the door when we went outside.

We decided that Max was an outside cat, and told our daughter that forcing him to live indoors was probably responsible for his surliness. We warned that an outside life carried with it some dangers — hungry predators, speeding cars, malicious humans. She decided that if outside was where Max would be most happy, outside was where he needed to be.

Max quickly went from stressed out to blissed out. He still spent time inside, sometimes snoozing beneath the lamp in my wife's quilting studio while she worked, and occasionally emptying her pincushion (you can watch him in action at YouTube; search for “Max” and “pincushion”). She eventually made him the subject of a small art quilt that appeared in Quilting Arts magazine in June.

More often, he ruled the yard. He provided the audience for football and soccer games. He crouched beneath the little dogwood tree, preparing to sprint after squirrels he probably knew in his heart he couldn’t catch. He oversaw yard work.

Soon he discovered life beyond our yard, sauntering across the street to spend time with our neighbors. I sometimes called him the Mayor, but I’m sure he thought of himself more as a king and of us as his subjects.

We grew accustomed to his being out and about, so much so that when we left town near the end of July for a few days, we did so without even a goodbye. We were far away when he was struck and killed near our house Aug. 2.

We weren’t there for him, but Max’s loyal “subjects” were. One of our good neighbors collected the body and brought it to our house. Another called and gave us the heartbreaking news, and then with two more put the body in a cooler, to give us time to get home so that we could give Max the burial that a cat of his stature deserved.

The next day, when my wife gently lifted him off the ice, and carefully took him out of the plastic bag, we saw that the fatal blow had left few marks. Even in death, he was our Beautiful Boy.

We dug a hole, and with our two girls we buried him in his beloved yard.

No one saw who or what hit Max, though it’s a reasonable bet that the driver was going too fast, not paying attention, or maybe both. But it’s hard for me to reduce eight years with Max to a safe-driving public service announcement.

Max reminded me that people and cats have got to do what they’ve got to do. We knew the risks involved in letting him out the door, but we knew that's where he had to be. He knew it too, and he made sure we figured it out and followed through.

The outdoors cut short Max’s time with us, but that’s where I will choose to remember him: lying contentedly beneath the little dogwood tree, happy with his kingdom, living his life the only way he could.

– Rob Knapp

 Goodbye, Max. Love you, boy.

Blueberry Jam

The pattern for my Blueberry Jam quilt is included in the Fall 2010 issue of Fons & Porter’s Easy Quilts magazine, which will be on newsstands in early August. 

All the fabrics are Bernartex batiks (and if you want a fabric kit with the same fabrics I used, you can order one now on the Fons & Porter website here). I designed the quilt with big circles and leaves, so it’s easy to appliqué smooth curves and sharp points. Or you can make it using a fusible appliqué technique.

I quilted my quilt with big swirls on the blueberries, curvy veins on the leaves, and an overall leaf pattern in the background. 

These blues and greens are my favorite colors! This quilt was inspired by a trip to a blueberry farm near my parents’ home in Tennessee. Blueberry Jam is 43-1/4" x 52", but wouldn’t it look smashing in a bed sized quilt? 

Quilting research shows growth in number of quilters and money spent

Quilts, Inc. (the company that does Quilt Festivals in Houston, Long Beach, and – next year – Cincinnati, as well as two Quilt Markets annually) and Quilters Newsletter magazine has just released data about the quilting industry from its Quilting In America 2010 research study. The extensive, detailed report will be available sometime in August. 

What did the research find?

• 14 percent of U.S. households (16.38 million households) have at least one quilter. That’s about 21 million total quilters in the U.S.! 
• Each quilting household spent an average of $219 in 2010. That’s 27 percent more than in 2006.
• The estimated total dollar value of the quilting industry is $3.58 billion. 
• The “dedicated quilters” group (those who spend more than $600 per year on quilting-related items) reported spending $2.5 billion on their hobby in 2010. 

For more information, you can download this PDF that recaps the research’s basic findings.

The research was conducted by TNS Global, Inc., and DP Research Solutions.

Wooden Spools

This is one of the two pieces I made for the current (August/September issue) of Quilting Arts magazine.  My article is on adding dimension using thread. I started out with a background of pale pink, then fused the spools down, and thread sketched the spools and the shadows, using a crosshatching technique (stitching in several directions to build up the darkness/value of the shadows):

The thread on the spools was constructed with fused pieces of fabric in the same color, but different values before I stitched real thread on top:

Once I was done, I realized that I needed to establish a horizon line, because it looked like the spools were floating in space, so I painted the upper part of the background a darker pink, using acrylic paint.

If you like this piece and would like to stitch one of your own, you can get my line drawing pattern on the Quilting Arts website. Just join the Quilting Arts community (for free) and go to “Free Stuff” and then the “Online Extras” section. There you will find several of my free patterns for pieces I’ve done for my thread sketching articles. 

And of course, pick up a copy of the August/September issue of Quilting Arts magazine for lots more information on adding dimension to your work with thread sketching. It should be on newsstands soon, and on its way to subscribers’ mailboxes now. Or you can purchase it on the Quilting Arts/Interweave website.

I Didn’t Know… Did you?

I made this piece, I Didn’t Know Roses Had Hips, for the August/September issue of Quilting Arts magazine. My article focuses on creating dimension with thread. Here’s a closeup shot where you can see the colors of thread I used on the rose hips and the brown leaves, as well as the cross-hatching (lines in several directions) I did to shade and make the rose hips look more round:

This is the photo on which this piece is based:

I took this photo on a family trip to Maine two summers ago. The name of the piece comes from my 10-year-old daughter, who asked what “those things” were when I showed her the quilt. I told her they were rose hips, formed as the fruit after the rose flowered, and the title was her response. It was too cute not to use!


This issue of Quilting Arts is available for pre-order on the Interweave website.

August/September Quilting Arts

The newest issue of Quilting Arts magazine is about to hit subscriber’s mailboxes and newsstands. It contains the latest installment in my series of articles on thread sketching, focusing on adding dimension with stitch. 

Isn’t the cover luscious? This is the work of Ana Buzzalino, an artist from Calgary, Canada, and I love, love, love it! Those cool aquas and pale teals are the perfect cooling breeze for hot August. Can’t wait to see the cover up close when I get my issue.

If you don’t subscribe, you can order this issue; it is available for pre-sale on the Interweave website now.

2011 Quilting Arts Calendar has arrived

It’s here! The 2011 Quilting Arts Calendar is available now at the online Interweave store. I don’t have my copy yet, but I’m betting that my piece, Candy Corn, is featured in the month of October!  :-)

Framing fiber art

 A nice way to finish a small piece is to frame it. This makes the piece less likely to get soiled by dirt or dust, and makes it more appealing to people uncomfortable with how to hang fiber art. It also makes small pieces more finished and formal looking. I did this with House Rules 2 (above) last fall, but forgot to blog about it. House Rules 2 is 16.5" square. Today, Debbie wrote to ask me how I hung my smaller art quilts, so I figured this was a good time. 

Textile pieces should never be framed directly under glass, because any moisture that collects inside the frame can be pressed into the fabric, causing water marks or mildew. Either choose a shadow box, or add spacers between the glass and the mat. You can take your fiber art to a good quality framing shop and they can do this for you. Or you can do it my way, with a $20 frame from Ikea and a little elbow grease. If you choose this method, make sure you sign the back of your work so that it will still bear your name even if it is taken from the frame later.

Look for acid free mats (see Willa’s notes in the comment section after this post). I found a $20 shadowbox frame at Ikea (above). Measure your quilt, and then open the frame and measure your mat. Subtract the size of your quilt from the size of the mat. (Example: Your quilt is 17" square, and the mat is 20 inches square, so 20-17=3. Divide this number by 2 (Example 3÷2=1½.) Add 1/8" to this measurement (Example 1½ + 1/8 = 1-5/8".)

On the back of the mat, draw a pencil line that is this far in from the outer edge, around all the sides (above). My piece was square, so I drew in the same distance on all sides. 

Place the mat on an old, clean towel. Use a heavy needle or nail to punch holes along this line every ½" or so (above). You don't want the holes to be too big, but they need to be big enough that you can pass through them with the needle and thread you’ll be using in the next step.

Thread a smaller needle with heavy thread, such as hand quilting thread. Place the quilt on the top of the mat and align it with the holes. Take a stitch on the back of the quilt so that your knot is on the back, and bring the needle out at the corner. Go down through the corner hole (above) and come up through the next hole (below).

 Take a small stitch through the back of the quilt (below). Try to get all the layers except the front (because you don’t want your stitches to show on the front). 

 Go back down through the same hole (see below), and then on to the next one.

Continue in this manner, pulling the thread taut every few stitches, until you have gone all the way around. If your thread runs out, make a large knot on the back of the mat. Secure your stitches with tape on the back (below). Acid-free artist’s tape offers the best protection for your piece (see Willa’s comment below this post).

Remember to sign your name and date on the mat with a Micron Pigma pen (below). Most artists sign in the lower right corner.

 Clean the glass, insert the mat with the quilt stitched to it, and finish framing according to the frame’s directions. Voila! Now you can hang your fiber art the same way you’d hang any other piece of art in your home. 

NOTE: These directions are now available in a PDF format you can download, print out and save. To download, go to the “Free Stuff” icon in my blog sidebar, or simply click here.