Quilt Art 2012 Engagement Calendar

Last spring, after my quilt Pink Petal Party was displayed at the AQS Quilt Show in Paducah, I was contacted by Klaudeen Hansen, who edits the Quilt Art Engagement Calendar. She wanted to know if I’d give permission to include my quilt in the 2012 edition, and of course I said yes. A few days ago, the calendar arrived in my mailbox. 

I’ve purchased this calendar in the past, and it is very nice. Each spread features a beautiful quilt — and all types, including pieced, appliqued, contemporary, traditional, and art quilts— on one page, with the other page to write your appointments and important dates. Here is my spread: 

There are 54 quilts featured this year; I think Klaudeen gave me Valentine’s Day week because my quilt is so pink and sweet! 

The 2012 Quilt Art Engagement Calendar costs $13.95 ($11.16 for AQS members), and is available from the American Quilter’s Society’s website. 

Fall Farm Stand, Part I

I have started to paint the big gray pumpkin in the commission piece I am working on. It is coming along nicely. I am thinking about calling it Fall Farm Stand. Here is that section of the photo, so you can see what I am trying to achieve:

I will probably do a little more blending, and adjust some of the highlights and shadows, before I am finished painting. After that, I will do the rest when I thread sketch. I am planning to do each pumpkin separately, then applique them to the background. This is partly because I want to add some extra batting behind some of the pumpkins to make them come forward. And I want to add bumps to some of the pumpkins with pieces of melted Tyvek. This material is stiff, and I can’t bend a big quilt too much to get it under my home sewing machine to thread sketch. The finished piece will be about 24 x 36".

In case you were wondering, here is my workspace – my kitchen counter island (or peninsula, more properly). That's my microwave at the back, and my oven to the right.

I am showing this because I’ve discovered that a lot of people think I have a big fancy studio, with space for “wet work” like painting and dyeing. 

Nope. 

I do have a studio, which holds my fabric and sewing machine and a cutting table. It is my former guest room, and it is about 14 x 14 feet. And I feel very fortunate to have that space, but it is not big enough to handle a painting surface. So when I paint, it is most often on my kitchen counter, in the middle of the hub-bub of family life and meal preparations. My old laminate countertops in pale yellow (probably installed in the 1970s) hold up very well to acrylic paint, and can be cleaned with SoftScrub. 

I really hate my countertops, but since I can’t afford to replace them right now, and since the laminate works great for my process, they are probably here to stay for a while.

101 Patchwork Projects + Quilts

I have two projects in a new publication by the publishers of Quilting Arts magazine: 101 Patchwork Projects + Quilts. The 196 page magazine ($19.99) will be available in mid-April, and is available for preorder now on the Interweave website.  

The issue features “patchwork projects of every kind, including home décor, accessories, and wearables… from full-sized bed quilts to patchwork scarves, slippers, bulletin boards, and key chains.” I’m intrigued by the table of contents; it looks like there are lots of cool projects, including many that would be fun to make as gifts. 

Bumwad and Poster Brain

Trouble cat says, “Take me with you!”

If you’ve been checking in on my blog every few days, you may have noticed that it’s been mighty quiet around here lately. That’s mostly because I’ve been on the road a lot this month. In the past two weeks, I’ve taught four days and given two lectures, and traveled to nearby Concord, NC, to the Cabarrus Quilters Guild and to the Lake Quilters Guild of Smith Mountain Lake, near Roanoke, VA.

I love speaking and teaching, but I also need time in my studio to work and think and create. Today I got a little. I am starting to work on a commission piece, and this time, I am experimenting with tweaking my preparation process.

When basing a piece on one of my photos, I often start by tracing an 8x10" printout. I add things, take things out, or move things around while I trace. Then I scan in this traced drawing, enlarge it and print it out in “tiles” (or sections), and use this printout as my pattern. If the piece will be done using fused applique, it becomes the pattern for the fabric pieces. If the piece will be wholecloth painted, I place it under fabric and trace the lines.

This time, instead of using an 8x10" photo, I had my photo enlarged to a 2 x36" poster through PosterBrain. It cost me $19 plus shipping, arrived very quickly, and the quality was fantastic, just like a giant photographic print. Here it is, spread out on my cutting table:

A student at one of my workshops suggested a type of tracing paper I’d never heard of before called Bumwad. Sounds like toilet paper, right? ;-) It is actually a type of tracing paper used by architects, and it comes in big, wide rolls, up to 24" and 36" wide. Bumwad is available through ArtSuppliesOnline. I paid $16.23 (plus shipping) for a 24" x 50 yard roll. 

I placed a piece of Bumwad (fighting the giggles now, each time I write that) on top of the photo and taped it down.

Then I started tracing the main lines in the photo. (You can see the photo I printed out on my laser printer next to the pen.) My first impression is that the Bumwad is a tad heavier than traditional tracing paper, which has its pros and cons for my process. It does not tear as easily (pro), but it is also harder to see through (con). I could put it on top of a light box, but because the poster is on paper that is nice and heavy, I doubt that the light box would help me see any better. I do find that I am able to see better when I flip on the lower setting of my overhead desk light, rather than the brightest setting.

I am reserving judgment on whether I like these materials or the changes to my process, but I’ll let you know as I work more on this project. I am thinking about using some melted Tyvek pieces on the bumpiest of the pumpkins in this piece.

Second edition of inStitches features my friend Faith!

My friend Faith Cleary is featured in the second edition of Quilting Arts’ new e-magazine called in Stitches! That’s her in the photo with the dog (above), wearing those cute flower headbands.

Here is a preview:

InStitches_Vol2

You can find out more, and purchase the download by clicking here. 

Faith is also featured in the spring issue of Studios magazine, the one with Ty Pennington on the cover. She shares how to manage pet messes and decorate with your pet in mind.

Here are some more photos of Faith’s work for clients of her company, Dolce Amico. She takes photos of pets that are provided by her clients, like this: 

and makes them into fabulous thread-painted portraits like this (that can be stitched onto tote bags, purses, pet carriers, stockings, apparel and more):

Here’s another example of a client photo:

and Faith’s finished product:

Faith’s French Bulldog, Barkley, is featured on the front cover of a photo album:

Faith captured two labs named Daisy and Scooter in this piece, which was matted and framed:

I think Faith’s work is amazing. And she is such a warm and wonderful person.

Stay tuned! You’ll be seeing a lot more of Faith’s wonderful work in other Quilting Arts ventures this year!

The Space Between, Part 4

Hope is the Thing by Susan Brubaker Knapp 36" x 46.5"

It’s done! This is my latest piece, and it is called Hope is the Thing. I am submitting it for consideration in a juried invitational called “The Space Between,” which will be co-curated by Leslie Tucker Jenison and Jamie Fingal. 

The name comes from a line in an Emily Dickinson poem; you can read about it in my previous post. 

I am very pleased with it, now that it is done. After I had finished the quilting and had sewn on the binding, I decided that some of the feathers were not blue enough. It looked a bit washed out. So I went back in and added some more paint (I used Jacquard Lumiere and Stewart Gill acrylic paints) so that the blue was even more luminous and iridescent, the way it looked in the photo I took.

I also added darker blue on the second and fourth feathers to make it obvious that the third feather was on top of them. The third feather was a lighter blue color to start with, but I made it lighter and the others darker because this contrast portrays greater depth, and defines the layers.

Aurifil’s free project for March

Eclipse by Sarah Vedeler

Aurifil’s Designer of the Month is my friend, Sarah Vedeler. Sarah designs fabulous machine embroidery designs, and recently won first place in that category at International Quilt Festival in Houston with this beauty:

One of the things I like best about quilting is being part of a community that encompasses such a wide range of techniques and interests. There is a place for everyone, whether you like handwork or computerized designs. Sarah’s experience as a software engineer led her to digitize her own quilting designs and use the embroidery machine to do the quilting. 

If you click over to Aurifil news page and read the interview with Sarah, you can also download the free project she designed for this month, Eclipse (shown at the top of this post).

You can learn more about Sarah and her work here:

Website: http://sarahvedelerdesigns.com/
FaceBook:  http://www.facebook.com/SarahVedelerDesigns

Pat Sloan’s interview with Sarah (scroll down to the podcast): http://toginet.com/podcasts/creativetalkradio/?s=creativetalkradio

Aurifil will pick one random winner each month who has made one of the designer projects; she or he will receive a special Aurifil thread prize. You can make any of the designer projects (and we hope you make them all!) To participate, simply share your photos at our Flickr Folder... we can’t WAIT to see what you do.

GIVEAWAY!

Each month this year, I’m going to be giving away a pack of Aurifil minispools (like the one shown above) when the new project is announced. Just leave me a comment here to tell me what you think of Sarah's project. I'll pull a name at random on Friday, April 1 at noon. The sampler pack includes great colors in different weights. 

UPDATE: Tonya Littman won the thread this month! If you didn't win this time, please come back and try again each month this year. 

The Space Between, Part 3

 

Yesterday, I finished quilting my piece to submit for consideration in a juried invitational called “The Space Between,” which will be co-curated by Leslie Tucker Jenison and Jamie Fingal. I just pressed it (with lots of steam), and it is actually lying flat. Hallelujah! I am amazed, as I had worried that such heavy quilting would make it go very wonky, and it was certainly looking that way before I pressed it. I thought you might like to see the back of the piece, which more clearly shows the stitching, all done in black and white thread (Aurifil Cotton Mako 50).

The back looks like a pencil drawing, and it is quite a nice effect. When I was worrying about the wonkyness, I thought I might have to add a layer of interfacing and another backing, and quilt some areas again to take care of this. I am so glad that I didn’t have to, since it would have hidden all of this wonderful stitching.

Here is a shot of the front:

Now, on to the binding. I usually face my art quilts, but if I do this, I will turn under just a bit of the quilt, and at this point, it is slightly smaller than the size requirement for the exhibition, and a binding will add a bit back. And I think a small white binding will frame it nicely. I hope to show you the finished piece in my next post. 

And I have a name: Hope is the Thing. It comes from a poem that was special to both my mother and me, and seems appropriate, as I was working on this piece when I learned about her death on Jan. 26. My mother loved two American poets very much: Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson, and passed that love on to me. The name for this quilt comes from this poem:

HOPE

by Emily Dickinson

 

Hope is the thing with feathers 

That perches in the soul, 

And sings the tune – without the words,  

And never stops at all, 

 

And sweetest in the gale is heard; 

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm

 

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,

And on the strangest sea;

Yet, never, in extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.

The Space Between, Part 2

I have made some progress on my latest piece for a juried invitational called “The Space Between,” which will be co-curated by Leslie Tucker Jenison and Jamie Fingal. I ignored my own advice, and quilted this piece, rather than thread sketching it first on just the top layer. So this piece is a bit wonky right now. It is exactly four weeks since my mother’s death, and I am still not thinking clearly. But it is helping me to work on this piece, to do something creative. 

I am hoping that with the rest of the quilting, it will lie nice and flat. If not, I will probably add another backing and perhaps some trapunto-ed areas behind the quills of the feathers or the whole feathers, and try to quilt out the wonkyness. Each piece brings with it its own challenges, and I try to not get too stressed out, reminding myself that such challenges often result in my learning new skills, or trying some new technique.

I am using only black and white thread, Aurifil Cotton Mako 50, a very fine thread. Black on the feathers, and white for the swirls in the negative space. The swirls make me think of air, or wind.

I thought you might like to see the photo on which this piece is based. I arranged four bluejay feathers on white paper, and shot them using the macro lens on my camera. Here is the photo:

The Space Between, Part 1

The morning of January 26, I started work on the piece above for a juried invitational called “The Space Between,” which will be co-curated by Leslie Tucker Jenison and Jamie Fingal. That afternoon, I got the news that my mother had died unexpectedly, in her sleep, early that morning.

In the three weeks since then, I have been consumed by grief, handling the details of affairs that came in the wake of my mother’s death, and trying to tread water. I have not had the time or the interest in working on my art. And the thought of returning to this piece, which was interrupted by such a devastating event, chilled me.

But the deadline for this exhibition looms. And making art is healing. So today I finished painting the fabric, cleaned my studio, and started stitching.

These two photos show the piece after painting, but before any stitching. It is 36" x 48".

This piece features four bluejay feathers I have found on my daily walks. Some of the feathers are blue on both sides, with interesting black splotches. Some are blue on one side and black and gray on the other. I have always collected feathers, nests and egg shells; as a child I loved to look for birds’ nests, and I even made them, out of mud and grass, let them dry, and perched them in trees. My mother gave me bits of brightly colored yarn to hang in branches in the springtime, for the birds to use as construction material, and then we would go on walks, looking for nests with glints of yellow, pink or purple. 

I read once that birds keep themselves warm by trapping and heating the air in the space between their feathers. The feathers themselves are not warm, in the same way that a blanket or quilt is not warm, but merely act to hold our body’s heat close to us. This phenomenon is what inspired this piece. I have not started thinking about a name yet.

In 2010, Leslie and Jamie’s exhibit Beneath the Surface premiered at International Quilt Festival in Long Beach, California, and also showed at International Quilt Festival in Houston. 

It included work by Jamie Fingal and Leslie Tucker Jenison, Natalya Aikens, Frances Holliday Alford, Loris Bogue, Deborah Boschert, Peggy Calvert, Phyllis Campbell, Paula Chung, Joanell Connolly, Gerrie Congdon, Cindy Cooksey, Jane Davila, Muna Elias, Barb Forrister, Terry Grant, Desiree Habicht, Pamela Price Klebaum, Sherry Kleinman, Jane LaFazio, Jayne Larson, Linda T. Minton, Susie Monday, Jeannie Palmer Moore, Rachel Parris, Karen Stiehl Osborn, Judy Perez, Yvonne Porcella, Wen Redmond, Karen Rips, Carolyn Ryan, Sarah Ann Smith, Virginia Spiegel, Cynthia St. Charles, Ann Turley, Terry Waldron and Kathy York.  

This year’s exhibit will also premiere at International Quilt Festival in Long Beach, July 29-31, 2011. I hope my piece is juried in. I’ll post more about my progress in the weeks ahead. 

My new book is coming out in July!

I have some very exciting news that I’ve been wanting to share with you for more than a year, but I had to wait until now… I’ve written a second book! It is called Point, Click, Quilt! Turn Your Photos into Fabulous Fabric Art, and it will be released by C&T Publishing this July.

The book includes 16 artful projects inspired by my digital photographs.

In the book, I show how to compose and shoot dynamic digital photos from a quilter’s perspective. You can follow the fun workshop-style exercises and step-by-step directions to turn your photos into small art quilts, both realistic and abstract. Most of my projects use fused batik and hand-dyed fabrics, but four projects include innovative materials (paint, Tyvek, Angelina fibers, and foils).

I think you’ll also be inspired by the gallery section of the book, which includes beautiful work by other gifted art quilters I know.

If you are interested in learning more about my book as it gets closer to the release date, please e-mail me at susan@bluemoonriver.com. I'll add you my mailing list and let you know when you can order the book.  

Here’s a peek at the projects:

I’ll be sharing lots more details about the book, the projects, and the process of making a book in the coming weeks.

2012 Quilting Arts Calendar

Today, I feel very honored. My work “Trouble in the Pumpkin Patch” (detail shot above) has been chosen for the 2012 Quilting Arts Calendar. This will be the fourth year in a row that my work will be included. The other pieces are:

“Candy Corn” (2011)

“Autumn’s Bounty” (2010)

“Citrus Slices” (2010)

“Home Planet” (2009)

I continue to struggle mightily to come to terms with my mother’s recent death. It is hard to be very happy about anything right now. But she was my biggest fan, and I know she would be proud to hear my good news. I just wish I could pick up the phone and tell her about it.

Happy Valentine’s Day

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly,
what is essential is invisible to the eye.
– Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The Pandoras play with gelatin plate printing

At this month’s meeting of The Pandoras, my local fiber arts group, we did gelatin plate printing. This is a process I won’t describe in detail here (a great source for information is Rayna Gillman’s excellent book Create Your Own Handprinted Cloth). Basically you make up unflavored, non-sweetened gellatin, and allow it to firm up in a shallow pan. Then you dump it out, roll paint onto it, place found objects on top to act as a resist, and press fabric or cloth on top. 


Here are some of my results. This was a very fun, serendipitous process; I'll definitely try it again.
 

I'm teaching at International Quilt Festival in Houston

I am pleased to announce that I will be teaching three classes this year at International Quilt Festival in Houston: 

Wholecloth Painting – Botanicals
Thursday, November 3, all day

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 Start With a Photo
Friday, November 4, all day

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 Thread Sketching – Dragonfly Wallhanging

Saturday, November 5, all day 

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For details on the classes, please click here.