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  • Columbia River Piecemakers Show – Revisited

    Last week I posted a notice about my participation as a guest artist at the Columbia River Piecemakers Show. In this follow-up post I wanted to share a few pictures and say a few things about the show.

    I was very impressed with the show. The guild is not a very large one but they had a wonderful array of quilts exhibited in a variety of styles – traditional as well as contemporary. I was the guest artist and here are some pictures of my display.

    My display at the show.
    My display at the show.
    Yours truly!
    Yours truly!

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    I was the Guest Artist but they also had one of their members as the Featured Quilter. Her quilts were varied in design and very scrappy (a woman after my own heart!).

    Featured Quilter Cathy Lundberg with her display
    Featured Quilter Cathy Lundberg with her display

    All the quilts at the show were lovely but one in particular caught my eye, it had an Egyptian theme and I  really liked the cat (Bastet –  to those who are familiar with Egyptian mythology). I was fortunate to meet the quilter and when I told her how much I liked her quilt, she told me that she was inspired by my Jaguar Totem quilt. Hers was Egyptian, mine South American – it’s a small world when it comes to cat icons.

    The cat Bastet
    The cat Bastet
    My South American Jaguar
    My South American Jaguar

  • Quilt Show This Saturday

    I have been invited to show a few of my quilts at the Columbia River Piecemakers Quilt Show this Saturday. Click on the link to get the details – time, place, admission fees etc. They are giving me four quilt standards for my quilts and now I have to make the incredibly hard decision of which quilts to choose out of the literally hundreds of quilts large and small I have in my collection.

    I have decided to hang two large quilts and devote the other two stands to panels featuring a collection of smaller quilts, one will be devoted to my landscapes while the other to my ethnic inspired quilts. Still, even with that narrowed down parameter, I have to choose a crosscut of my work that will hang well together and yet provide some visual variety. This will not be easy and I know what I will be doing today and tomorrow.

    One of the quilts that will be on display at the Columbia River Piecemakers Show this Saturday
    One of the quilts that will be on display at the Columbia River Piecemakers Show this Saturday

    On a related note, a friend of mine – Irena Swanson – is having a one woman show of her work at Reed College in the Vollum College Center Lounge. The lounge is used for meetings and is not readily accessible to the public at predictable hours but she is having an artist’s reception this afternoon (I’m sorry, I should have posted this with more warning) from 4-6 pm. She will also have an open house demo of her unique piecing technique a week from today on September 14 from 2:30 – 6:30 pm. If not the reception tonight, perhaps you can attend the demonstration, it is well worth seeing.


  • Upcoming Expo Classes

    It’s hard to believe that a whole year has gone by – where did it go? Summer is almost over and Fall will be here before we know it and with Fall comes NW Quilting Expo.

    Once again, I have been invited to teach and give a trunk show at Expo and I want to take a few moments to give you an overview of the classes I will be offering, the show class brochures have to condense the class description into one paragraph and often that is not enough to cover the class content adequately. Last year, my classes filled fairly well, some better than others but all had enough students that none were cancelled and I hope to keep that up for this year as well.

    I am offering three classes – two half-day classes and one full-day class and a trunk show/lecture as well.

    The Trunk Show takes place on Friday September 23 from 10am – 11:45am and will encompass a general sampling of my work over the years starting with some of my earliest pieces and how those led to what I create today. During this journey through fabric and thread (and even a bit of mink) I have explored a far ranging array of styles and techniques that span the globe in their inspirations; it will be a virtual smorgasbord of my work.

    My full-day class – Free Motion Magic – will be on Wednesday September 21 from 9am – 4pm. This class is well suited for beginners who have never tried free-motion quilting and more experienced quilters alike. The class will focus primarily on free-motion quilting and will cover a variety of techniques to use for various designs. After this class, you should be able to approach any design you wish to stitch and decide which of the techniques will yield the best results for that design.

    Free Motion Magic Sample
    Free Motion Magic Sample

    On Thursday September 22, I will be teaching Man-Doodle-Dalas. You may already be aware of the whole Zentangle® movement that inspires people to doodle, even those who don’t believe they have an artistic bone in their body can learn this ‘stream of consciousness’ style of dancing with a pencil. These free-form doodled mandalas make wonderful motifs for quilting and in the class I will show you a variety of approaches to create and use them. You will learn to doodle your own ‘dalas’ and also receive one of my Man-Doodle-Dalas on a wash away stabilizer to stitch along with a handout with a few other mandala designs (in case doodling your own is not your cup of tea). This class will run from 9am – noon.

    Free-Style Medallion #2 stitched without a template
    Free-Style Medallion #2 stitched without a template
    Free-style Medallion stitched without a template.
    Free-style Medallion stitched without a template.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    On Friday September 23 from 1pm- 4pm I will be offering Simple Sashiko Landscapes. This is the class I’m most excited about. I learned to hand embroider as a child then abandoned that in favor of quilting for much of my adult life but I have rekindled the passion for hand stitchery in recent years. My love for embroidery, like my love of quilting, spans a world of techniques – mostly ethnic. Years ago I discovered Sashiko (Japanese Hand Stitching) which I took to like a fish to water. Many of you may have been hearing lately about a rather new stitching fad called ‘Slow Stitching’. Well, it’s not really new at all, anyone who has explored Scandinavian Darning, Indian Kantha or Japanese Sashiko, knows this meditative sewing technique has been practiced for centuries. What’s new is old and what’s old is new. What’s new in this Sashiko class is the subject matter for the stitching. Sashiko is usually applied to a wide variety of traditional Japanese designs ranging from all-over patterns to Komon (Japanese clan crests). In this class you will apply this slow stitching technique to creating little stylized landscape vignettes. There will be a couple of designs included in your handout with a variety of interchangeable tree designs in case you want to customize your own scene.

    Sashiko Trees, rendered on a piece of  antique Kimono silk
    Sashiko Trees, rendered on a piece of antique Kimono silk
    Sashiko Landscape #1
    Sashiko Landscape #1

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    I do hope you will come join me for one of more of these classes and/or the trunk show, I promise you will leave the event with new skills in your repertoire or at least inspired to explore and take your own quilting to new heights.

     

    PS: Here is a sneak peek at my NW Quilting Expo show entry – Vintage Falls. It is yet another rendering of my Multnomah Falls pattern this time in Japanese Taupe fabrics (I LOVE those Japanese Taupes!) My goal was the try and recreate the image in a sepia tone presentation just like one of those old time photographs. It is hand and raw-edged machine appliqued with some textural embellishment. The photo does not do it justice – you need to come to the show and see it in person.

    Vintage Falls - my latest incarnation in my waterfall series
    Vintage Falls – my latest incarnation in my waterfall series