Ties That Bind

My art quilt group took a field trip last week to the Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh, NC, to see the Ties That Bind exhibit.

From the CAM website:  Precious Lovell: The Ties That Bind is a collection of 15 apron studies that continue Precious Lovell’s exploration of the narrative potential of cloth and clothing with a focus that is both personal and universal. The exhibition explores the lives of women through the cloth and clothing they have historically made, worn and continue to make. The medium is the combination of techniques used by improvisational and traditional patchwork techniques of African American quilters with those of Korean women’s Jogakbo (Patchwork), Nubi (Quilting) and Bojagi (Wrapping Cloths).

The aprons are displayed on dress forms.  Each apron is represents a female ancestor of the artist's.  A symbol on the waistband represents the relationship to the artist.

Today is the last day of this exhibit.  We all liked seeing the different techniques used to make the aprons.  None of us had visited this venue before.  It was kind of hard to find a parking place on the day we attended because of many large cement-mixer trucks in the same block.  I managed to parallel-park, and we paid a dollar for the meter.  The museum admission was five dollars, but free for seniors over 65 (I qualify!)

After we viewed the exhibit, we went to lunch at Jose and Sons Mexican Restaurant in the next block (free parking in the adjacent parking lot.)  We all liked the delicious fresh food that they served.  It was a good outing!

Christmas Surprises

It's Christmas week for two of my quilting groups.  Yesterday the Anything Art group met at Ruth-Ellen's for our annual holiday lunch to celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah.  We all helped make the potato latkes, and Ruth-Ellen made the kugel.  

In honor of the season, I made some little ornaments for the ladies to select.

Some are made from a piece of needle-felted batik enriched with silk roving and other fibers.  The shiny one on the left is made with Textiva film and bits of ribbons and threads that I fused to a piece of Timtex with Misty Fuse.

Here it is, upside down...thanks, Blogger!

I made quite a few of these but they were snapped up yesterday at the art quilt bee meeting!  Each one has a little bead, mostly ones that I made from Shrinky-Dinks painted with Lumiere paint.

I received a very nice quilted, beaded fabric bowl from Toni yesterday.  She cut up a quilt, tucked in the sides, and voila!

Roberta made us each a fabric-covered notebook covered in cheery Ultra-Suede.

Sideways this time!  What's going on?

Tomorrow it will be Christmas brunch in Wake Forest with my Whacky Ladies bee.  I don't get to participate in all their meetings anymore due to the distance involved in driving at night, and also because we often leave for the mountain cabin on Thursday nights.  But I am looking forward to seeing them again tomorrow!

Anything Art Day

Monday I took a day off from my usual gig of being a "grand nanny" and spent the day with my art quilt bee, "Anything Art."  We had our usual morning of "show and tell" followed by a field trip to an art installation.

Show and Tell included Peg's original patchwork tote bags.  That large one would be perfect for carrying a cutting mat to a quilting workshop.

Roberta is known for up cycling garments and other items from thrift shops.  Here is a necklace made from neckties, sewn into tubes with wire inserted and rolled up to make flowers.

She also had a vest made from recycled clothing.

She is working on this fabulous piece which resulted from a skirt with the figures and blossoms printed on it.  We had a lot of fun thinking of titles for this one.  I was thinking along the lines of "Rohypnol Nights" 

There were several other quilts shown, but some are probably going to be the upcoming PAQA-South quilt show, so I will save those for a future post.

Then we took off for the Cary Arts Center to see the exhibit of work by jan-ru wan titled In Clothes We Remember.   

She is an installation artist and fiber art educator.  She used garments and up cycled objects to create objects of art.

Here is the room with two of the installations in view.

The works are ethereal and lovely from a distance.  Upon closer inspection, you realize that the wedding dress has rusty razor blades hanging from the split panels of the dress. You can interpret that in many ways and our group had some lively discussion.  Most of us are of the opinion that art should be beautiful, not edgy, but this exhibit was both.

The installation on the far wall is titled Wearing Mortality on Your Sleeves.  It is made of dyed and printed silk organza, and includes bean sprouts and stitching.

One of the installations that we all liked was this baby bassinet with spirit money attached.  It is filled with mini-marshmallows.  The anthropologist in our group, Toni, explained that spirit money is used by people in some Asian cultures when visiting the graves or memorials to their ancestors.

The next installation,  The Little Blue Shirt, is made from a shirt from Guatemala.  It has dyed threads and beads, which support used laboratory tubes containing bean plants.  

Several of us were quite put off by the laboratory tubes, which look kind of gross.

The largest installation is the one we all liked best.  It is ethereal and lovely from a distance as well as up close.

                              

I would like to have seen this installation in a room with natural light catching the petri dishes and glowing through the silk organza.  The windows in the room were covered with shades, perhaps to avoid fading of the fabrics due to sunlight.

It was an interesting and thought-provoking exhibit, and I am glad that we went.

And then the next day, I got to stay with my little granddaughter, Charlie.  She always makes me happy!

Mixed Media Backgrounds

Monday was our Anything Art Bee meeting.  We met at Peg's, but I provided the program.  We were creating backgrounds for mixed media collages on either gallery-wrapped canvas or canvas boards.

I made a few before the meeting, using either gesso, or gesso mixed with acrylic paints.

You can add a lot of texture to the background at this stage with stamps, thick applications of gesso, or carving into the thick gesso with a sharp object like a straw or the end of a paintbrush.

The striped effect on the two golden pieces is from a piece of corrugated cardboard from packaging.

The next two are similar, but one has much more color added to the gesso before applying.  They both look like ocean scenes to me.

We once again used Peg's plastic-covered folding banquet table, and had fun painting and creating yummy textures for our backgrounds.  

We only had three members present, because snow and ice were predicted for after lunch.  Here are Peg's two backgrounds.  

And these two are Toni's.  The large spiral motifs are from one of her own hand-carved stamps coated in gesso.

 I started another background using a canvas I had previously painted in black, and didn't like.  Will have to take new pics of that one and also a piece that is almost finished.  Getting ready to head to the mountains!

Work-in-Progress: Looks Like Ashe County

I was going through some bins in the sewing room last week, and came across a project from a Pamela Allen online class some years ago.  Pamela is always trying to stretch her students and impart some instruction on different types of art, and art history.  This particular piece began as an attempt to do an "abstract" piece.   I think it was from the Four Quilts class, where we interpreted our theme four different ways.

My theme was "Mountains."

Looks Like Ashe County, Jeanne McBrayer, 2014

As I recall, this did not win the teacher's approval as a good example of an abstract composition.  However, I liked the fabrics and colors, and the symbolic representation of the mountains, Christmas trees, rivers, fields, and trails.  It reminds me very much of Laurel Springs in Ashe County, North Carolina, where we have a cabin.  The fabrics include hand-dyes, hand-painted, sun printed, stamped, and commercial fabrics.

Typically, the pieces from Pamela's classes are cut freehand with scissors, applied with glue stick to a fabric backing, and then embroidered around the edge to secure the pieces to both background and a piece of batting.

This project had been in the bin with pins and glue-stick holding the appliques together.  In the interest of getting it done,  I used a zigzag stitch and a turquoise poly thread to get all the parts sewn on.

Now, I need to decide what to do.  I am thinking of making this into a tote bag, in which case it will not need additional quilting, or have a traditional binding.  If it becomes a wall-hanging, I will add a backing fabric and do some more machine quilting.

Now to some other photos of our Anything Art bee meeting last week.  The day's topic was hand-stitching.  We called on our member Peg Henderson of Raleigh to show some of her work and demo a few stitches that she likes.

Here is an undersea piece with hand-dyed fabric, cheesecloth, and various embellishments.

This unusual piece features some of Peg's unique fiber stitching.

She did some samples for us, showing how you can change the appearance of stitches like French knots, lazy daisy, and Y-stitch for different effects.

Here is another sample with running stitch used to make a basket-like effect.

Since we are featuring hand stitching, here is another piece of mine that I have never shown on the blog since it was finished.

It is a small piece mounted on black gallery-mounted canvas.  The photo is crooked but the quilt is not.

I started the background in a class with Larkin Van Horn at the Capital Quilters Guild in Raleigh.  She provided the words printed on Extravorganza, a sheer fabric you can run through your printer.

I decided mine looked like an undersea scene, so after quilting, I added some fiber seaweed, beads, and some real shells from my collection.  I think I also did some painting on the background with Lumiere paints, which gives it a little bit of a gleam.

And to wrap up today's post, here is a beautiful dish of treasures from Roberta's house.

She has made bangles, hearts, and hand-painted buttons.  That heart with the royal blue center now belongs to me!  A nice gift to remember a special day.

Lots to Catch Up On

Another week has flown by.  The Anything Art Quilt Bee met last week.

First was the reveal of our Five Funky Flowers group quilt! This picture is not good because it was on the wall at an awkward angle.

Five members of the bee each made one or more red/purple flowers, and then we divided each into four quarters and divided them back up.  After deciding how to construct our new flower from the four sections, we each added stems, leaves, quilting, and other embellishments.  We each bound our own section, and Roberta whip-stitched the five sections together.  My flower is the one in the center with the dark stem and leaves.  The quilt will be shown at the next guild quilt show in March.

Roberta Morgan showed off some of her tissue-bleed fabric projects.  That was our project last month, wherein we used wet colored tissue paper to tint commercial fabric.

This one is a landscape with amazingly strong color tones.  It reminds me of a watercolor painting.

She got some great colors on this one, too.


I finished my fabric-colored journal in time for the meeting.  The cover is quilted to a piece of Timtex interfacing, then fused to a piece of snow-dyed fabric that I made years ago.

I stamped the inside covers with botanical stamps and green ink.

I used three or four different kinds of paper to make three signatures, or sections of paper, bound into the book.  Each signature has a cover made of watercolor paper.

In keeping with the garden theme, I stamped many of the blank pages with green ink.

I recently made a whole collection of collaged tags, and added one to the journal.

Some of the signature covers are made from my grandchildren's artwork.  I have been letting them use a set of my father's watercolors when they visit.  I remember using the same set as a child.  It makes me happy to see them painting and carrying on the legacy.

I also finished my other tissue-bleed fabric project.  Here are my three little posies, now embellished with some quilting and hot-fix crystals.  I used a silk sari ribbon with silver threads to finish the edges.

I will have some more about our bee meeting and also another project I have almost finished next time.