Anything Art Flower Challenge

Today was our monthly meeting of the Anything Art Bee.  I traveled on the new I-540 toll road for the first time.  I would say there is strong resistance to paying the toll for this section of highway.  There were only two vehicles on the southbound trip, and three on my return trip!  Lovely not to have any traffic, but $1.00 each way seems high to travel a few miles.

First, we had Show-and-Tell.  I showed my baby quilt top and my paintings of the Christmas tree farm  and another one that I have not posted here yet.  I dropped the paintings off at Michael's on the way home to get them framed.

Roberta had an array of beautiful hand-made cuffs.  

I loved the one she was wearing.

Our hostess, Toni, made a great-looking T-shirt quilt, quilted by my friend Cathy Kirk.

Marion made a unique background display for quilt pins from a folded fabric technique.

After a delicious salad lunch, we proceeded to show off our red/purple flower blocks for our group challenge.  Don't they look beautiful grouped on the table?

Several members made more than one block.  What a wide variety, from the simple broderie perse rose, to the traditional blocks at the upper left, to the exotic in the second row!

We decided to slice each block into four equal parts.  Marion volunteered to be the slicer and dicer.

As soon as they were cut up, we started playing with the pieces to recombine them.

Everyone got one section of their own block back, and chose three more.  I thought we played very nicely during this game!

When I got home I tried mine in different combinations on my design wall.

We decided we would add stems and leaves to our blocks.  I found some pieced beige fabrics already in strips, probably left over from some Debbie Mumm-inspired quilt projects in the nineties.

Now I have to figure out how to join my flower squares, design a stem and leaves, quilt, and embellish.  Each person will make an individual quilt with a hanging sleeve.  They will be hung together if we decided to enter the in a quilt show.  Can't wait to see how they all turn out!

Anything Art Bee

Today we met at Ruth-Ellen's house for our annual December lunch meeting of the Anything Art Bee.  Ruth-Ellen made a delicious kugel, and once again led us in the making of potato latkes, in honor of the approaching Hannukah season.  Everyone else brought side dishes and desserts, for a deliciously decadent meal.

I decided to make some ATC's (Artist Trading Cards) to share.

 

All of these except one were made from an old piece of watercolor paper that I had painted with washes of pastel color.  I painted some flowers, trees or other designs, then cut the paper into the standard 2.5" x 3.5" ATC size.  I added some stamped text to the front, fused some photocopies of some of my artwork to the back, and stitched around the edges.

 

 

 

I also turned in two more pieces of fabric for our surface design challenge.  For this project, each participant started with a yard of palin white cotton fabric and sent it to the next person in the rotation.

 

When I got Roberta's fabric, it had been tea-dyed.  Roberta loves bright color, so I got out the Seatacolor transparent paints again and splashed some on to the wet fabric, allowing the colors to mix and blend.

 

Then it was looking kind of like an abstract garden, so I stamped some dragonflies and flowers with Tsukineko inks.

 

 

Here is a detail shot of Roberta's fabric.

 

When I got Peg's fabric, it was Round 3, and this is what it looked like.

Roberta had needle-felted some roving in a grid, and painted with Lumiere paints, which are very shiny.  Toni extended the lines of the grid on a diagonal with Inktense pencils.

 

This was looking way too linear for me, and there was a vast amount of white space left.  Once again I turned to the Setacolor paints and splashed some on.  I also put down some stencils to print while the paint was drying.

 

I just kept adding more paint, and fiddling around until I decided I had done enough. On to the next person to add more embellishment or design.

 

 

We had some good show and tell.  My favorite was this beautiful quilt that Peg made using a jelly roll, some additional fabric, and this fabulous border batik that finished the top beautifully.

 

We have a new group member named Marion, who is from Australia.  She made an Australian tree skirt featuring Santa in the sled pulled by " six white boomers,"  or kangaroos.  There is a song about it.

 

 

We often have a tutorial of some sort during our bee meetings.  Today Ruth-Ellen showed us how to light up our quilts with LED lights.  She had all the supplies we needed including conducting thread.  I decided I would learn by adding an LED light to a felt flower brooch.

 

It was pretty cool!  Now that I know how to do it, I might add lights to other projects.

 

I finally finished one of the watercolor paintings that I started in November at Art of the Carolinas in a class with Tom Jones. It is now off to the framers.  The scene reminds me very much of Ashe County, North Carolina, where we have our mountain cabin.

 

 

That gets me about caught up with what I've been doing.  Now I have to get serious about getting ready for Christmas.  Charlie and I started off the seasonal festivities by going to a Mannheim Steamroller concert at the DPAC Friday night.  It was just wonderful!  Our son from South Carolina is coming up with his family next weekend to celebrate Christmas.  Charlie got the lights up outside, a candle in each window, and the lights on the tree.  Now I need to get the ornaments on the tree and get all my other preparations ready.

 

Can't wait!

 

 

 

 

Narrative Threads, Part 2

Okay, trying again today to post about the Narrative Threads exhibit at the Page Walker house in Cary.  This time I have resized all the images to a lower resolution, and hope I won't have the frustration of the past attempt!

Here is another favorite of mine.  The quilt was made by my friend Margaret Jordan.  The tree is dimensional and features wrapped fabric.  The fused background of triangles diminishes in size from foreground to sky.

Winter Waiting, Quilt by Margaret Jordan, Text by Jenn Mercer

As I mentioned last time, some of the quilts had text incorporated in the piece, and some had it published on a separate display.  The next quilt has text right on the quilt.




With the heavy quilting, again, it was somewhat hard to read.

Here is a quilt in bright and happy colors with a delightful gathering of fibers.

Threads, Quilt by Jenny Williams, Text by Anora McGaha

The quilt in the next piece is by well-known art quilter Lyric Kinard, who lives in Cary, the site of the exhibit.  Her piece looks very organic, with soft earth tones and nature imagery.



Narrative Threads:  Call and Response, Quilt by Lyric Kinard, Text by Maura High

Here are detail shots of the two smaller fabric pieces.

Here is another piece with soft earth tones.  There is subtle quilting of nature images to enhance the theme.

One of the most compelling quilts in the exhibit is this one called Yet, it is all a dream.  It is a tribute to children in refugee camps.  The sheer ribbons have text of the poems, and contribute to the imagery of being trapped. The figures are heavily thread-painted.

Yet, it is all a dream, Quilt by Katy Gollahon, Text by Christine Wai.

I will share one more quilt from the exhibit.  This one is a very colorful piece called Life Force.



Life Force, Quilt by Jana Lankford, Text by Kerry Holjes

The poem was rendered in a very lovely calligraphy on a separate piece.



These are not all of the quilts, but I have chosen the ones I liked the best and which had decent pictures.  It is hard to photograph quilts  in a show without a tripod to avoid the crooked angles and keystone effects.  But, I hope you have enjoyed seeing some of the Narrative Threads exhibit.

Artsy Excursion

Yesterday was a wonderful, inspiring day...and finally I have some quilty things to write about.  I know you are tired of hearing about me peeling off wallpaper and packing boxes!

My art quilt bee, Anything Art, traveled to the Page-Walker house in Cary to view the exhibit Narrative Threads.

  Narrative Threads is a members-only exhibit that offers creative collaborations between quilters and writers with each team of artists displaying unique works that relate to their selected theme. Exhibit closes August 26. For more, call (919) 460-4963.

Our own member, Antoinette Brown, was one of the exhibitors and coordinators of this event. We have been hearing about this project for almost a year, so it was wonderful for the whole group to visit the exhibit together. Toni had two projects herself in the exhibit, as did our former member Margaret Jordan.

One of my favorite pieces was this scene of an old woman knitting in a primitive log cabin, complete with baskets on the shelf and a cozy fire in the hearth.  The knitter's face is hidden behind an unruly mass of white hair, while her dog is curled up by the hearth.

I neglected to get the name of the quilt maker or the writer with whom she collaborated on this one.

Another one I loved was used on the postcard advertising the exhibit.



The Healing, Quilt by Eileen Williams, Text by Donna Carswell

   Each quilt was made to interpret or complement the writing of a collaborating partner.  I found it somewhat difficult to appreciate or even read the accompanying text on most pieces.  Sometimes the font was too small to read, sometimes the text was artistically presented but hard to read on the wall.  I concentrated instead on the quilts.

I loved this very colorful collage of images by Romare Bearden.  The fabric collage is by Nancy Lassiter, and the descriptive text surrounding the images is by Antoinette Brown.



Jammin' with Romare Bearden, Quilt by Nancy Lassiter, Text by Antoinette Brown

I think I will stop there for today.  I have written this post twice, completely losing the images the first time, and having huge computer delays this time.  Don't know if it's my computer or Blogger misbehaving.  More next time!







December Anything Art!

What a nice day with the Anything Art Bee!  For the third year in a row, we held our December meeting at Ruth-Ellen's home.  Potato latkes were once again on the menu, along with some great salads, kugel, and desserts.

Here are the needle-felted bookmarks that I made for this group- not at all Christmasy!  I found a piece of water-soluble fabric that I had already made to look like sea and sky.  I decided to make it larger and cut it up for bookmarks.  Since it was on the water-soluble base, I also had to do some stitching or it would all fall apart when I washed out the base.

I added a little Angelina for sparkle.  The edges are zigzagged with turquoise thread.

The backs are watercolor paper painted to match.  One is stamped, as well.

We had fun talking about our classes at Art of the Carolinas.  Ruth-Ellen had her Colorful Boats painting from a Karlyn Holman class, and her art journal begun in a workshop with Suzanne McNeill.

I had one of my class paintings framed and brought it with me, but can't show it yet!  (Surprise!) 

Roberta did a demo at AOC on making brooches from paper slide frames, and gave us each one.  Super cute!

Mine has a rose made of text.  Some of the others had a dangling bead.

We had some more great show and tell and lots of time to visit.  Next month we will meet at my house for a review of some of the art quilt techniques I have learned in my Pamela Allen online workshops.