Kodiak Bear Paw Quilters Annual Quilt Show

The Kodiak Bear paw Quilters hold a quilt show every year.  The show is Saturday and Sunday, October 8th and 9th, at the Kodiak High School auditorium Foyer.  These are my entries. The photo above is called Big Dipper.  It is 21.5 x 20.  This piece started out with a piece of hand dyed fabric.  I had a block left over from a reduction print I made in Liz Mitchell's print workshop, with which I printed the distant mountains.   I decided to extend the mountains beyond the silk border.  The gradations in the border are hand dyed.  I originally printed the stars with gold Lumiere paint, but they weren't  as bright as I wanted, so I stitched with gold metallic thread.  This is the quilt that led me to a thread crisis about a month ago.  I ran out of thread with only 12" of the border left to quilt!  I asked the wrong daughter to quickly send me thread!

 This quilt is 15 x 20 and is called Joy.  The print is an Alutiq petroglyph.  She is actually the only recognizable female figure.  Arms upraised signifies dancing.  Although I am not Alaskan Native, she is my Goddess.  The people who carved these images in the rocks many, many years ago, came to this island from someplace else and made it their home, just like I have.  I was not born here, but after 35 years, I am from here.

 Alaskan Sky is 21 x 12.5.  This piece shows one more stage of the reduction print.  The stars and the Northern Lights were printed first, then that was cut away, and the mountains were printed.  I really like that the red border does not extend into the mountains, making them look more authentic.  The gradations in the border are hand dyed.

 Kings is 15.5 x 20.  One morning, I just decided to start cutting this print up and inserted strips thinking sea grass.  I was happy with the layering effect, and though everything matched up quite well for freeform work.  I don't normally do alot of hand embroidery-I am pretty much hooked on beads, but the stitching on this piece was fun and I am pleased with the results.  I used 3 stands of red embroidery thread on the distant blades, and  hand dyed purple Size 5 pearl cotton on the closer blades.  I will not try that again-multiple layers of pimatex is not easy to pull that thick of a thread through.  I used hand dyed size 12 pearl cotton to outline the starfish, which turned out great.  I bought both of those thread at Visions in San Diego last Spring.  Then, of course the required beads and buttons were added.  I used higher contrast thread than I normally do.  I have thought that my stitching gets lost when i use lower contrast thread, but I am not all that great of a stitcher.  Of course, when my thread really show is when my sewing machine started misbehaving and eating the thread.  I tried new needles, rethreaded, put on some thread treatment.  She just was angry with me that day, I guess.  Our first bad day!

 A close-up of my starfish and button creatures.

Over the Mountains is 12 x 12, with a portrait quilt measuring 4 x 6.  I posted about this piece several months ago.  i wasn't happy with the placement of the mini quilt.  I moved it around for months, then I read somewhere to leave blank space in the upper left corner, which works for me.  This is my donation for the silent auction.

I have been playing with Decolorant and paint with stencils this week, as a means of procrastinating binding and hanging sleeves!  I had some ugly scarves that I experimented with.  I used spray decolorant on one which was a mistake-it crept under the stencil.  Then I did three with plain decolorant paste.  I was working on a table with batting, covered with plastic.  I guess paper or cotton underneath would be better.  The paste went through the scarf and seemed to just sit there on the plastic.  You can't move the scarf until it is dry, also.  Anyway, one of those is beautiful.  Then, I used yellow Decolorant and a leaf stencil on a red scarf.  That one is pretty awesome.  Finally, I printed Lumiere paing with a stencil.  those turned out OK, but it is hard to apply the correct amount of paint.  Tomorrow, I will take some photos and post them.

And I almost forgot-my SAQA Auction quilt sold for $250.  Of course, there was family politics involved-it was purchased the Aunt of my daughter, Kristin's, fiance.  All the same it sold for a good price and I wasn't shamed by having it sent back like last year. 

Obsessed!

I live in a very small house.  When something is not in use, it gets stowed away.   Once I got out all the gear for dying, I can't stop until I am done!  No dawdling about it.  For the last week, I have done some sort of task related to dying every day.  These photos show some of what I have accomplished.  I dyed several 6 step gradations.  I have been starting with dye and fabric, after 10 minutes add soda ash, then another piece of fabric, and so on, so that it gets lighter as you add fabric. 

 Some of them don't have as much variance as I would like to see.  The next batch I will try mixing the dye for each step.  More work, but if I get better results...These are all fat eighths.  Mixing each stage, I will do larger pieces of fabric.

 this piece started out as a light peach color.  I stitched the circles, then dyed it in red dye.  I dipped the stitched portion then submerged the fabric with the stitched part sticking out.  The center circles has the most definition,

 This piece started out yellow.  I had bound some stones before dying, but it really didn't show on the yellow, so I bound it with rubber bands and dyed it in orange.  What is weird is that the original bindings show better now!

 Small stones bound with rubber bands.  I like this, but I wish I had dyed it first.  Try again...

 Pole wrapped shibori.

 This piece was yellow, bound with rubber bands, then dyed in red and fushia, bound with rubber bands again.

Another piece of pole wrapped shibori.  I also dyed some scarves with this batch, but took no photos.  Nothing terribly extraordinary.  Now it is time to take todays work out of the drier and see what I got!

Anchorage

I just returned from spending a week in Anchorage.  I took my granddaughter, Olivia, to visit with her cousin, Callista.  That was the reason for going to Anchorage, but my daughters, Ingrid and Kristin also had an agenda!  Here you see Ingrid slaving over her sewing machine(actually, Kristin's because Ingrid couldn't find her foot pedal and power cord). 

 We had made most of the squares previously.  Here you can see the quilt with part of the sashing added, laid out on the bed to arrange the squares.

 This is how far we got.  She still has a row of 1/2 square triangles and a 6" border to add.  There was no stopping Ingrid!

 Kristin was intrigued with the prayer flags I had made.  At Christmas I gave her a 12 step fat quarter gradation which we tore up and printed with the stamps I have carved.  She could hardly wait for the ink to dry to hang them.  She strung these from the fence in front of her house.

And these in front of her lovely garden. She has one more strand in front of her house. She calls them her Alaskan Peace Flags. I want to make some for me but I have to dye more fabric first. We also made 29 jars of raspberry jam from berries growing in her yard. Of course, we showed Olivia city life too.



Build A Bear Workshop



 Waiting for Mom to get off work, outside City Hall, after an afternoon of shopping for school clothes.

After some margueritas at the house, we decided to walk to dinner.

Olivia jumping on the trampoline with her crazy Aunties!

Had a great time!  Thanks Kristin, Ingrid, Mike and Callista!

Early Morning

For me, today was an early morning.  Since I work nights, I tend to lounge around in the morning, but today I jumped out of bed and got to work.  I had this piece laid out already.  I changed the mountains in the foreground several times before I settled on this fabric.  I need more dark and toned fabrics!  Going through fabrics looking for mountains, I realized that the majority of my fabric is medium shades.  Although I do like the gradation in the border, it is not very uniform-by that I mean that there are unexpected gaps-one of the things of working with handdyed fabric.  There is so much variation in the fabric, often I have a piece sewn in before I realize that it is not quite right.  I really like the narrow red border, and the way it lies behind the hills in the foreground.

It is time to start quilting.  I have 5 pieces ready to quilt.  I have been procrastinating.  Figuring out how to stitch a piece is always a bit intimidating for me.  But, my stitching improves when I quilt several quilts in succession so I choose the one that I care about the least to start with, and by the time I get to the piece that I am the most invested in, my stitches are uniform and sortof beautiful.

New Work

Dancing Lady is 24" x 24". I made the jelly fish by sandwiching watersoluble stabilizer(Solvey)and some unfused angelina fiber, for a little sparkle, between layers of tulle which were then place in a hoop, then free motion stitched. The tenacles are made from handdyed ribbon yarn, which are loosely stitched on, and strands of beads.

This quilt and the following two quilts were begun by sewing strips of the background fabrics together. I then cut slightly turned squares from the resulting fabric, and sewed the squares back together. I think it adds alot of interest to the quilts.

"Square Dancers" is 21.5" x 27". The jelly fish are made the same as for Dancing Lady. The quilting isn't very visable in this photo, but I love the texture I achieved. It was the first time I have used wool batting, which contributes to the great texture.

"Rockfish in the Kelp Patch" is 21.5" x 27". The rockfish were made in a similar fashion to the jelly fish but made using orange organza. Seaweed is made from various couched fibers. The seaweed in the borders is pieced in using Carol Taylor's technique of sensuous lines. In the picture above you can see a closeup of the fish.

"Treasures" is 16" x 16". The clam shell is made from white organza, again, with angelina and water soluble stabilizer sandwiched between and placed in a hoop for free motion stitching.