The Reef

The Reef
30" x 40"

About a month ago I was asked to create a piece to hang in Representative Alan  Austerman's office in Juneau.  Very exciting, because it was my first commission, and because of where it will hang.  They looked at the pictures on my blog and decided that they wanted one with similar colors to the quilt on my header, and specified the size of 30" x 40".

The background is pieced-first by sewing strips together, then I cut squares from the resulting fabric.  I did 3 different strip sets- one for the forground, one for the mid section, and one for the water.  The fish and crabs were printed with blocks that I carved, and Daniel Smith water soluble printing ink. I carved a second, smaller crab so they appeared more distant.  I cut them out and fused them to the background.  The seaweed was stitched on tulle layered with angelina fiber and water soluble stabilizer.  I shaped the rocks using freezer paper, then used an invisible stitch to apply them to the quilt, with various ribbons tucked behind for more seaweed.  Finally, I added more embellishments with buttons, beads and hand dyed pearl cotton.  I love the little beaded jelly fish.

Detail

Foreground Detail

Crab Festival Art Show

These are two of my entries for the Crab Festival Art Show.  Opening Reception is Friday, May 27th 6:30-9:30 pm at the Kodiak Inn.  show continues through 4 pm on Sunday.

Circling 23.5" x 23.5"
Rockfish printed on commercial fabric.  Circle fabrics hand dyed.



Closeup of Circling.

Closeup of Not My Grandmother's doilie.

Not My Grandmother's Doilie. 23" x 26".  Hand dyed fabrics and doilie.

I have two other entries, but I guess I didn't photograph one of them.  The other, Island Spirit, can be seen here:  http://sallysartquilts.blogspot.com/2011_03_01_archive.html.

More Small Work

I have been experimenting with some different finishing techniques with this latest group of small quilts.

This rockfish is, once again from a printing workshop I took last Spring.  I fused the purple organza before printing the fish.

I wish I had used a darker and heavier thread for the branch quilting on the outer part of the piece.  I got good texture, which I attribute to the wool batting.  I also thought the spray of beads across the piece is effective.

The fabric in this quilt is one of the first pieces of fabric that I dyed.  The mountains were printed.  I really fell in love with my Bernina quilting the sky.  My Viking ate metallic threads like this.  I was so happt with the way the machine was reacting, that I forgot to stop and change color of threads where I had intended. The image in the sky comes from petroglyphs of drawing by Kodiak Island's earliest residents.

Another Northern Lights quilt from the same piece of dyed fabric in the quilt shown above.  I quilted differently and followed the quilting motifs with beads.

One more very small Northern Lights quilt.

I did the same quilting on the outer border of this quilt as I used on thea bird quilt shown above.  Once again, a heavier thread with more contrast would have been more effective.  I am scared to use threads with high contrast.  I grabbed a piece of cotton batting when I layered this quilt and I think that the difference in loft is amzing.  I prefer the look of the wool batting to the cotton.  This quilt I sewed on rickrack to the quilt before I faced the entire quilt with a piece of backing prepared for fusing.  I am not entirely happy with the way the corners turned out, but with more experimentation, this will improve.  All of these pieces have fused backs, and with the exception of the final quilt, have fused bindings, which i have decided are great for very small pieces, but in the future, I will put a traditional binding on pieces that are 6" x 6" or more, like the larger Northern Lights pieces and the bird pieces.